Oopsie...

One of my hard drives died (won't mount,) and that's the one that holds all of my audio, show scripts, fragments, etc .

Sorry but I have to try to get it to work before I scrap it...

Okay, drama is done.

Drive is replaced but recovery takes time.

I know what I have to do to reduce that time.

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0045

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0045.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> "Money" by: "Pink Floyd"
..

----

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
Im all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, its a hit.
Dont give me that do goody good bullshit.
Im in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a lear jet.

Money, its a crime.
Share it fairly but dont take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise its no surprise that theyre
Giving none away.

Huhuh! I was in the right!
Yes, absolutely in the right!
I certainly was in the right!
You was definitely in the right. that geezer was cruising for a
Bruising!
Yeah!
Why does anyone do anything?
I dont know, I was really drunk at the time!
I was just telling him, he couldnt get into number 2. he was asking
Why he wasnt coming up on freely, after I was yelling and
Screaming and telling him why he wasnt coming up on freely.
It came as a heavy blow, but we sorted the matter out

----

This is episode 45

I've been converting my 400 or so albums from vinyl to CDs, to MP3s, and you're going to reap the benefits of my vastly expanded iTunes catalog.

Here comes some more Louis Armstrong aka Satch'mo.

But first I'm going to reveal why I am about to  leave you for, uh, snowier pastures, for my health … care, abandoning you to your own fates.

---- vvvv The Media Squat vvvv ----

As a Canadian, a member of a civilized and industrialized country, I would like to give some explanation as to why I am choosing to head back to Canada for my health care instead of staying here in the 'States.

Basically, I'm choosing to go the Snowbird route because Americans don't understand probability. (Which sort of explains all of "Las Vegas," doesn't it? A town whose entire "raison d'ètre" owes to the fact that Meir Lansky understood all too well the innumeracy of his fellow citizens.)

On the one hand this lack of understanding gives them endless optimism, even in the face of statistical certainty.

On the other hand, it puts them entirely at the mercy of their own ruthlessly efficient rapaciousness.

And smack in the middle is the unpleasant truth that there is a word for people who keep on repeating the same stupid mistake, hoping that this one time they'll get a different outcome, and that word is [bleep].

Lets look at the statistics gathered by the misnamed World Health Organization (I say misnamed because, for the purposes of this little "exposé," its really the view of the world as seen from the vantage point of the very 1960s, "looking for all the world like a enormous, humongous Fram air filter sitting in front a wall of dirty glass wall," building of the Pan American Health Organizations on the corner of East 23rd Street and E Street in Washington DC,) and those statistics, as revealed in actuarial tables, are that 15% of the population at some point, for some reason, for some duration of time is disabled.

"But the US is not the entire world," I hear you cry.

No, it most certainly is not.

That is reflected in the fact that the US is on par with really third rate, third-world countries, at the very bottom of a list of health care providers, 39th out of a list of 39 industrialized countries, surpassed even by Cuba. [ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Cuba-Has-Bypassed-the-US-i-by-John-Little-090512-856.html ]

(Who would have thought that. even after a forty year long embargo, a tiny little country, a single island in the Caribbean, deprived of access to the rest of the world by the mighty United States, would still be better able to take care of a poor mother and her new born infant, than the short shrift she would get in Washington DC.)

The individuals might change, that is shown as some fuzziness on a graph, by a wider bar delineating the arbitrary separations thereon, but the numbers are remarkably stable.

----

The citizens of the USofA must face that they have a corporate monster in their midst, one that is entirely within their power to vanquish.

That monster dictates that it be fed first, last and, since it does not care about anything or anyone, that it be fed even if that means that you starve.

Like all parasites, it does not consider its host until it is dead. The "it" can refer to either the parasite or to the host and the parasite.

Lets consider the costs of not excising this fiscal cancer which is metastasizing in plain sight, right in your midsts.

Consider that the costs of health care are far more than just the formidable tab of illness in this country, (already by far the highest in the world.
[As an aside, did you know that your stay in a hospital is called hotel services?
Do you think any hotel or even "We'd leave a light on fur ya" motel X in the world would not be a smoldering pile of embers if it tried to pull the [bleep] that you're put through in a night in the hospital?
{And I spent five weeks in the Ottawa General Hospital, and no time at all in a Brooklyn hospital
(and guess which one has left me using a cane since, maybe I should have, uh,
[hint, it wasn't Ottawa,]) so I know that whereof I speak.}])

Consider that it constricts your movements. (Your "God Given" right to "head on the highway of your choice, tossing out Big Mac and artery clogging Freedom Fries wrappers onto the road, smoking big ol' fat Dominican cigars, looking for whatever opportunities lie over the next blighted ridge," is being curtailed and your horizons are being shrunk much closer, much tighter than those of the poor South American migrant workers you have to hire now 'cause there's nobody left to mow your lawn or to haul away your toxic wastes for the skin-flint wages you're willing to pay. [Except when you aren't even willing to part with that much and screw 'em out of the money. {Why not? What are they gonna do? Call the cops? (Bwahaha ha. I slay me…)}])

Consider that you don't dare go anywhere to look for a better job either, because you might lose your coverage, so you are stuck in dead-end jobs, working for peanuts and feeling your life ebb joylessly away.

Consider that you better not dare get sick either because that might be considered cause for denying you coverage. (Think about that for a minute. "You don't dare get sick because that might be considered cause for denying you coverage." Then why are you paying for a policy?)

Consider that you'll probably get sick anyway, everybody does, sometimes severely (the actuarial tables say you're fighting one in eight odds to be the one in eight who does,) and then you'll discover that the insurance company may decline to cover you anyway.

(I'm sorry you got cancer but you didn't tell your doctor you had acne as a teen-ager so we're declining you your chemotherapy. And you owe us for the clinic visit because we decided to challenge it retroactively. [I wish I was kidding but the case, the HMO policy it exposed and congressional testimony where it was recorded has been well covered in the media and documented.])

Consider that the The #1 reason for personal bankruptcy in America, responsible for more than half of bankruptcies filed nation-wide, happens to be failing health. [ http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/2007/03/10/3-top-reasons-why-people-go-bankrupt/ ]

Bush made it rougher to declare personal bankruptcy, and still about 2 million personal bankruptcies per year can be traced to medical expenses [ http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/briefs/other/hb050202c.htm ]

If the HMOs thought could get away with it, death would just transfer the debt to a person's inheritors so the survivors could just keep on paying for systemic failure.

----

Consider that personal bankruptcy is rarely limited to one person.

People are rarely alone, so their wives or husbands or life-partners, children and pets are bankrupted right along with them.

