Brady’s Blog

as many of you know, i have been dealing with a pretty major health issue for a while now..

around eight months ago i developed meniere’s disease in my right ear, resulting in dizziness, fatigue, and occasional bouts of acute, violent, rotational vertigo with associated barfitude..

to put it mildly, i have not been “myself”..

meniere’s is “idiopathic”, which means its cause, triggers, and cure are not understood..

it’s the medical equivalent of “UH.. DAAAAH.. I DUNNOOOO..”

it’s a very scary disease, very frustrating, and definitely the worst thing that has ever happened to me..

i would not wish it on more than two or three people that i can think of..

i have been promising to write about this here off and on for a while.. just to fill you in..

but i have been reluctant to do so because i hate thinking about it and it is inherently not very funny unless you hate my guts..

if that’s the case, enjoy..

anyway..

after much research, trouble shooting, and simple trial and error, i came across something called nucca..

nucca is a sub-discipline of chiropractic dealing with the top few bones in the neck..

basically, the theory is if those couple of bones aren’t lined up, all kinds of stuff can get messed up including ears, equilibrium, etc..

it is pretty much the weirdest, most far fetched thing you can imagine, but so far it appears to be doing some good in my case..

i am not ready to go too far out on this particular limb just yet as i have only been under this treatment for about three weeks.. but SO FAR i have been feeling better and experiencing only milder versions of the most troublesome symptoms..

bottom line - my ear is ringing like crazy off and on, and i have had some dizziness and vertigo, but i have not been sick and have been generally feeling much better since beginning nucca treatment..

again, this is not the greatest comedy material..

but i said i would write about it..

so i did..

one of the ladies i work with has for some reason uttered the following sentence at work about fifty times over the last year.. *

“well ya know, my dad is a computer programmer”..

allow me to address..

first of all..

no he is not..

how do i know your father is not a “computer programmer”?

because there is no such thing..

no one is programming computers anymore..

computers are programming computers..

not someone’s dad..

secondly, you are about fifty years old, which means your dad probably doesn’t know his own name..

much less what a computer is or how to program one..

maybe he did these things in the sixties, back when it was appropriate for you to go around blabbing about what your daddy does..

but not anymore..

and thirdly..

my dad can totally beat up your dad..

* probably more like twice but still too many..

i already posted this joke on twitter, but i’m going to double dip because i like this little joke and i’m trying to keep it short since i just got back from a nucca adjustment.. (i’ll fill you in on that later)

it’s your basic one-liner..

“mixing a bunch of cereals together is the best kind of suicide, then the soda kind, then the kind where you kill yourself..”

YOU ARE WELCOME!

just clearing out more wordpress queues..

this one has been sitting here for at least two years..

this was an idea i had for a website that would take the drudge report and “yoda-mize” all the headlines..

that is to say change them into the speech pattern of yoda, the great jedi..

for instance, today’s top headline would read “fire another missile, north korea does”..

normally i am the first in line to express how stupid my own ideas are, but this time i completely understand if you want to cut in front of me..

and now i will compare our journey home from a long weekend at the lake to the tragedy known as the trail of tears..

keep in mind, i know next to nothing about the trail of tears..

it was some indians that got moved a great distance against their will..

i think from the carolinas to oklahoma..

that’s what we’re going with..

so here’s the comparison..

first of all, i don’t want to hear about how we had shoes and the indians didn’t..

because they had moccasins, at least for the first couple hundred miles..

and the shoes we had didn’t do us a bit of good driving in our car..

so we’re even there..

now.. about the car..

the car sounds great i know.. especially when you’re hauling a bunch of kids..

much better than a horse..

but have you ever tried to dig a sleeping kid out of the back seat of a suburban?

impossible..

without the jaws of life or some kind of elaborate pulley system, you’re better off just leaving them back there until they wake up.. or the next day.. whichever comes last..

but a horse? a tired little indian kid probably just slides right off the horse and into your arms..

oh and that’s the next thing..

those indians didn’t have to tote kids up two flights of stairs when they got to oklahoma.. (two story buildings weren’t introduced to oklahoma until the late nineteen sixties..)

listen.. i’m not saying the indians didn’t have a hard time of it on the trail of tears..

i’m just saying other folks have have had some hard travels too..

i mean.. it’s basically the same thing..

they were forced to go somewhere they didn’t want to go..

so were we.. (you think i want to go back to work tomorrow?)

they were going west..

so were we..

most of them probably died..

two of us got sunburns..

see?

it’s a lot the same..

the only really big difference i can see between their journey and ours is we didn’t cry so much..

oh boy..

you guys are going to love this one..

this is a poem i wrote in about 1989..

i used it all through college to freak people out at parties and such..

i hadn’t even thought of it in years but i still remember every word..

