by the way we played that song for my dads funeral.. nobody knew wether to laugh or cry lol.. its what he wanted (my dad had a strange sense of humor)

thanks for the kind words.. and monthy python always helps :)

well.. me da in law just passed (cancer) and one of my daughters classmates offed herself last week..so.. tie me to that bandwagon allready.. im good to go

I agree. Sad, sad times. :( I want to protect Peter Gabriel and Tom Waits now. Irrationally.

There’s a documentary on Netflix called “Remote Area Medical” that I highly recommend. It’s about a large pop-up clinic that serves the Appalachian region (don’t remember exactly where), and it’s so horrible how underserved this region is and how desperate these people are to get basic medical care.

Seriously. Well, only 49 more weeks to go.

you can insist your neighbors worship you and build alters in their closets that you can inspect weekly.

Hugs to you for having to live with TB at one point, and thank you for highlighting the problem in Marion, AL! I hadn’t known of it previously.

Remember how we said we wanted 2016 to be way better than 2015? Apparently the universe has decided to take some of our favorite people as human sacrifices. :(

Was yours that new strain that is antiobiotic resistant? Because that stuff is terrifying.

Loss of hearing was a really common one. But also things like psychosis and hepatitis, plus all kinds of more general bodily discomfort. Here’s a good, quick summary about why the lengthy treatment is so problematic:

What are the side effects?

But we have the best health care system in the world because you can’t be turned away from the emergency room or something, silly goose.

part of what freaks me out about this story (and did when i was dealing with TB treatment myself) is that it’s so hard to treat active TB correctly even for a diligent person in comfortable circumstances — i had to take four medications every day for like nine months, couldn’t drink, had to go for tests all the time,…

Like Trevor Noah satire’d last week: it’s time to run commercials in various African countries asking that they give money to children in American cities have: clean drinking water (Flint - arrest the Gov).

I struggled with depression and addiction issues for years (I’m 41 and urban); have beat the addiction God willing and am so happy — partly because I met a wonderful woman and am having the time of my life. But don’t really sympathize with the male navel-gazing going on here. It’s not rocket science.

“I rarely see it in my small-ish city up here in Canada”

Oooh! This will be missed because of my evergray status, but I have seen the collection of trepanned skulls at the Mutter Museum in Philly and it is gruesome! Some of those holes weren’t made with fancy drills - cross hatching on the skulls shows that someone took a blade to the head repeatedly and hoped for the best.…

Well this is a story of my grandfather at a moment of great family sadness and pain.