If a parent fall sick, it usually means an abrupt end to the children's education, regardless of how well the children were doing.

That costs everybody every cent of what that child could have been earning (and of what taxes could have been collected on those higher earnings.)

----

Consider that of those people, broken on the wheel of medical bills, have had to sell everything at fire-sale prices; house first, furniture as part of that, then car (which everywhere but the major metropolitan centers means you have just developed a bad case social leprosy,) clothing … everything.

Consider what your chances are of recovering from a severe illness when you're made homeless because of that very illness. Are they slim, or none?

----

Incidentally, that cheapens the value of everything that anybody else owns.

The cost in dollar amount, an arbitrary figure at best, but nonetheless a reflection of the price of a product and/or or its production, and the value of things are shrunk before your very eyes.

Treasured pictures and "objets d'art" are immediately reduced to the cost of their constituent parts; thus a van Gogh is reduced to an assemblage of used old canvas and a few scrapings of pigment, an Annie Leibowitz photograph is reduced to the cost of a roll of used film; a Rodin sculpture is reduced to its weight its weight in metal, clay or stone.

That's part the true cost of not having health care in this country.

Lost opportunities squandered like so much chaff because of the greed and rapaciousness of some companies, some corporations, some eternal infernal problems that are holding you by the throat tighter and tighter and squeezing the life, the fun and the free will out of this country.

----

Insurance companies are at a tipping point in their battle with the citizens of this country.

Are they really bigger than the 15% of the economy, of the population they are alleged to serve?

Then something is dreadfully wrong. [ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1213783/UKs-doctors-write-letter-U-S-politicians-battle-lies-NHS.html ]

The UK health-care runs at about 8% of GDP and provide universal coverage.

In the US it runs at around 16% of GDP and there are 45 million uninsured, 25 million under-insured.

The insurance only applies for the first time because after that its a pre-existing condition, and we have congressional testimony as to what that means.

The 'States is beginning an accelerating  decline into irrelevance because it has frittered away the so called "Peace Dividend" that it got with the end of the "cold war", at the collapse of the Soviet Union, by countless fruitless pursuits.

The stock market started the Bush regime at 9,605 and eight years later, it stood at precisely 9,605. For business, the experiment with uber-capitalism has been a wash.

For the citizens stuck in a couple of trillion dollars of extra long-term debt, they've watched their future get mortgaged away.

Bush also took sympathy at the loss of the World Trade Center and turned it into universal opprobrium and hostility.

Bush managed to take The United States from a position of pre-eminence in all endeavors and reduced them into an economically and militarily deflated also-ran.
(Why do you think Kim Jong Un is laughing at you? He's leader of isolated, rinky dink North Korea and he's got more pull than the USofA. What he says goes. What Obama says is open to ridicule, endless debate and downright hostility.)

Oh and insurance company executives, don't think you can wave the flag like a magic wand.

Returning veterans have an entirely different view of combat  and armed conflict that you do.

Don't think that the people who are thrown out of their homes are magicked away into a never-never land.

They may end up filling the trailer parks, but the memory of having owned a ranch house is gnawing at the insides of the people you have so disposed.

Don't think that you aren't at risk of joining them either

There are millions more of them than before Bush took office. The edifice of commerce is getting shakier by the day.

As the HMOs toss people and corporations aside to avoid doing their duty by them, you may get a surprise and suddenly discover that you have tossed out the wrong person or corporation, one who can hurt you, big time.

Those darn survivors are an inconvenience aren't they?

----

Consider that the never mindful, ultra capitalist "Wall Street" firms who are in bed with the HMOs, locked as they are in a mutual-fund embrace, and looking to squeeze the populace of the United States for the profit they should have had over the past eight years.

Consider that the stock market debacle, has erased all their gains and stands once again at 9,605.

Consider that the mortgage meltdown has left them holding their noses and holding their breath as they hold worthless paper.

Consider that the credit crunch has left them painfully exposed and forced to risk their own money instead of just screwing around with your money.

Consider that that means charging you, not mythical people, but you, ever increasing amounts for health-don't-care coverage while constantly and consistently denying any and all charges against that coverage, with ever increasing ferocity.

If you think it won't happen, look around you… It already has.

The testimony is in your congressional record.

Health care for profit is not only an impossibility, but it is an obscenity; something only a parasite can regard as a right.

No one has a right to make a profit from the  death and misery of the sick and the dying.

By the end of this decade, I'm heading to Canada, because I can… Its my home...

Come to your senses.

If you lined up all of the high priced doctors end to end, they have not done as much for the common weal as the equivalent length of sewer pipe.

If you piled up all of the expensive drugs, recreational and otherwise, they haven't done as much for the common weal as the equivalent weight in mosquito netting.

A cost benefit analysis of the health-don't-care system you've got should clue you into the fact that you're getting screwed.

And don't tout the achievements of the drug companies too loudly.

If it hadn't been for the government finally walking the [beep] up because Rock Hudson looked like [beep] when he died of AIDS, most of the developments in pharmacology, therapies and genomics wouldn't have happened; not without the National Institutes of Health ponying up the money for some real research.

Health for profit is only good for preventive medicines, therapies and regimens, and those aren't covered by any of your damned health-don't-care policies.

I'm opting out because Americans don't understand probability.

What were the odds, unh?

That may be good for running a casino, but it sucks if you're the one betting your health on life's little lottery.

I've already lost that bet once and I'm not going to risk going through this twice.

I'm going to Canada for my health … because I can.

Home is where they have to take you in when you show up at the door.

I refuse to get sick in the United States.

Consider that Nicole Hollander once remarked in her cartoon strip "Sylvia" [ http://www.gocomics.com/sylvia/ ] about growing old in the United States: "You're best to do it elsewhere."

That's a sad commentary on what the children of the self-proclaimed "greatest generation" have become.

---- ^^^^ The Media Squat ^^^^ ----

Now, adelante la musica.

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Dusky Stevedore" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Solitude" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Swing that Music" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Darling Nellie Gray" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Red Cap" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I Wonder" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Some Day" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"You Rascal You" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Song of the Islands" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Avalon" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Someday Sweetheart" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira


----

The show notes, incuding the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

And this show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter or to accompany the music.

wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0013

YouTube video(s):

"Meds" by: "Placebo"

..

----

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

This show is "not" any kind of a medical show /podcast.

It is by and for the disabled, and if we can help reach across the chasm of questions and indifference to the other side of the rainbow of ability ... well and good.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disabilities.

The path to disability is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

Intro

I discovered I could write/assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

There is a phenomenon that I have always been fascinated by.

Its called "The Placebo Effect." [ http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect ]

Our minds are incredible things which have effects far beyond those we would expect.

