A Fool and their Medium

 

A friend of mine recently returned from a local psychic reading for a small group of people. He said the medium told him things about his late parents that no one could have known. I asked if he filled out any paperwork before the event. He did, including "a prayer sheet" that he signed and addressed which contained, coincidentally, the same information that the medium was privy to. The psychic, a middle aged man, said the prayer sheets were burned in order "to send them to God." 

When I suggested that the dude probably used his sheet to garnish the information about his parents, my friend was incredulous. I'm pretty sure God doesn't need a return address to know it's you. I asked my friend if he was going to issue a formal announcement for the birth of another sucker? That's the way my generation talks to their friends.

Theresa Caputo

Theresa Caputo is the Long Island Medium and the star of the namesake reality television series on TLC. She's master class when it comes to cold readings, the art of extracting tidbits of information from simple questions. A typical reading goes like this.

Theresa: Has someone close to you died recently?
Sucker: Yeah, my father.
Theresa: Well, he's standing right next to you.

Oh yeah. If he's standing right next to me and talking to you, why didn't he just tell you his name? If Theresa said that your father, "Beowulf," is right there, and he forgives you for ruining his garden hose with a pitchfork when you were twelve, and she was right then that would be a different story. It doesn't take a lot of information to guess that someone likely lost a parent. Theresa sees a few age spots and grey hairs on you, and the next thing you know she's chatting with your dead mother.


Tyler Henry

Matt Laurer, the former host of the Today Show, once held a reading with Tyler Henry, the clairvoyant star of Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry on the E! Television Network. Tyler is a young guy who believes that healing is possible through psychic readings. His clients are mostly celebrities. Tyler has been described as a "grief vampire" who exploits people who have lost a loved one. He does look a little like he walked off the set of Twilight with his strikingly fair complexion. Tyler should back off the Proactive.

Tyler was unaware who he was reading so presumably he couldn't research his subject in advance. He also had Laurer bring in something special to the person he wanted to contact, which was a pocket knife belonging to his grandfather. Tyler honed in on Laurer's father instead, saying he told him about fishing and golf and how he enjoyed both with his son. Laurer confirmed that these activities were favorite pastimes he enjoyed with his father. Laurer was so impressed, he said, "My hands were shaking."

How could Tyler have known these details about Laurer's father? The magic of the Internet, that's how. It took me five minutes to find a 2007 article in which Laurer reminisced about fishing and golfing with his late father. Although Tyler was unaware of who he would be reading, cold reading a celebrity is much easier than the general public since there is so much information readily available online about them. All you need to know is a little bit about a lot of famous people, and you too can be the next celebrity psychic medium. Don't forget the bucket of face cream.

Tyler directed the reading to Laurer's father and not his grandfather, the actual owner of the pocket knife, because he didn't know anything about his grandfather. Tyler justifies this by expressing that sometimes people other than the owner of the item "insist on making their presence known." Who knew the dead was so petulant? Tyler picks who is contacting you, and what they say which allows him to manipulate the entire experience. Now, if Tyler said that Laurer's father was disappointed that his son used his position on the show to sexually harass hordes of women, I would've been impressed, but apparently all Laurer's dad wanted to talk about was fishing and golf.

Not Sonya Fitzpatrick

Sonya Fitzpatrick is a British pet psychic who claims to have telepathic powers allowing her to communicate with animals. The Animal Planet cancelled her show, The Pet Psychic, due to low ratings primarily because the show was just plain stupid. A typical exchange with Sonya in her quintessential British accent went something like this,

Sonya: Has anything changed in his life?
Dumb Ass: Yeah, I got a new dog walker.
Sonya: He says his new walker doesn't give him enough time to pinch.
Dumb Ass: Pinch?
Sonya: Yes, you know, burning the bog sod, clotting the brown cream, laying a Lord Nelson, slapping gruel in Oliver's bowl.

The brilliance of Sonya's act is that no one can actually refute her unless, of course, they too can talk to animals. Along with being a female Doctor Doolittle, Sonya has expanded her repertoire as she discovered she had the ability to communicate with dead animals. She would cold read some sappy fellow, blubbering over his dead cat as he fumbles with Fefe's favorite pet toy, then tell him that his cat is happy in heaven and plays with other cats every day. Sonya might as well tell the dude that Fefe met Jesus, and he's much taller than depicted in all those statues in church.

