Omnes Vlogia in Tres Partes Divisa Est
Or, as Caesar himself might have described today’s practice:
Veni to the pool, Vidi how hot and disgusting the water was, and Vici despite myself
Part. 1. Bill
This morning, I received a couple emails from my best swimming friend in the world, Mr. Bill White, father of Liam White, who at age 8 handles all my more complicated technology installations and software problems. Bill handles the easier snafus. Bill is also the father of Ciara, the cutest little girl in all the world. When I was going through a particularly stubborn bout of depression a while back, the application of Ciara to my head like a tablet of skin-leeching ketamine was as close as I could come to feeling like my old self.
Bill White, best friend, and Ciara White, human antidepressant tablet
Liam White, Boy Genius
One of Bill’s emails described the removal of a kidney for transplantation purposes through a woman’s vagina. He suggested that I might consider having part of my liver removed through my anus and writing about this for Men’s Health magazine, my employer, for at least the myopically foreseeable future. I thought perhaps I should instead specialize in removing transplantable tissues through women’s vaginas, that I thought perhaps I would be better at this. Bill suggested that I could tell them I have a special surgical trochar that is particularly effective at such removal. I replied that I do indeed have such an instrument. And just as oilmen remove petroleum from deep in the earth by paradoxically pumping stuff in, so does my trochar work on this same pumping in to remove pay dirt out principle.
But this is off the subject of today’s vlog. I just thought perhaps some of my readers might enjoy a bit of romantic whimsy, seeing as Valentine’s Day, aka, VD, is not that far in the future.
Bill’s other email was, however, to prove the subject of today’s vlog. (Sorry for yet another momentary digression here, but I am using the word “vlog” of late interchangeably with the word “blog.” It is true there is not official video accompanying today’s post. However, I am hoping that I might be able to paint a video with my words that the reader can run through his or her own cranial VCR apparatus.
Example: Imagine Jessica Alba laying herself upon my chaise longe and announcing, as she removes her backless hospital gown, “Okay, Dr. Thornton. I am ready to have my kidney extracted by this novel means of yours.” Now imagine a couple lovely nurse-fluffers bustling around me, unbuckling my belt, and so forth. I say: “Trochar! Stat!” And within a minute or two, the nurses have the instrument ready and glisteningly sterile for the procedure.
"I'm ready for the procedure, Dr. Thornton!"
Here is a link to Bill’s other email, i.e., the one actually relevant to today's vlog. It is a press release entitled:
"New Study Reveals Swimming Can Cut Men's Risk of Dying in Half:
Research shows swimming may be the prescription for longevity."
http://www.nspf.org/Documents/Press_...s/PR_Blair.pdf
The good news here is that guys like me, at least if you believe research conducted and supported by the National Swimming Pool Foundation, and there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t believe such research, anyhow, the good news is that guys like me don’t have to die young, and in fact, we will be around for a very, very long time hoping to shove our trochars in to remove young women’s kidneys whenever the need for donor tissue arises. (And the way we old coots drive our Cadillacs, god knows there will be plenty of need for donor tissues!)
Part 2. Ronald Gainsford, Redux
Last night’s practice was incredibly grueling. I managed to finish it, come home, get in bed, read this awful book about a woman serial killer, a book that I tell myself during daylight I am not going to finish, but when night time comes around and natural grogginess is turbocharged by the Sandman’s imminent visitation, and I am too doltish to think of anything besides impossible evil vs. improbable good, I find myself turning once again to the bosom of this woman serial killer.
Where was I?
Oh, so I get up, waste a lot of time, think I have made progress, check, realize that progress was an illusion, send a friend of sort a couple quotes from Marcus Aurelius, and call it a day.
Mr. M. Aurelius of Rome
Then I go to the Y for a restorative super slow Tai Chi swim to keep massive adhesions from cementing my few remaining muscle fibers into the deltoid equivalent of lock jaw.
On the way, I stop at our mailbox and retrieve an oversized manila envelope from Ronald Gainsford, the fellow regular vlog readers will recall is a 79-year-old heart transplant recipient and incredibly accomplished swimmer who was one of the top 5 butterfroggers in the early 1950s, when “breaststroke” consisted of fly arms and breast kicks.
When I got to the Y, Ronald was there, as always, swimming a practice. He told me he has been gradually upping his effort to get ready for Worlds when he turns 80. He said that the hard thing was that he works his ass off in the pool to get stronger, then he has to go home and take all this antirejection medicine that makes him physically weaker. If there exists a more admirable Sisyphus swimming on Planet Earth today, I have yet to meet him.
When I got home, I scanned in Ronald’s letter and pre-Steeler game picture, complete with overhanging icicles. For what it’s worth, Ronald told me that he could not watch the last 10 minutes of the Superbowl because his heart could not take it. He kept his head down during the actual plays, and only watched them on replay.
Here’s Ronald’s latest note. I think this is the best evidence of all that the research Bill sent me was, in fact, valid.
Part 3. Dysthymia.
I have been sinking ever so slightly of late into a pit of despair, not sure exactly why, but the collapse of the global economy in general, and my economy in specific, might play a slight role. On this note, I shall now quickly paste in the two quotes from stoical philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, that I sent earlier to my Facebook friend. If these provide you any solace or succor, I am glad to have done so.
1. Time is a river, and a violent stream. For as soon as a thing is seen, it is carried away and another takes its place. And this will be carried away too.
2. Never surpass the sense of your original impressions. Perhaps they tell you that a certain person speaks ill of you. That was their sole message; they did not go on to say that you have been harmed by him. Perhaps I see my child suffers illness; my eyes tell me so but do not tell me his life is in danger. Always keep to your original impressions; add no interpretation of your own and you remain safe. Or at the most add a recognition of the great world order by means of which all things come to pass.
Epilogue:
Special thanks to A) Mr. Onefish, whose kind comment about my vlog inspired me to postpone the female serial killer’s shenanigans for a little bit tonight and write this instead, and B) all you lovely young women out there in Swimmingville who have begun the not-easy but still-right decision to donate one of your kidneys to needy children, and to let me extract this kidney through your vagina, despite the fact that the procedure I will be trying has yet to receive FDA approval.
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