Now, that does not extend to the mechanics of antibiotics and antivirals drugs discovered and refined since the middle of the last century, originally developed during another enterprise in killing, but placebos have effects which extend far beyond those of their components: "sugar, water, starch, and hope."

---- "Inertia" by: "Cat Jahnke (yong-kee)" http://www.catjahnke.com/

Because my father worked for Merck, Sharpe and Dohme, which became Merck/Frosst during his decades there, as a salesman, director of marketing and later as manager of their print shop, on and off of the Island of Montréal, I got exposed to all kinds of things that went on inside of that company.

Being a curious and interested kid, I listened intently, (and being a smart one, I shut up about it, so as not to remind the adults that I was indeed there. [You can learn the most amazing things that way. {Far more than people think they've revealed.}])

One of the most interesting was the measurement of the efficacy of drugs by the use of blind and double blind trials.

The technique was already old, having been conceived by "Claude Bernard" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Bernard ] back in the middle and latter parts of the 19th century (He was a fascinating man from whom we have derived a lot of the scientific method, scepticism. I could do a show just about him.)

This was just after the second world war, when the power of the scientific method came to medicine, and there were any number of discoveries being made every day.

Journals were exploding in readership, and in content for all those new readers and writers. (Actually I would argue that those peer-reviewed scientific journals were the earliest manifestations of moderated blogging, being read by a motivated and specialized audience, any one of which could write in and contribute.)

Like all human endeavors, there were all kind of claims made and these were rife with B.S. from people selling "snake oil", which the scientific technique originated by Claude Bernard was quick to put to the test.

Any claim found wanting was usually found to be actionable instead and the Snake Oil salesman was, at best, "run out of town on a rail" [ http://www.takeourword.com/TOW204/page2.html ] (I'm quoting from a Take Our Word webpage here because it says it best: "The phrase in question here, of course, is riding the rail or to be run out of town on a rail.  You may be surprised to learn that it has nothing to do with the railroad and everything to do with with a fence rail.  How does one ride a rail?  This is a form of punishment in which a person is tied or held to a rail that is then paraded through town, and often out of town, on the shoulders of two or more men, presumably strong men.  The object is for all to see the transgressor and immediately recognize that he has done something wrong by virtue of the fact that he is tied to and riding on a rail, and thus to humiliate him. " )

At worst, these individuals were jailed for murder. (Making claims on medicines is serious business, because either people paid with their lives, leaving the inheritors to bury your mistakes, or people paid for the rest of their lives.)

---- "Inertia" by: "Josh Woodward" http://www.joshwoodward.com/

Placebos are bits inert "stuff" which should be having no effect, but "are," through the mechanisms of the mind and its ability to control the body.

Incidentally, I would recommend all interested people to download "All in the Mind" from the ABC Radio National [ http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330911 ] as  Natasha Mitchell [ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/about/default.htm#presenter ] is a great host for an also great show.

---- "Inner Focus" by: "absentmachine" http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44463417

Controls occur at arbitrarily determined levels, but in general the mechanisms are perceptive and reactive.

The first occurs on the perceptions of how well we perceive ourselves to be.

This is just operating at the level of our own abilities to put differing values on the same sensory inputs.

Thus, what is an incredibly painful experience in one series of circumstances involving the literal death of tissue or the tearing of lignin which hold our muscles in fibre bundles, under other circumstances becomes "one Hell of a great hot-barbecue sauce," or "a workout that'll put some inches on your biceps and some hair on your chest."

It depends on what your expectations are (like the anticipation of pain is often worse than the pain itself.)

The ability of fakirs or sufis [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir ] or if you'd rather use the Indian words sadhu, guru swami or yogi, to put themselves in trance like states is one very easily explained, explored and useful way beyond the ability to lie on a bed of nails, to slap one's forehead bloody, to walk barefoot on a bed of coals, to achieve an altered state of consciousness.

This is the goal of users of recreational drugs and other substances. (I'll stick to beer, thank you,)

---- "INNER QUEST" by: "v.f.d. " http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords

The second occurs at a more mysterious, nah strike that word, at a "less well understood," level of effecting remissions and outright cures when there are no commonly accepted causal relationships.

This is something I am familiar with at a superficial level because MS exhibits this, depending on what part of the brain is being used to carry the signals from the volition to the outcome. ("I have to move this leg" usually gets me a "Yeah, yeah, yeah … hold your water…" and a slow response from my body, while "Youch, that's HOT!" usually gets me a spastic hyper-reflexive jerk which certainly gets my hand off the handle of the pot and makes it become airborne, spilling its contents all over the damn stove.)

The mechanisms involved with semi-volitional healing, what used to be called "hysteria" by Freud or "faith healing" by revival tent preachers, neither term explaining a damn thing, involve the marshaling of the body's own forces, somehow.

We don't understand exactly what is involved at what level and in what order, we know that something is happening, caused by our own minds acting upon our own bodies to initiate a chain of events which leads us along a path from illness to wellness, but beyond the facts, we know very little and understand even less.

Well, two hundred years ago, we were burning people at the stake, one hundred years ago we were locking them up in asylums, fifty years ago we'd just discovered penicillin and that a lot of people still aren't too clear on the difference between causality and coincidence (and we won't mention the idiots who believe in demonic possession, vampires or space aliens,) so, no nothing surprises me anymore.

---- "The Awful Green Things From Outer Space" by: "Clouseaux" http://www.myspace.com/clouseaux

Outro

The show notes, including the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

This show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter, or to accompany the music.

----

YouTube video(s):

"Meds" by "Placebo"
The music this time was:

"Inertia"
 by: "Cat Jahnke (yong-kee)"
 http://www.catjahnke.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Inertia"
 by: "Josh Woodward"
 http://www.joshwoodward.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Inner Focus"
 by: "absentmachine"
 http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44463417
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"INNER QUEST"
 by: "v.f.d. "
 http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"The Awful Green Things From Outer Space"
 by: "Clouseaux"
 http://www.myspace.com/clouseaux
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

msb-0388 Move Over MS

YouTube videos:

"Move It On Over"  by: "Hank Williams'"
..

intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

MSBPodcast is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for MSers.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disease.

The path to illness is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

Feedback comes first, so...

Shivver me timbers, oi missed "International Talk loik a Pirate Day", but it were few days ago , the nineteenth of September. Arrrr,,,

Sorry Miss Chris but the video to accompany this episode is by Hank Williams.

It seemed like a perfect accompaniment to the topic.

I know you're not into C&W, but at least its not on the program itself.
 
---- "I Gotta Move On" by: "Andre Bisson" http://www.andrebisson.ca/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.
 
