Me and the corp’ral out on a spree

Here’s two for the boys overseas, originally made for their compatriots from the last Empire.

“Banks of the Nile” – Richard Thompson

“Island of No Return” – Billy Bragg

“I get free medical care because we lost the war. I lost it real good for them, too. They look at my record and say ‘How much Demerol would you like today, Mr. Trout?'” —Bob Trout (UDT veteran, Vietnam)

“When the flag comes out, it’s only a matter of time before someone’s handing you a rifle.” —My great-uncle Richard Sears. (Army grunt, WWII, Sicily invasion)

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

—Kipling, “Tommy”

I’m a village explainer, which is fine if you’re a village.

The dunes are on the move.

In the market tonight a sixtyish man in one of those store-provided handicap carts was buzzing around the aisles, followed by a clerk who was helping him. (They’re really nice there.) At one point he lurched suddenly around a corner at me and I saw that the entire front basket on the cart was full of the largest possible containers of skin lotion. “You want all of these, really?” asked the clerk as she dropped a couple more in. Looking and sounding exactly like Jack Nance in Twin Peaks, he half-yelled “Yeah! I use them to PUT MY ARTIFICIAL LEG ON.” The bro dudes next to me, who were buying protein bars and vodka, looked stunned. I bet he has a fish in his percolator, too.

I think too much, I talk too much, I write too much. At least I don’t smoke, drink, or eat too much, so it’s more a problem for others than it is for me. Something I inherited from my father is the tendency to take over a conversation and deliver paragraphs, speeches, stories. Like him I have a compulsion, and like him I always feel later that I’ve overdone it. It’s like a miniature bipolar cycle in which I have the most! important! thing! to say! and then later on I bottom out and think “What the hell was I babbling about, and why were they so patient?” Stupid brain, can’t find a happy medium.

The new girl at Diedrich has a really forced-sounding Irish accent. I wonder what that’s all about?

Sometimes these maneuvers are performed while you wear a vibrating headband.

The likely diagnosis for my big adventure on Sunday is Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. I gave a cute metaphorical description of it before. Basically little rocks fly around where they shouldn’t in tiny structures in the ear and make people dizzy and nauseous, and sometimes other effects. There’s no reason why it occurs, nor any reason why it stops. It’s just one of those things. Unpleasant but not deadly.

There are a number of things to do about this, and I’m doing two: taking 50 mg of niacin a day, and taking a diuretic. (Excess fluid in some ear part or other can set this off too, apparently.) But that’s not all!

If this keeps happening, I can try one of two Liberatory Maneuvers for Vertigo: the Epley, and the Semont. I picture them as two old grumpy men like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show.

This is the Semont Maneuver:

semont maneuver

And this is the Epley Maneuver:

epley maneuver

This is fabulous stuff. Immediately I forget that I’m ill, and I imagine myself in an ancient office full of phrenology heads, giant clamps, perhaps a van de Graaf generator or two, with an elderly German man grasping my head harshly with gloved hands and flinging me around as I vomit explosively on his hapless assistant, yelling “JU MUSST REMAINEN SCHTILL!” until finally the tiny bit of calcium that’s been tormenting me comes loose and falls down the back of my skull like it went behind the fridge. Then I tip my hat to him and leave my card, and stride down the Strand to my club. With luck I’ll be asked to stand in a zinc basin first, and everyone will be wearing spats.

Now to look up the “Brandt-Daroff Exercise”, which I hope involves Indian Clubs, a Medicine Ball or two, and a pint of oatmeal stout afterwards. Physical culture is the key to life, men! To the icewater baths!