467 Bloody Run.

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Internet problems.  Will Twitter updates.

Edit:  Looks like the net is working for me again.  It’s been down since last night.  I was in Garden most of the day yesterday, but it stopped working late (or early depending on how you look at it.) when I tried to get on.  I was sore, and tired, but couldn’t sleep.  I slept a little bit on the way back home, so I woke up at an odd time in the darkest of night.  Ended up sleeping on the floor because my body hurt no matter how I tried to sleep.  Woke up feeling pretty much alright though.  Went for a little walk before dinner.  Started feeling bad again right after that. 

I went to the chiropractor yesterday.  The last time I was having these problems it seemed to help.  This time it seems to have been less effective.  Then again it’s hard to tell.  I’m all keyed up one moment, then perfectly fine the next.  I need to figure out what I’m going to do about all of this pretty soon though.  It’s getting really hard to keep my shit together.  I’m not sure if I’m really sick, or just overtired, but I’m sick of being tired. 

I recognize that chiropracty is pseudoscience.  The last time I was having problems the doctors just ignored me if I said anything about it.  Honestly I can’t tell for sure if the benefits I experienced were anything other than the placebo effect.  That being said, at least it was an effect.  I was able to begin feeling better and gathering up the pieces.  This time I’m aware of too much.  Having learned about the magical craziness associated with chiropractic I’ve essentially ruined it for myself.  It’s a very impressive illustration of the old saying ignorance is bliss. 

There are storms all around so if this edit suddenly cuts off it because of that.  I’m saving periodically.  Mostly I’m just typing what I’m feeling to keep myself distracted.  Potentially unwise, I know.  Kind of like drunk texting. 

It’s hard to maintain my focus.  I’d play some pokemon, but just thinking about breeding Pokemon right now is too much.  I’d draw, or write, but I keep losing my train of thought.  If I just let whatever’s in my head spill out it’s easy.  Plus I can pause for minutes at a time, but for you things continue without breaking. 

I have some nice emails I need to respond to, but I dare not do it now.  I like to reply with as much care as I feel was put into the original.  Of course sometimes I reply in the wee hours of the night.  Which results, I fear, in strange, rambling, responses.  Pretty much what you’re reading now…  -_- 

When I first started using the internet I went through that period, like all people do, of just saying anything without any kind of filtering.  Driven by that insane human tendancy to believe that everything pertaining to yourself is interesting to others.  It almost never is.  It took a few years, and a few bad decisions, for me to grow out of that. 

Of course, one could argue that I really haven’t.  I just got a little better at editing. 

 Curses…  My emo posting has resulted in me missing the BBC world news.  That’s what happens when you take time to Baaaaaw on the internet.  I NEVER LEARN!

 

21 Comments

I take offense at your dismissing chiropractic care as “pseudoscience”
It is a scientifically proven practice of medicine which garners real results. I don’t know what kind of chiropractors you are used to, but no chiropractor I know (including my father) is a charlatan of the medical field.

I hate to rant, so I’ll cut that one short. I enjoyed the comic today!

I love his tiny “was it?” . :D

When I lived in Japan, I hurt myself. My hip started to hurt the day after I did some running (I don’t normally run). It was like an ache in the bone that seemed almost like it was from my femur hitting my hip (which, it probably was, due to my slanted posture). I took it easy for a while, started walking with a cane and it eventually switched to the other side, but didn’t go away. After that, it switched to my lower back. After my “magical back pain” moved there, I decided, “Crap… -_-; Guess I’ll go to the doctor…” I went to the school nurse who gave me some hot and cold pad thingies and that helped a little bit, but it didn’t go away. She told me to go to this English speaking bone doctor. I was like, “Fuck… This is going to cost a freaking fortune…”
I got there and asked about the cost of the visit and everything. They said it would be around $300-500 -some odd dollars and to go get some insurance. I left. My friends took me to the Foreigner registration building (Gaikokujin Touryoukushou, or something). Apparently, you can get insurance there for $24 a month, if you’re foreign.
I went to the doctor and the first words out of their mouths were, “Let’s take some x-rays.” I was like, “Oh holy God, no! The MONEY!!! THE MONEY!!!!!” They proceeded to take about 7 x-rays of just whatever the hell they felt like. It was like they had a freaking digital camera than an x-ray machine. I was going to have a panic attack. X-rays here are so expensive! Anyway, they showed me a few of the x-rays, told me my fifth vertebrae was all out of whack and that I needed to be put in traction and we’d start today. They put me on this table and stretched me out with a machine that pulled my hips down. It was really weird. After about 15 minutes of that, I got to sit in a massage chair for 15 minutes, which was … awesome. It didn’t really hurt a lot. I couldn’t do anything except walk to and from school for two weeks. After that, I could ride my bike and do swimming for the next month but that was it, and after that, I could do normal activities. The initial visit ended up costing about $35 with my insurance and I had to go in for traction about every other day for the first month. That was about $4 for every visit. My back was fixed by the time I came back to America (where I re-injured myself doing woodcuts in printmaking because I am retarded).
I’m not going to say that traction is for everybody, in fact, it’s not practiced much here in America and I’m sure there are good reasons for that. But, our doctors could at least take some freaking x-rays or something. I went into the doctor a few years ago for back pain and spasms. They asked me where it hurt and I showed them. They gave me a prescription. I never even filled it. If I wanted to be medicated I would have just taken a bunch of Ibuprofen. I wanted to be fixed. Sometimes I wonder about our doctors. I’ve never been to a chiropractor, though.