Say "your" piece on this segment.
 
Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.
 
Drop us an email: "charles at MSBPodcast.com"
 
----
 
This rightfully belongs in the Feed Forward segment.

I am starting to expand msbpodcast.com into an actual web radio station.
 
Starting in January 2010, msbpodcast will have an interactive component which will be called MS Web Radio [ http;//www.MSWebRadio.com ]
 
Right now its not operative and its only a repeater to bring people to the msbpodcast.com site but I'm going to retool the web site to handle the web radio component.
 
It will also be podcast so if you don't get to it, it will still be available after the airing.
 
MS Web Radio will be held for a half an hour every Sunday afternoon at 3PM (15:00) my time.
 
I will be taking my definitely, uh, unusual show and opening it up to everybody.
 
I'll keep you posted on my progress as it happens.
 
---- "Move On" by: "Wes Jeans" http://www.myspace.com/wesjeans
 
Feed Me comes third, so...

I now have THREE sponsors. Success breeds success.
 
It you're listening on this podcast through iTunes or through a web browser, just click on the image for the sponsor and I'll take you right to the appropriate web page.
 
If you're on an iPhone or an iPod touch, you should be good to go too.
 
----
 
The first sponsor, you should be all familiar with and maybe even have bought some t-shirts.[ http://www.artoshirt.net/servlet/the-MS-Artists/Categories ] (whispers) That's the whole idea.
 
I'm a big T-Shirt wearer since losing my job and giving up the monkey suits.
 
I'm wearing one of the many shirts right now. The one that says: "Guitarded". I've even got a compliment on it on the boulevard around the corner from my apartment.
 
----
 
The second sponsor is the CADDi by BARBCO. [ http://barbco.biz ]
 
The picture of the CADDi in use sort of says it all.
 
BarbCo is very generously giving a dollar of  from every order they process to a bunch of causes and YOU select the cause.
[ http://barbco.biz/MultipleSclerosis.htm ]
 
----
 
The third sponsor is someone by the name of Rudy Sims who has a web site for people who are disabled in some way or other to exchange their information and other resources. [ http://www.disabilityresourceexchange.com/ ]
 
Join him in making friends among the disabled community and in sharing the resources and information we all need to live better.
 
----
 
My Book is out and Lulu are still [expletive deleted] but I don't have a choice anymore so lets make the best of it until I write a book about The Disability Show.
 
Its got:
• a frontispiece
• a Dedication.
• a Table of Contents
• Some History,
• Some Biography,
• Some Technology,
• Some Evolution,
• Some Episodes, (40 choice ones,)
• Some Parting Thoughts,
• URLs & references, a list of
• Books and one heck of an
• Index

It is awesome.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

The hardcover is beautiful but it IS a bit expensive for a single copy; they're cheaper if you buy lots of them; its eBook is $6.25.

The paperback is a pocketable version and better looking than most but it IS still a bit expensive for a single copy; they're cheaper if you buy lots of them; its eBook is $6.25.

I need the money to live. Have some pity folks.

Buy which ever you want. (But wouldn't you have a nice hard cover? [Or, are you sure I couldn't talk you into a paperback edition? {I really "need" the dough... :-}])

Oh all right.

Its the eBook then? [ sigh ]
 
---- "Move On" by: "Robb McMahan" http://msbpodcast.pbworks.com/MissingArtistPage

"Thesis:"

I'm sitting at my desk looking at some pointless and utterly unrelated images of people, and a bowl of fruit?

"moveoverms.org" sent me a email asking me to help them build an even better site.

[slow exhalation]

Wait. It gets even better…

---- "Move Your Mind" by: "Matt Mays & El Torpedo" http://www.last.fm/music/Matt+Mays

"Synthesis:"

Their email ends with "We look forward to hearing from you soon."

Well, here's their chance to, for real.

Like I said, they're asking me to help them build an even better site.

The problem with websites are two fold.

First is that people don't like to read, may have trouble with reading, may read bring too much of their own experiences, or too little of their own experiences, to the information that's on the page. For a lot of reasons, MSers just won't stumble onto the site.

Second is that it actually takes a great deal of skill to express what you want.

I read an enormous amount, and I write everyday, day in, day out, week in, week out.

Its all I do anymore; its all I "can" still do anymore.

I live (and I die a little everyday,) by the old  saw: "You may have thought your understood what you heard, but I don't think you realize that what said was not what I meant."

Writing something is damnably hard.

I am sticking to biographic and non-fiction because there's touchstones that I can feel as I stumble about, finding my way around in the dark here.

Part of the second problem is that most people who created the language were themselves healthy, or in denial.

This leads to situations like David Paterson, the blind governor of New York state, telling colleagues that he'll "see" them later.

It should be obvious to all and sundry that he'll do no such thing since he blind.

Language is clearly no help in "speaking truth to power."(What ever that is supposed to mean.)

There are a bunch of traps and pitfalls like this.

Then there is the fact that written English is entirely devoid of diacritical marks.

This leads to "tomayto", "Tomahto" situation in that nobody ever knows what the vowels are supposed to sound like, never mind colloquial usage and regional and multinational accents.

I include the entire written text of every episode along with the spoken word so that people can get my meaning despite the differences in pronunciation.

But straight ol' text doesn't get across any emphasis.

There are already many more shades of meaning which can be communicated without any need for visual explanation but just from my intonation.

---- "IF IT MOVES - IT AINT SAFE" by: "MADHOUSE" http://www.myspace.com/madhousedetroit

"Conclusion:"

moveoverms.org have sent me a email asking me to help them build an even better site.

Here's an idea, how about podcasting to your membership?

----

I just read something in the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/technology/15speech.html?ref=technology ] that makes me despair for anyone living in this vast, stupid wasteland, controlled as it is by people who have for-profit rules to "prevent" things from happening with ruthless denial of access to health.

I have become convinced that health-don't-care is killing America as surely as disease is decimating its citizens.

Now I have to get the heck out if this country before *I* get sick.

I really don't expect to finish the decade in the 'States.

President Obama is a mighty good man but the safety net you have here in the 'States just catches you once you've already been made destitute by whatever got you.

I don't intend to live out the declining years of a vastly shortened life as a pauper.

Its tough enough being healthy in this country. I don't intend to try it being sick.

At some point soon, the podcasts will definitely be originating from Montréal, Québec, Canada.

The health care system in Canada is beckoning (as opposed to the health-don't-care system here South of the border.)

Think of it as a reverse brain drain.