Once, some guy brought in a lizard he wanted Sonya to talk to. The dude learns all sorts of things about the reptile like it's favorite color, that it prefers romaine lettuce, and it's a Bernie Sanders supporter. Who knew lizards were so opinionated? The part that gets me is that all these animals communicate in perfectly formed, grammatically correct sentences. When did the Animal Kingdom pick up the English language? When Sonya says that a dog told her "he feels badly about chewing the arm of the your favorite chair" is that her words or the dog's? Americans never use adverbs correctly. An American dog would say, "bad," not "badly." Apparently, the Animal Kingdom learns the Queen's English. If Sonya could really speak to a dog, she would more likely get,

"I want to go outside, outside, outside, now, now, NOW. Oops, I pee floor."

While Tyler Henry may be a "grief vampire," Sonya Fitzpatrick is a "grief werewolf."

Jeane Dixon

The late Jeane Dixon was a twentieth century, self proclaimed psychic and astrologer who had a syndicated column in which she made all sorts of predictions. She claimed that a traveling gypsy gave her a crystal ball as a child, and after reading her palm, revealed that Dixon would become a famous "seer" who would advise powerful people.

Most of her assertions missed the mark, but in 1958 she did predict the JFK assignation. She stated that the president would be "assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term." She was half right. Dixon was a master at making sweeping predictions, then concentrating on those that came true. This began to be called "the Jeane Dixon Effect." She once incorrectly predicted the sex of the Canadian Prime Minister's unborn child. Fifty-fifty shot, and she got it wrong. She also said China would start World War III over a dispute about some islands. That didn't happen either. She predicted the Russians would win the space race, but that was wrong too. Good thing because if they did, Yuri Gotmitnikoff would have exclaimed as he stepped off the ladder,

"This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

Jeane Dixon obviously didn't understand basic manufacturing processes. It's doubtful that the former soviets could have ever beat us in a competition to build something as complex as a manned spacecraft bound for the moon. Fifty years later and the Russian's still can't make a car with a window you can roll down. Dixon appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in March of 1987. She was 83 years old and seemed frail, but still had all her marbles along with her crystal ball. Dave, who could sometimes get off script, seemed skeptical of Dixon's abilities. He asked her to predict the outcome of the Oscars. Dixon responded that the President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences told her,

"Don't you ever do that again because you change the outcome."

Dave went on to explain that the votes had already been cast, the winners already chosen. Dixon looked baffled as she said,

"What?"

Dave clearly expressing his disbelief replied,

"That's what I thought."

Self proclaimed psychic mediums exploit the collective gullibility of the masses. The fourteenth century poet and farmer, Thomas Tusser, wrote a famous saying about a fool and his money. Psychic mediums have turned that proverb into a business model.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 4, 2016.

Medical Forms for the Terminally Uninterested

 

When you go to the doctor's, and they make you fill out all those forms, no one actually reads any of them. For the past ten years, I've been filling out gibberish, and no one ever said anything. Today, at the doctor's office, when I was asked on an electronic form how I heard of them, I entered

Voices

"Voices in my head."

For the condition affecting me I entered "dyspepsia." Dyspepsia was believed to be a stomach condition that Pepsi was originally formulated to remedy. For overall physical health, I put "general malaise." General malaise was a term used by doctors as a diagnosis during the early 1900's because it sounded more clinical than "we don't know what the fuck you have." I also put down "scurvy," and no one ever recommended vitamin C.
 

 

For known conditions, I once wrote "ptosis of the liver," a condition thought to describe when your organs hang too low. Organ position was originally studied on cadavers, who were prone so the organs were higher than that of upright, live humans. They used to operate on people to raise up their organs. It didn't do anything, but, hey, no one died from it. No one ever asked me about it either.

Once I was asked if I had missing body parts. I put down, "my head." I also listed my height as 7' 2" and weight as 25 lbs, and on the same form I stated that I suffered from "dwarfism." No response from any medical professionals. I routinely sign my name, "Richard Milhouse Nixon," followed by a pi symbol, and no one ever questions it.



 

The other day at the doctor's office, a receptionist person told me that they had switched computer systems, and needed to ask me some questions. So we ran down the normal stuff, insurance information, primary contact, phone numbers, then she asked,

"Are you Hispanic?"

"No," I answered.

"Are you of Middle Eastern descent?" she then asked.

"Nope."

Then she followed with, "Are you an Apache?"

She actually asked me if I was an Apache. Now, I know all those parts of the form are optional, but some people just don't like it when forms aren't completely filled out. I stated,

"I'm not going to answer anymore questions."

To which she insisted, "I need to put something down for race, or we won't be able to charge your insurance!"

So I said, "Human."

I sat in the waiting area with the paper forms I had to fill out, and when I encountered the section that asked why I was here, I put "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)."