I know that some people say that chiropractor’s are basically new age sorta medicine, but I knocked my neck out of wack once. It hurt like a son of a bitch for 3 day’s getting progressively worse and worse. I had no clue what was wrong I just knew I had reached up to grab something, heard this load pop and I dropped to the floor in agony.

In talking to my mother she rushed me into a chiropractor. They were totally professional and a hell of a lot better than some doctor’s I’ve been to. She felt my neck, knew immediately what was wrong, asked me to lay down, tilted my neck around at a weird angle then turned it really sharply the other way and pop! I was back to normal with nothing more than some sore muscles that went away the next day. There’s no way some pill could do that.

If you have back problems, go to a freak’n chriopractor. :P

The big debate over chiropractic is that its earliest practitioners were newagers and there have been substantial claims about what it can do that have no supporting scientifically-acceptable proof but certainly scientifically-acceptable evidence to the contrary.
That said, yoga and chiropractic can both help with misalignments, soft-tissue injuries, some RSI strains and overly-tightened muscles, and a number of other soft-tissue or alignment problems; standard modern medicine has few accepted techniques for such adjustments and chiro is effective for those.
Just, y’know, beware unsupported claims: http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/06/libel-law-has-no-place-in-scientific.html

I’ve found there are chiropractors and then there are chiropractors. Some good, some not good, some who are good but just not knowledgeable about what’s wrong your YOU, and so on. I’d not settle on one person without trying different people out first. I got my best recommendation at the my gym. More than one person there all recommended a particular person and he’s been excellent so far. The best part is he doesn’t push. No “So, shall I put you down for next week?” stuff. I like that.

If you’re like me you’re sitting at the computer a LOT and not moving as you’re creating your strip. I’ve been forcing myself lately to get up occasionally and also forcing myself to not be one sided. What? One sided? Yeah. I always cross my right leg over my left when I’m sketching, inking or lettering. Ended up tilting my pelvis, causing pain. Now I concentrate on crossing my left leg over my right (which feels very weird and wrong) so that there’s no overall bias. Might be worth a try for you too.

On an unrelated note, these two days that have been passing in the strip have taken two years irl.

XD

Loved the strip, he ain’t gonna last, no way.

About the chiropractic vs. “medical” doctors debate, you have to go back just a few years and find MDs with no concept of septis (infection), all drugs were “herbs”, and the most common treatments were blood letting, purges and opiates.
The “palmer” explanation of how chiropractic worked seems laughable today, but the fact remains that there are valid treatments wthin the scope of chiropractic medicine. I have met both types, the very careful and thoughtful practicioners, and those with webbed feet and bills.
One of the “advantages” of getting older is the perspective you get. I remember when Vitamin E was being labelled as useless by the medical community at large, while a small group was hailing it as a great stride in treating heart and blood conditions. Turns out the small group was correct.
Oh and while Palmer was starting Chripractic medicine in Chicago, Dr. Kellogg was treating patients for the evils of being “over stimulated” with super bland diets and coffee enemas (!). Dr. K gave your corn flakes and other great “bland” foods to keep you from being over stimulated (over stimulation causes problems like sexual stimulation without procreation, can’t have that).
there has been recently an awareness of the danger to “neck adjustments”, which can cause stroke and/or death in certain patients, when there is tearing in blood vessels in the effected area.

I have had back problems which no MD could help with, other than offer pain killers or muscle relaxants, which only worked temporarily on the symptoms. I have had chiropractic help that not only gave relief to the symptoms, but over time helped me achieve a stable healthy back. And as a rule chiropractors will take more time explaining the condition and the treatment than MDs do.
Good luck,
Al (in Canada) VSR

Yeah…generally speaking, that’s the best way to get rid of a guy. Unless of course said guy had older sisters, in which case he might not care any more. Carol must have a degree in torture stashed away somewhere…

Feel free to vent about anything here dude. We’re you’re fans and your friends.

Also who ordered their Carol with extra ketchup?

Well, I guess if she has the civil war in her pants, Thomas will volunteer to be General Sherman and ravage the South…

Thomas as Gen. Sherman, huh? But I don’t think salting the fields will make them infertile… quite the opposite I’d say. :3

Ahhhh, yes, the dreaded ‘nasty time of the month’ tactic. I did that in high school for especially thick guys who wouldn’t leave me alone because they wanted to ‘show me the error of playing for the wrong team’. I was a full-blown lesbian at the time and my high school was especially intolerant of lesbians and gay men. So, many of the less savory men (Mostly the football/basketball jackasses) took it upon themselves to ‘cure’ the women of their… ‘inappropriate conduct’ and ‘turn’ them to ‘more respectable members of society’.

Needless to say, the football and basketball teams got more than a dozen rape cases filed against them and the coach for these two teams is serving time in prison for encouraging such behavior.

Silly Reggie, the best way to deal with a girl trying to gross you out with her period talk is to ask creepy questions about the subject, she will stop pretty quickly I can assure you.

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