---- "Move" by: "Jen Elliott" http://www.citycanyons.com/jenElliott/index.html

Outro

----

Theme and 'incidental music' from:
"msb_theme",
 by: "Guy David",
 http://www.guydavid.com/
 no album,
 via personal contract

YouTube video list:
 
"Move It On Over"
  by: "Hank Williams'"
 
Song list:
 
"I Gotta Move On"
 by: "Andre Bisson"
 http://www.andrebisson.ca/
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"Move On"
 by: "Wes Jeans"
 http://www.myspace.com/wesjeans
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com"
 
"Move On"
 by: "Robb McMahan"
 http://msbpodcast.pbworks.com/MissingArtistPage
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"Move Your Mind"
 by: "Matt Mays & El Torpedo"
 http://www.last.fm/music/Matt+Mays
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"IF IT MOVES - IT AINT SAFE"
 by: "MADHOUSE"
 http://www.musicalley.com/music/artists/bandphotos/853744266_m.jpg
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"Move"
 by: "Jen Elliott"
 http://www.citycanyons.com/jenElliott/index.html
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com


----

Photo Credits:

 All images, synchronized with the songs, are of the artists and come via music.podshow.com except when they aren't. :-)

----

Books:

go to my books page at

 http://msbpodcast.pbwiki.com/BookRecommendations


----

Links:

 Guy David - intro & theme
  http://www.guydavid.com

 iTunes
  http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

 iPodder
  http://www.ipodder.org/directory/4/ipodderSoftware
A.K.A.
 Juice
  http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php

 iTunes link to download this show
  http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=120932170

 Multiple Sclerosis Blog
  http://multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/

 This podcast:
  http://www.MSBPodcast.com/

 The Ouch Podcast
  http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=137157388

----

You can leave me comments of the episode at //multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/ or

email me at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com

wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0012

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/wspc_TheDisbilityShow_0012.m4a

YouTube video(s):

Medical Information : About Peripheral Neuropathy
..

----

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

This show is "not" any kind of a medical show /podcast.

It is by and for the disabled, and if we can help reach across the chasm of questions and indifference to the other side of the rainbow of ability ... well and good.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disabilities.

The path to disability is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

Intro

This has been an interesting week capping off a very interesting summer.

It was full of discoveries.

Like I discovered I could write/assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

Another discovery was "Peripheral Neuropathy".

---- "Isnt It Enough To Make You Nervous" by: "Trev Gibb" http://www.myspace.com/trevgibb

I am alway amazed at how reluctant some people are to talk about their disease (after all its not as if they asked for the crap to happen to them. There's no shame involved.)

But you always find one who is a fount of knowledge and inspiration and that make it all worthwhile.

This episode features something about "Peripheral Neuropathy" written by "Joe Bartoszek" for "The Disability Resource Exchange" group on "Peripheral Neuropathy". [ http://www.disabilityresourceexchange.com/group/peripheralneuropathy ]

The Disability Resource Exchange [ http://www.disabilityresourceexchange.com/ ] is a website started and run by "Rudy Sims".

In case you're wondering, I am a member.

---- "Nervous!? again?" by: "The Reel Banditos" http://www.reelbanditos.com/

Now I'll read Joe's words...

These are my symptoms. It all started about 10 years ago (I'm 59) with slight tingling in my feet.

I was pretty active...running 5 miles 3X a week, scuba diving and surfing.

At first I kinda shrugged it off. Then I noticed that when I was surfing I wasn't able to feel the board and my wipeouts were becoming frequent...there went my surfing days.

I then went to 3 different Podiatrists with no good explanation, finally one Dr recommended that I see a Neurologist.

This had been going on for several years and the tingling now became numbness with dull aching and the tingling was moving about 1/2 up my calves.

Well the Neurologist was reviewing my history and came to the part, occupation. At that time I was an engineer at the Cape working on the Space Shuttle (retired now).

His first question was: Do work at the Cape? (Yes). Have you been around rocket propellant? (Yes)....Hydrazine? (Yes). He then told me he had about 50 patients that had been exposed with the same symptoms!

(I then discovered that chemical exposure could cause Neuropathy(NP). Exploring around on the internet I found people working around fertilizers could develop NP.)

Back to me....

The Dr then did nerve conductivity tests to confirm the nerve damage, prescribed Neurotin for the aching and told that I was progressive, would not improve.

Then we set up a follow up appointment a year later. Well during that time I noticed that if I cricked my neck a certain way I would get electric shocks running down my legs.

I brought this to the Dr's attention as a "GeeWiz" experience. He immediately scheduled me for an MRI of my neck. Results were rather disturbing and he then scheduled me to see a neurosurgeon.

The surgeon wanted to operate ASAP on my neck, fusing 3 or 4 vertebrate, inserting rods and screws. I refused!

That didn't make him real happy. Warned me that if I injured mt neck, I could be a quad.

To make matters worse he told me to stop scuba diving immediately....Scuba is my life!!!

Well that four years ago and 500 dives later and I'm still not a quad...however the disease has progressed with tingling above my knees, my feet completely paralyzed.

I must use hand crutches and AFO braces to walk. My walking distance is very limited even with the crutches and I most resort to my wheelchair for any distance (shopping etc)....

But I'm still diving and teaching.

---- "Making Me Nervous" by: "Brad Sucks" http://www.bradsucks.net/

More of Joe's words...

Symptoms are related to the type of affected nerve and may be seen over a period of days, weeks, or years.

Muscle weakness is the most common symptom of motor nerve damage.

Other symptoms may include painful cramps and fasciculations (uncontrolled muscle twitching visible under the skin), muscle loss, bone degeneration, and changes in the skin, hair, and nails.

These more general degenerative changes also can result from sensory or autonomic nerve fiber loss.

Sensory nerve damage causes a more complex range of symptoms because sensory nerves have a wider, more highly specialized range of functions.

Larger sensory fibers enclosed in myelin (a fatty protein that coats and insulates many nerves) register vibration, light touch, and position sense.

Damage to large sensory fibers lessens the ability to feel vibrations and touch, resulting in a general sense of numbness, especially in the hands and feet.

People may feel as if they are wearing gloves and stockings even when they are not. Many patients cannot recognize by touch alone the shapes of small objects or distinguish between different shapes.

This damage to sensory fibers may contribute to the loss of reflexes (as can motor nerve damage).

Loss of position sense often makes people unable to coordinate complex movements like walking or fastening buttons, or to maintain their balance when their eyes are shut.

Neuropathic pain is difficult to control and can seriously affect emotional well-being and overall quality of life.

Neuropathic pain is often worse at night, seriously disrupting sleep and adding to the emotional burden of sensory nerve damage.

Smaller sensory fibers without myelin sheaths transmit pain and temperature sensations.