Now, my physician occasionally reads my blog. He told me that he laughs whenever I reference colonoscopies. He's probably not going to find this funny. After years of post graduate education, followed by a lengthy residency, the dude is tasked with trying to figure out what's ailing me, and his computer is choking on a seven foot dwarf, suffering from scurvy, who doesn't have a head.



 

As far as I know, I've never been misdiagnosed from any of the garbage I've put down on medical forms. The way it works is the nurse person always asks you what's going on first, and they enter your information into the computer, then you get to repeat the whole thing for the doctor who mostly asks you the same questions because they never read whatever the nurse person wrote. So I'm sure the bullshit I pen isn't read by anybody.

I wish someone from the medical community could answer just this one question. Where do all those forms go? Do they file them in a massive vault somewhere, or do they send them overseas to a country with marginal indoor plumbing where data entry people are contracted to enter all that information into a massive super computer? Oh, just one other question.

How come nurse people wear such goofy clothes?

Editor's Note: Originally posted on November 17, 2016.

No Novocain, Please

 

Whenever my wife, Christine, undergoes a dental procedure, caps, fillings, you name it, she forgoes the Novocain. She claims that the shot is worse than the dental work itself. True, afterwards your face feels like rubber for hours, and you drool like a baby, but going without drugs seems impossible. The sound of the drill alone is synonymous with pain. How could any mere mortal take on a dental procedure straight up?


Women endure pain far better than men. That's why they give birth while we stand there and try not to look scared. It's God's punishment for that apple fiasco in the Garden of Eden. I've endured my share of home improvement pain, mainly striking my fingers with blunt tools. According to my wife, if you could bundle up all the times I smashed my thumb and unload that on one direct hit, it wouldn't even come close to labor pains. One time, she did twenty hours of hard labor before she tapped out and went for a spinal block. That was after getting a cap at the dentist without Novocain.

Recently, I bit into a big piece of taffy, and heard a strange crunching sound. I pulled the taffy from my mouth and saw a peculiar object sticking out of the candy. My first thought was,

"Someone's tooth is in my taffy!"

My second thought was,

"Two workers had a fight at a Chinese taffy factory when one socked the other in the jaw, sending his molar on an epic journey into a big vat of pink goo."

My third thought was,

"Wait, it's mine."

Christine immediately lobbied for a dental procedure sans the Novocain. She even resorted to shaming me into it. When that didn't work, she tried to convince me that the pain associated with dental procedures is exaggerated by the drug manufactures to increase sales. Then she said that injecting chemicals in your head is probably not a good idea. She's right there although she's been dying her hair since her teens. I feel like I live in my head. Shooting up numbing agent that close to home does sound like a bad idea. She even tried logic by asking,

"How do you know drilling your teeth hurts? You've never tried it."

She did have a point although I kept thinking Eve probably said something like that to Adam. After a few days, she convinced me to give it try. As my dentist appointment neared, she checked in with me to ensure I was still onboard. The closer I got, the less it sounded like a good idea, but I agreed so I was going commando on the Novocain.

My son, Aidan, recently had his first tiny cavity after twelve years. They numbed his gums first, then numbed them again. They shot up his head with Novocain. They gave him a pillow and blanket. They hooked him up to laughing gas, then gave him general anesthesia. They lit aroma therapy candles, played ocean sounds softly, and sat him in a massage chair. They used a "whisper quiet' drill. It was nice to see dentistry finally acknowledging the sound of a Dremel in your mouth is scary.



 

In my day, my dentist, Dr. Smith, used to do two patients at a time connected by a Jack and Jill torture chamber, full of all sorts of rusty dental tools. He would moon walk between the two rooms, inflicting various degrees of pain on the occupants. He never showed any emotion at all and spoke monotonically. When you cried out during a procedure, he would say, as close to one syllable as possible while still being intelligible,

"Shudup."

That's all I ever heard him say. At one visit, I had three teeth pulled. That was back in the days when dentists thought they should hurry along nature and perform the equivalent of a dental hysterectomy. There was none of this worrying about the comfort of or trauma to the patient. Once, I looked through the connecting room to see my sister, Jeannine, with her arms outstretched. She sounded like she was begging for mercy. Dr. Smith told her,

"Shudup."

He pulled what for a moment looked like her soul out of her mouth then dumped it with a clank into a metal bowl. He looked down at my sister curled up in the fetal position, whimpering, then indifferently moon walked my way. As he entered my little room, he turned. His face was ancient, pale and expressionless. He held a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. I screamed something unintelligible about having to call my mother and go to the bathroom. Dr. Smith said,

"Shudup."