——————————————————————————

“idle time”
by brady doty

ah to sit and ponder in my idle time..
the thoughts and pleas of a victim..
to imagine the reactions of this old man..
if i were to somehow kill him..

he would undoubtedly thank me in his flight..
for ’tis surely better there..
where one receives much needed rest..
and has not his cross to bear..

but he is old and fading fast..
‘twould be a waste of time to kill him..
this young girl’s life’s just begun..
now there’s a worthy victim..

to cut her short in her eleventh year..
from breathing five times more..
and with my strong and violent soul..
her head dash to the floor..

she too would thank me in the end..
for the pain she never felt..
and as her dying eyes befell me..
i’m sure my heart would melt..

alas but ’twas a daydream..
and i have murdered not..
but with this violent daydream..
a kind of peace was bought..

a peace of understanding..
a peace most sublime..
god, thank you for my daydream..
and for my idle time..

——————————————————————————

told you you’d love it..

i have no idea what “front desk” is supposed to mean..

i just found it sitting there in my wordpress drafts..

it’s possible that the idea was to write about how dumb it was for them to put up a big wall at our front desk and then put up a big mirror so they could see around it..

maybe..

but, while ironic and foolish, i’m not sure that’s a real comedy gold mine or anything..

oh well.. it’s out of my queue now..

let’s get another one out of the way while we’re at it..

i had a post ready entitled “fortune cookie” in which i was prepared to mention i got a fortune cookie that was made in macon county, georgia..

making it the only thing in the world not made in china..

that right there is one horrible joke..

good riddance..

aren’t you glad i didn’t make you read those?

i have an inner ear disorder called meniere’s disease..

it causes vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss..

once, in the spring of 2009 it even necessitated my taking a few days off from this very writing endeavor..

one of the things you are supposed to do when you have meniere’s is eat less salt..

which means you are very likely going to find yourself at the local hippie store..

every town of any size has a hippie store..

if you don’t know where yours is just start asking around town where you could go to find some patchouli oil.. shouldn’t take long to track it down..

we’re lucky to have a very nice hippie store here called ozark natural foods..

good food and good hippies..

do i occasionally have some fun with them by cranking up rush limbaugh in the jeep when i roll up?

yes, yes i do..

but i shop there without irony..

i’m grateful for the the low-salt spaghetti sauce and no-salt potato chips..

i’ve also bought plenty of supplements there for meniere’s and other ailments..

one problem with this store..

every time a truck goes by outside, the WHOLE floor SHAKES..

as someone who is shopping there in part as a pursuit to find a remedy for vertigo..

i have to say..

this is not good..

is that funny enough to support this entire blog post?

probably not..

but it’s something bad that happens to someone that is not you..

and that is pretty much my definition of comedy..

so it’ll have to do..

i don’t know why there are still zoos in the world..

anything you can see at a zoo, you can see in walmart - and you probably won’t have to wait as long..

oh sure, in a zoo, you’ll get to see monkey’s and bears do stuff..

but monkeys are supposed to throw their poop..

any visit to walmart holds the potential of the worst the animal kingdom has to offer, as performed by humans..

and it’s free..

i went to walmart yesterday to return my wife’s manure..

let me say that a different way..

my wife had some extra manure in her trunk..

oh never mind..

i was at walmart making a return..

in front of me was a woman driving a cart..

don’t worry, she was perfectly ambulatory..

in fact, she had no reason at all to be riding around on a handicap cart except for her extreme obesity which she obviously obtained by riding around in carts instead of walking..

shocking.. yes..

as terrible as that behavior seems to me.. she went beyond that..

when she got up to talk to the lady at the counter, she asked/told her friend to go park the cart for her..

thankfully her friend was a smidge and couldn’t figure out how to make the thing move..

so the lazy lady had to park her own cart..

anyway, i felt this was quite shameful..

even the fat, lazy bears at the zoo don’t expect someone else to hibernate for them..

i have long written here with the assumption absolutely NO ONE is reading this..

turns out i was wrong..

there are at least two of you, and if you’re willing to subject yourself to a constant stream of mediocre, over-tried, and under-done comedy, who exactly am i to stand in your way..

and so..

i say to you..

i will write again good people..

THERE WILL BE JOKES!!