Damage to these fibers can interfere with the ability to feel pain or changes in temperature. People may fail to sense that they have been injured from a cut or that a wound is becoming infected.

Others may not detect pains that warn of impending heart attack or other acute conditions. (Loss of pain sensation is a particularly serious problem for people with diabetes, contributing to the high rate of lower limb amputations among this population.) Pain receptors in the skin can also become oversensitized, so that people may feel severe pain (allodynia) from stimuli that are normally painless (for example, some may experience pain from bed sheets draped lightly over the body).

Symptoms of autonomic nerve damage are diverse and depend upon which organs or glands are affected. Autonomic nerve dysfunction can become life threatening and may require emergency medical care in cases when breathing becomes impaired or when the heart begins beating irregularly.

Common symptoms of autonomic nerve damage include an inability to sweat normally, which may lead to heat intolerance; a loss of bladder control, which may cause infection or incontinence; and an inability to control muscles that expand or contract blood vessels to maintain safe blood pressure levels.

A loss of control over blood pressure can cause dizziness, lightheadedness, or even fainting when a person moves suddenly from a seated to a standing position (a condition known as postural or orthostatic hypotension).

Gastrointestinal symptoms frequently accompany autonomic neuropathy. Nerves controlling intestinal muscle contractions often malfunction, leading to diarrhea, constipation, or incontinence. Many people also have problems eating or swallowing if certain autonomic nerves are affected.

---- "central nervous piston" by: "el ten eleven" http://elteneleven.com/

Well, that was most elucidating. I'd like to thank Joe for explaining about neuropathy.

Something else I knew nothing about.

But now I DO.

That's what counts.

By the way, I have become a radio producer in my, uh, copious spare time; what with being unemployed and all. GRRRR!!!

My marketing director ideas for WSPC have taken root.

---- "Nervous" by: "Wil Deynes" http://www.myspace.com/wildeynes

Outro

The show notes, including the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

This show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter, or to accompany the music.

----

YouTube video(s):

Medical Information : About Peripheral Neuropathy
The music this time was:

"Isnt It Enough To Make You Nervous"
 by: "Trev Gibb"
 http://www.myspace.com/trevgibb
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Nervous!? again?"
 by: "The Reel Banditos"
 http://www.reelbanditos.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Making Me Nervous"
 by: "Brad Sucks" http://www.bradsucks.net/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"central nervous piston"
 by: "el ten eleven"
 http://elteneleven.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Nervous"
 by: "Wil Deynes"
 http://www.myspace.com/wildeynes
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0044

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0044.m4a

Video Links

YouTube ->

This is episode 44

As promised, I've been converting my 400 or so albums from vinyl to CDs, to MP3s, so you're going to reap the benefits of my vastly expanded iTunes catalog.

Before I launch headlong into some Jazz, (the sweet sounds of SatchMo' blowin' his horn are calling to me sumtin' fierce,) I'd like to make some observations about my media studies classes.

---- vvvv The Media Squat vvvv ----

The media are about to change for the better as Marshall McLuhan's dream of a global village gets going, in ways he never lived long enough to get more than a glimpse of.

In keeping with Douglas Rushkoff's theme of economic empowerment from the bottom up, on WFMU (my other job, as it were,) since the top doesn't seem to know which way the light shines, (like, from outside its colon,) I would like to tell you abut some things I have noticed about the media.

One management axiom holds that "perfect is the enemy of 'good enough'" and at some point "you have to shoot the engineers and ship the damn product."

But there is another axiom which ad supported media ignored until it was too late, "'Better' is death to the 'Status Quo'"

This has "no" application for "Mom-and-Pop" outfits except that it will give them the tools to compete with the former "Big Boys".

Lets take what is laughingly referred to as food by the average American.

How many pizzerias are there across the United States?

Like a hundred thousand.

How many mega-conglomo-giganto-humongous pizza, and I use the term very loosely here, processing corporations are there?

Likely there are fewer than you've got fingers, even if we hack off your thumbs with a Bowie knife…

You can repeat the question for every kind of food to be found around the planet. Chinese, Mexican, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Polish, English (though to be honest I have never eaten a burger as badly prepared as I had once at a Wimpy's. Country ale was a great discovery, but you can take most of England's grub and toss it somewhere deep, dark and anoxic. It sucked.)

You will probably find that its the same handful of mega-conglomo-giganto-humongous corporations who are trying to squeeze every fraction of a penny until Lincoln [bleeps].

(No wonder everything tastes like [bleep], and its the same [bleep] from Portsmouth Maine to Port Angeles, Washington and from Tampa, Florida to just north of Tijuana, Mexico.

Its utterly, unrelievedly, unpalatably, monotonously, toxically consistent across all time zones and from sodden melting pole to pole.

[The FDA is so screwing with you, big time.

They make horrible tasting, disease-friendly rules about the F;

they make laughably unsafe rules about the D,

because they're completely owned by the corporations who are having entirely too much fun giving it to you up the A.])

On the internet though, Mon-N-Pop and mega-conglomo-giganto-humongous corporations are both equal if their ads are good enough. (And that is were the money will lie. The demand for content production is about to sky-rocket. The delivery wont cost any more than a phone call. )

This has some wide ranging implication, (in that, the guy in the bread line next to you may have been working for ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN,  The Boston Daily Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, or any of the dozens of other media outlets trying to get by on ad revenue, but you'll at least have some marketable skill … while they won't! )

----

This has some severe consequences for television. The ad supported nature of the media is disappearing as fast as their old customers got onto the internet.

PBS, NPR, PRI and an alphabet soup of providers are already on the internet.

And why not?

With the mass media, the joke went, you knew you knew you were wasting half of your advertising money, if only you could know which half..

The lack of numbers of the mega-conglomo-giganto-humongous corporations will become apparent when their board members ask why they're still wasting share-holders' money.

Then, one after another, ad supported mass media will simply "cease to exist."

This won't just be television (They just went digital and now it'll have been pointless.)

----

The slide into oblivion by the newspapers and magazines is well documented by the "Newspaper Death Watch" types of sites [ http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/ ]  on the web.

The only ones that are even capable of hanging on are the ones who have been able to make the switch to hyper-localized news.

Even then. Google is handing them their heads on a dirty hubcap.

Magazines are going down in flames in a spiral next to them.

Several have crashed and burned already.

----

So what happens to movies then?

It won't be much fun down at the multiplex without the ads. (Not for you, the audience, since you're just the poor "schmucks" who wait patiently for the feature to start and don't give any more of a crap about the rest of it than you did before, but the retailers who are so desperate that they would advertise at a multiplex are going to run out of money.)