Then he dove in as I passed out. I awoke in my bed at home a week later. I have nightmares about it to this day.

 

 

When the time came for my no Novocain experience, I was sitting in the chair, looking up at my dentist looking down at me. She held a drill in one hand and what looked like a pair of pliers in the other. I casually announced,

"No Novocain, please."

She laughed then tapped me in the shoulder while saying in two distinct syllables,

"Shut up!"

I reissued my request. She got real serious when she realized I wasn't joking then sympathetically asked while slowly nodding her head,

"Are you afraid of needles?"

"No, I just want to see if the drill hurts," I answered.

My dentist tried to convince me that it was a bad idea. She explained that if I jumped in the chair, she might inadvertently drill through my face. I assured her I would be fine; after all, my wife had already done it several times, and being a mother, she knows pain. She's the Queen of Pain. So we forged ahead, and this is what I can report. Dentists are much more careful when you forego Novocain. Christine was right all along. There was only the briefest discomfort, and it was nothing compared to the needle.

So next time you go to the dentist, and she pulls out the Novocain, don't cave in to odontophobia. Just say,

"No, thank you."

Then shut up, open up your mouth, and go to happy place, because in the end, it doesn't hurt.

Really.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 27, 2016.

Survival of the Dumbest: Naked and Afraid

 

I don't watch much TV, but when I do, I watch the most mindless shows. On my "idiot box," or should we say "idiot panel" now, I prefer two things, people struggling and nudity.


I watch home shows because as a long time home improvement guy who is on a first name basis with the cashiers of my local hardware store, I relax by watching other people smash their thumbs with Estwing hammers. If the cops ever need blood evidence to link me to a crime, all they need to do is take a sample from any of the projects I've done around the house. Tell Dr. Lee there's a particularly good pattern behind the fridge where I full on pummeled my thumb while installing a water line.

Humans are strangely interested in nudity. My wife swears that she doesn't look at the opposite sex, wondering what they look like full monty. Admittedly, I do. Before you go lecturing me about how wrong I am for objectifying women, consider that if it wasn't for people like me, human beings would be on the endangered species list. You might be thinking that the extinction of mankind would be great for the planet, but you're wrong again. Just yesterday, I spent 35 minutes waiting on the phone trying to order a part for my log splitter before I gave up. The last time I did that was in the 70's. If the population begins to thin out, the first thing that will go is customer service. Yes, not only do I like nudity, I cut down trees too.

Recently, I've stumbled across the Discovery Channel's smash reality survival series, Naked and Afraid. Apart from being a perfect mating of my two favorite concepts, nude shelter building, the show also offers the ancillary theme of man versus nature. On its fifth season, the series has been quite successful, having been nominated for several Emmy's including Best Bits and Pieces Pixelization. The people on the show are not really contestants. They're more like participants because you don't actually win anything for completing the 21 day challenge. At the end, they don't wipe the bugs from their butt cracks before jumping into a newly won car and drive away smiling. They get nothing, except maybe long lasting organ damage from some tropical parasite.

Yeeha, sign me up!

When they start out they're assigned a Primitive Survival Rating or PSR based on their experience, training and attitude. The PSR is reevaluated at the end, going up if they complete the challenge and down if they are carted off on a stretcher to the nearest Primitive Hospital Setting or PHS. Some of the participants are very confident announcing that they are "going to make Mother Nature their bitch." They usually end up puking up their pancreas after eating undercooked lizard innards. Who's the bitch now? I miss the days when they used to pixilate on screen cookie tossing. It wasn't censored like nudity, under the watchful eye of the Federal Communication Commission. It was voluntarily omitted because the television brass came to the executive decision that vomit wasn't good for ratings. But times change. Just look at legalized marijuana.

The participants, one woman and one man, get individually dropped off by a local guide, who does a great job at not staring at their jambalaya. I guess when you're navigating a dugout canoe in crocodile invested waters to drop off a nude American in a malaria invested jungle, you don't have time to look at someone's junk. The participants meet up and introduce themselves, engage in small talk, then get down to the business of survival. They're given a few paltry items of their choosing. Some people select a fire starting kit, a flint and steel sparker that lends itself to easy ignition. Others select something more labor intensive like a bow drill. If you've ever started a fire with a bow drill, you know that editing on the show makes it look easier and shorter in duration than it actually is. I often wonder why they don't just choose matches or better yet a lighter?

Someone usually opts for a survival knife, a good tool to chop firewood, skin animals and ward off rabid monkeys. The survivalists use a map to set off on an epic trek into the insect invested jungle to survive for three weeks. Judicious pixelization for the rest of the show must irritate the Free the Nipple folks. The only part of the human anatomy that is rendered unaltered is the back side. This show has taught me that the average male ass is not very attractive. Not to be accused of ugly ass shaming, but I have to say that a lot of men would benefit from some daily lunges. Surveys indicate that the favorite part of the male anatomy according to women is the butt. I find this difficult to accept. A lot of male asses look like they have a lot of miles on them. One day, I caught a glimpse of my ass in the mirror while getting out of the shower, and I thought there was a troll in the bathroom with me.

The participants find a suitable location to set up camp. They build a shelter, maybe a fire, and set some traps to kill unsuspecting wildlife. That's pretty much the whole show. There's no immunity idol, no Tribal Counsel nor inane Dorito food challenge. That's because unlike other shows, participants on Naked and Afraid are really starving to death. Occasionally there is some drama, but it rarely has anything to do with badmouthing or backstabbing. It usually is about more immediate things like taking a shit too close to camp or having to endure the guttural sound of your partner spewing on an empty stomach. You don't get voted off on Naked and Afraid. You get carted off on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. Now that's great TV!

After a few days of skipping meals, people start getting hungry and dirty, and the chances of any on screen shagging drops off as the basic need to procreate is replaced by the basic need to consume some small animal. I'm always amazed that their isn't more outrage over Naked and Afraid. No protest by PETA, Green Peace or the American Gerbil Society. I think that’s because on this show nature always seems to be winning solid. It's hard to object to someone squashing a mouse when they spent the last three nights with six billion mosquitoes drilling into their unclothed flesh. Sometimes it rains at night while the participants are huddled in a little stick fort like we used to make as kids. The good news is the rain usually brings relief from insects. The bad news is it heralds the start of hypothermia.

 

Water always needs to be boiled to kill the myriad of living things that you don't want inside your body like giardia, an intestinal parasite. Sometimes, the participants can't get a fire going so they get desperate and chance it by drinking tainted water. You can always bet that when they return from a commercial break, they'll be plenty of bobbing for spumoni. Whenever humans hurl, Maslow's Hierarchy of Five Basic Needs, physiological, safety, belongingness/love, esteem, self-actualization, and self-transcendence gets wholly replaced with one basic thought,

"Oh shit, I think I'm gonna puke."

When hurling grits people usually are taken over by much lower needs. Way lower. There's not going to be any self-transcendence when Mount Human erupts. Rational thought gets wholly put on hold which is why people vomit in their own car rather than rolling down the window. As civilized humans, we lost the ability to freely drink from any water source like the rest of Mother Nature. Hippos shit a pitcher's mound in the water where they live and drink. Somehow, the symbiotic nature of their cycle of life keeps them from ralphing when they drink feces infused water. Good for them, because it's not likely hippos would have any success with a bow drill.

If the participants make it to Day 21, they're instructed to embark on an arduous hike across a sun scorched tundra or swim in a crocodile infested river to make it to the extraction point. They usually are quite depleted by the time they make it through this fun activity. So spent that some look like they're going to drop dead in their tracks, or be dispatched suddenly by a cackle of hyenas. Yep, that's what they call a group of hyenas. A cackle.

 

When they reach their destination, they're picked up and driven off to the nearest fast-food joint for a super-sized fries and burger. Most lose well over twenty pounds. The finale is somewhat anticlimactic. I always imagine at the end, they'll go to Tribal Council to be awarded a million dollars by Jeff Probst, but that never happens.You might think the participants of Naked and Afraid are communing with nature and living the way humans once thrived. I believe they're climbing down the evolutionary ladder. In one episode, a dude with liver failure, as indicated by his jaundice eyes, was given the advice by a local medic to get out of the bush right away and get to a hospital. The guy was adamant about “finishing the challenge.” I know sticking it out is noble and all, but the smart thing to do when you’re messed up is to seek proper medical attention immediately. Hanging in there for nothing but bragging rights and elevated PSR when the local witch doctor is telling you to get to the hospital is going to get you killed. That's survival of the dumbest.

There are spinoffs like Naked Dating and Naked Dancing With the Stars, neither of which is as edgy as Naked and Afraid. I, for one, would pass on the latter series even if they had a couple’s edition. The last thing I want to do is run bare assed in the jungle, pull ticks off my monkey wrench and consume rodents all while trying to protect my wife from being mauled by an congress of baboons.

Yep, that's what they call a group of baboons. A congress. Imagine that.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on September 6, 2016.