As even those people switch to the web, you'll be able to watch theaters get dowdier, get dirtier, and eventually, get shuttered.

----

Books are in less trouble, but their production and delivery is about to become a whole lot more on demand.

Kiss those tiny advances goodbye.

Then again, kiss those remaindered copies we used to discover walking through the stacks and the back-rooms goodbye too.

Serendipitous discovery done by browsing requires the waste of scarce resources.

Its going to be rough in the malls when Barnes and Nobles, Borders, the rapidly vanishing Walden Books, and the few other chains try to compete head to head with Amazon.

Competing head-to-head means going on the web, (its a lot cheaper than retail space,) doing books on demand, (its a lot cheaper than throwing out books as remainders, a lot cheaper than doing the writer's dance of getting an advance and then finding it spread to the next book and the next book and the … you get the idea.)

----

The various associations wont be able to do a thing about it.

The MPAA and the RIAA have already feasted on their own audience. Here's a clue guys, lawsuits don't get you repeat customers

These are industries built, not on talent but on mediocrity and "churn."

You burn us, you burn yourself worse.

We have something you need like the air we breathe: money.

----

This is a cautionary tale for any of the people currently slaving in the salt mines of ad-supported media.

Where have their customers gone? (Not the audience/readership, but their customers. The audiences/readership are just entries on the liability side of the ledger.)

Where have they gone indeed?

To the internet where its cheap, where they know where every cent of their advertising dollar is going because they're able to run their advertisements strictly on-demand, where they can take orders, track orders, tracks shipments, track customers, take suggestions and quietly quash complaints.

The bottom up meaning for the Media Squat is that the top-paying client list of elite content producers is vanishing, but this heralds lots "Mom-and-Pop" opportunities.

When the carnage is over the only ones who will be feeling bad are the current media oligarchies.

The current ad and content producers will still be around and thriving.

There'll be more of them and they'll have a lot more work.

---

As we look back over the century of pondering on what was really happening to the media,
 through the lens of media studies,
 from the groping towards a theory of media effects,
 through Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi party propaganda,
 to McLuhan's "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" and "The Mechanical Bride",
all of these explorations were doomed to incompleteness because they were all 1:N, meaning they were assuming that there was a fundamental difference between media producer and media consumer.

They were all wrong, only examining of one side of the equation which never seemed to be able to resolve itself into anything fundamental or true.

It couldn't of course.

For the first time, the internet is capable of going beyond the merest renting of megaphones by the greedy to the global village idiots so that they can hawk their schlock.

It enables true N:M connection between all people.

It subsumes the old 1:N communication model, which is just an existential case of N:M, in that for the first time, the consumers and the producers are communicating on the same level, through the same asynchronous, packet-switched network and they are able to carry on conversations.

[with apologies to "Suzanne Vega" for misusing her song "Blood Makes Noise",]

This is so much richer a form of communication than standing at the mouth of "a windy tunnel shouting through the roar and I'd like to give the information you're asking for" as it enables us to stop and think, rather than just react to the wrong clues and cues.

---- ^^^^ The Media Squat ^^^^ ----
"

Now, adelante la musica.

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Alone At Last" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Butter and Egg Man" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Struttin' with Some Barbecue" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"West End Blues" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Symphonic Raps" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Basin Street Blues" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"When You're Smiling" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"After You're Gone" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Chinatown My Chinatown" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"All of Me" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Medley of Armstrong Hits" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"That's My Home" by "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira


----

The show notes, incuding the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

And this show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter or to accompany the music.

msb-0387 MS Together

YouTube videos:

"Together" by: "EXILE"
..

intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

MSBPodcast is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for MSers.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disease.

The path to illness is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

Feedback comes first, so...

I had some from Katie Pleiss of the "MSTogether" [ http://mstogether.wordpress.com/ ] word press blog.

I am in fact delighted to be of service to her, but wryly so because of the sentence in her email to me with reads "except maybe your advice could be focused more towards young adults with MS".

I don't think it was aimed at me personally but there it is.

I've thrived in spite of and survived with, MS long enough to become an author of "inspirational messages" for young people with this damnable disease.

Who'd've thunk it?

---- "Make This Together" by: "The Ram Boola Black" http://www.myspace.com/theramboolablackproject

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.

Say "your" piece on this segment.

Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.

Drop us an email: "charles at MSBPodcast.com"

----

This rightfully belongs in the Feed Forward segment.

I am starting to expand msbpodcast.com into an actual web radio station.

Starting in January 2010, msbpodcast will have an interactive component which will be called MS Web Radio [ http;//www.MSWebRadio.com ]

Right now its not operative and its only a repeater to bring people to the msbpodcast.com site but I'm going to retool the web site to handle the web radio component.

It will also be podcast so if you don't get to it, it will still be available after the airing.

MS Web Radio will be held for a half an hour every Sunday afternoon at 3PM (15:00) my time.

I will be taking my definitely, uh, unusual show and opening it up to everybody.

I'll keep you posted on my progress as it happens.

---- "Together" by: "Dona Oxford (pronounced DOH-NYA)" http://www.donaoxford.com/
 
Feed Me comes third, so...

I now have THREE sponsors. Success breeds success.

It you're listening on this podcast through iTunes or through a web browser, just click on the image for the sponsor and I'll take you right to the appropriate web page.

If you're on an iPhone or an iPod touch, you should be good to go too.

----

The first sponsor, you should be all familiar with and maybe even have bought some t-shirts.[ http://www.artoshirt.net/servlet/the-MS-Artists/Categories ] (whispers) That's the whole idea.

I'm a big T-Shirt wearer since losing my job and giving up the monkey suits.

I'm wearing one of the many shirts right now. The one that says: "Guitarded". I've even got a compliment on it on the boulevard around the corner from my apartment.

----

The second sponsor is the CADDi by BARBCO. [ http://barbco.biz ]

The picture of the CADDi in use sort of says it all.

BarbCo is very generously giving a dollar of  from every order they process to a bunch of causes and YOU select the cause.
[ http://barbco.biz/MultipleSclerosis.htm ]

----

The third sponsor is someone by the name of Rudy Sims who has a web site for people who are disabled in some way or other to exchange their information and other resources. [ http://www.disabilityresourceexchange.com/ ]

Join him in making friends among the disabled community and in sharing the resources and information we all need to live better.

----

My Book is out!

Its got:
• a frontispiece
• a Dedication.
• a Table of Contents
• Some History,
• Some Biography,
• Some Technology,
• Some Evolution,
• Some Episodes, (40 choice ones,)
• Some Parting Thoughts,
• URLs & references, a list of
• Books and one heck of an
• Index

I wish I could send you somewhere to buy it, but sadly Lulu.co are a nonexistent bunch of lying sacks of [expletive deleted].

I'm currently shopping around for a more responsive service (ha!) than Lulu.com.

Quite frankly, people have started <so-and-so sucks> websites for less irritatation.

I wonder if anyone works there at all because, I have brought up a problem with their StoreFront, namely its BUSTED, since August 19, 2009, which has so far gotten neither discernible solution, nor resolution.

All I've ever got from them is auto-responder emails. NOBODY WORKS THERE!

Sandra P. is NOT a person. Sandra is P-ing on me and my complaint.

I want the money back that I shelled out to them for the ISBNs because they're useless.

I can't sell the book at all because the storefront is shuttered and hidden in gray...

If you were thinking of writing a book, look anywhere else.

For the service they provide, I'm actually thinking I'd be better off sending you to your nearest FedEx/Kinko's to pick up a freshly printed and bound copy of the PDFs of the text and cover. If you want they can even ship it to you via FedEx.

In the meantime, I had book tours and other promotion things planned that I've got to undo.

I'll keep you posted.

---- "Still Together" by: "The Dangling Success" http://www.danglingsuccess.com/

"Thesis:"

Katie Pleiss wrote me such a nice email that I suddenly find myself in the distinctly uncomfortable of serving as a role model or as an inspiration to some people.

Well … Lets look at it this way, you could do worse than following in my footsteps.

---- "Held Together" by: "Rod Kim" http://www.rodkimrocks.com/

"Synthesis:"

My first attack happened when I was sixteen.

Unfortunately it was over too quickly and was mild enough that, apart from sending my handwriting to "Hell in a Hand-basket"©™® it was more of a minor inconvenience and quickly glossed over.

I had my hormones to deal with at the time and they were much more distracting, as was the fact that that was the time I had a massive growth spurt, which left me a foot taller, a hundred pounds heavier and, because I wan't interested in getting picked on by girls anymore, it was "all muscle"…

My second attack was severe (it tried to freakin' kill me,) and I spent weeks in the Ottawa General Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

I used the time in the neuroICU in the only way left to me, I thought deeply and at length about computers, object-oriented programming, system design, software implementation and when emerged from the hospital, I "grokked" it.
 I didn't just understand it, in the words of Robert A Heinlein [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_strange_land ] I "grokked" it.

Then I spent a year rebuilding my body, my muscles and my nervous system until I had better physical control over my body than most people dream of.

----

"Anybody who tries to give me an ideological argument against single payer health care will find himself called a murderer, a torturer, an Alqeda Operative, an ideologue, an effete intellectual and whatever other buttons I can push because Canada's single payer health care system saved my life and it had saved my father's life years before.

The doctors are for it now, the hospitals are for it now, patient organizations are for it now.

The only ones left complaining are ignorant morons.
 
You're scared that some bureaucrat is going to make your health decisions?

Which ones?

The bureaucrats in Washington who don't have an axe to grind, just anonymous payments to process, or the ones at the HMO whose year-end bonuses depends on how much costs they can cut, and guess what? "Your cancer treatment is very costly."

As for the Ayn Randian principle that we can all stand alone an independent, I say, remember what kinds of people use expressions like "divide and conquer," war mongering barbarians!

It called civics, people, part of being civilized is that we take care of our people, not kick their bodies to the curve when they stumble or when they get sick.

If being a decent human being is un-American, then you can call me that.

Some things the rest of the world is right about.

The only countries left where there is no health care are Third World Hell-holes, like Myanmar, and the United States.

[climbs down from soap box.]

----

That symptom-free state of affairs lasted until 1997 when I had a third attack which left me walking with a cane, slowly.

The wonder of modern medicine is at it does you no good if you just wonder about what the Hell just happened to you.

Since then I have started this podcast, done almost 400 shows, gone back to College, taken media studies to deepen my understanding of
• where the media corporations were,
• what happened to who and how, and
• how to position myself and MSB Podast to help MSers.

I want to help "all" handicapped people by giving us a voice which is never heard in the media.

---- "When I Get My Shit Together" by: "Noam Weinstein" http://enoam.com/

"Conclusion:"

So that's my story, a bit of it anyway.

The bit where I've used podcasting to deal with my MS instead of burying it in the past.

The burial has cost me dearly because I was an idiot, living in denial.

I will never dance again; I "loved to dance."

I will never play guitar again; I "loved to play guitar."

And I will never go on hikes or walk-abouts again; I "loved" to walk.

Don't be idiots, deal with the situation and you will probably be okay.

---- "Everyones In This Together" by: "Love = Action" http://www.myspace.com/loveequalsaction

Outro

----

Theme and 'incidental music' from:
"msb_theme",
 by: "Guy David",
 http://www.guydavid.com/
 no album,
 via personal contract

YouTube video list:

"Together" by: "EXILE" proving that Boy Bands are truly an international phenomenon.

I hear shades of the 80s and the nineties in that video.

Strangely enough, the quality of the vocals is good enough to hold my interest despite the fact that I don't speak a word of Japanese.

The video production is so 2000 "Lets show some kid bouncing around as if the were doing some kind of Kung-Fu, skate-boarding rap," despite the face that the beat is vintage Michael Jackson.

Song list:

"Make This Together"
 by: "The Ram Boola Black"
 http://www.myspace.com/theramboolablackproject
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com

"Together"
 by: "Dona Oxford (pronounced DOH-NYA)"
 http://www.donaoxford.com/
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com"
 
"Still Together"
 by: "The Dangling Success"
 http://www.danglingsuccess.com/
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"Held Together"
 by: "Rod Kim"
 http://www.rodkimrocks.com/
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"When I Get My Shit Together"
 by: "Noam Weinstein"
 http://enoam.com/
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com
 
"Everyones In This Together"
 by: "Love = Action"
 http://www.myspace.com/loveequalsaction
 album: "none"
 via: music.podshow.com


----

Photo Credits:

 All images, synchronized with the songs, are of the artists and come via music.podshow.com except when they aren't. :-)

----

Books:

go to my books page at

 http://msbpodcast.pbwiki.com/BookRecommendations


----

Links:

 Guy David - intro & theme
  http://www.guydavid.com

 iTunes
  http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

 iPodder
  http://www.ipodder.org/directory/4/ipodderSoftware
A.K.A.
 Juice
  http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php

 iTunes link to download this show
  http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=120932170

 Multiple Sclerosis Blog
  http://multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/

 This podcast:
  http://www.MSBPodcast.com/

 The Ouch Podcast
  http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=137157388

----

You can leave me comments of the episode at //multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/ or

email me at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com