Ulcers, Ulcers, Ulcers, I Hate Them.

As some of you know I have Crohn's disease. If you're interested in knowing what it is just click on that link. But rather than complain about everything that sucks about that disease, I just want to complain about the one thing that is pissing me off right now. Well actually I have many things happening that are pissing me off right now to be fair, but one in particular that really annoys the shit out of me.

One of the many problems with the disease is it causes ulcerations to the tissue anywhere along the digestive tract, the means from your mouth to your anus. It also can cause them on your skin. Right now I have probably a dozen of them in my mouth and it really is causing me a lot of grief. It's very difficult to eat, drink, or even swallow without causing pain. I have at least one deep in my mouth under my tongue that is really driving me crazy.  I tried to take some pictures of them to show you but its hard for me to get a good shot of them so I'm including some examples of what they look like at the bottom of the page.


Not only have they been attacking my mouth but my fingers again. The corners of some of my fingers are pitted with them. I've included pictures of my fingers to show you what they look like. I have a hole in the top corner of my left thumb I had to fill with that liquid bandage stuff just so I could type because its too painful.

Now while I'm sure I have ulcers in my stomach though I cannot physically see them I can feel them, every time I eat or drink something, or just lay down. I know I have them in my anus as well. Let me tell you, that really really sucks if you couldn't have guessed. It makes going to the bathroom, which anyone with Crohn's disease does frequently very painful, and also causes quite a lot of blood loss at times. I also have them in my intestines, again through feeling the pain as it flares from time to time. Oh I just thought of another thing that annoys the shit out of me and its along the same lines as the ulcers in my mouth so it counts as the same thing. I get these, bumps on my tongue. It's really hard to describe unless it happens to you. Basically your tongue is covered in tastebuds and normally the only thing you can feel about them is if you take your tongue and scrape it against your upper teeth, it feels slightly rough. Well at least once a month maybe more, these tastebuds become enlarged and very sensitive. It lasts for weeks. So touching one of them is like stabbing your tongue with a fork. It absolutely drives me bonkers. I've even gone so far as to break out a pair of scissors to take one of these off. I don't recommend doing this. It is painful and it bleeds quite a bit, but I will say about a day after aside from the pain of the cut, it won't annoy you anymore. Some people might be squeamish about putting a large pair of scissors in their mouth and cutting a piece of tongue off, but seriously that's how fucking annoying this is. In one of the pictures at the bottom you can see on the tongue exactly what I'm talking about.

I've had people ask me about how I feel about dying, am I pissed off?
Existence is such an amazing thing to me. All of us we live in two states of being simultaneously. We are both living and dying at the same time. If you think about it, the moment we are born we begin dying. Such things scare some people, make them run to religion for answers. Not me, I enjoy the idea that each of us exists only for so long, dying so others may exist later. Everything, the smallest cell to the largest star, everything is here for only so long. Everyone and Everything around you exists today because a star died. Every atom that makes up your body, your car, your house, the money in your pocket, the clothes on your back, the mountains, the oceans, everything once existed in the center of a star. It died so you could live, and when you die, the energy in you will be used to make new life. It's a kind of Universal Poetry. I'm as unhappy to die as anyone else is I guess. I could do without the pain, that kind of sucks, but remember we're all dying, some of us more painful than others.

 

 

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Supreme Court Rules Congress Can Re-Copyright Public Domain Works

When I first heard this, I thought it was simply a joke. It makes absolutely no sense.

The court ruled on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods.

The court, however, sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ argument said Congress’ move to re-copyright the works to comport with an international treaty was more important.

The works in question became public domain in the United States long ago. In 1994, Congress adopted legislation to move the works back into copyright, so U.S. policy would comport with an international copyright treaty known as the Berne Convention.


It seems however, the Supreme Court forgot Reid v. Covert, in 1957.  The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. According to the decision, "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty."

As I've blogged before on Copyright  (Corporate Sponsored Censorship of Your Internet), that although Jefferson himself hated the idea of copyright he believed if it should protect anyone it should be the individuals who created the work, and only for so long, at which point the works become public domain. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, empowers the United States Congress: 

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The Constitution clearly states that copyright is there for only one reason, to promote the progress of science and the arts. It exists for no other reason. So why would the Supreme Court rule against a previous court ruling or more likely ignore it, and do the exact opposite that the Constitution states? And worse to protect the copyright of foreign bodies? No one is harmed by the inclusion of these works in the public domain, to the contrary the exclusion of these works from the public domain harms those individuals who need them to work themselves, as well as everyone one of us who use them to enrich our own lives. The creators of these works have long been dead and I'm sure if they could speak for themselves it would be in favor of protecting the sciences and arts by allowing said works to be in the public domain.

This kind of nonsense is getting out of hand and it is just further proof we must do away with copyright altogether. Look don't get me wrong, I love music and movies and all sorts of other intellectual property but the fact is its all art. Art isn't suppose to make you rich, at least not monetarily. Art is suppose to enrich the culture and make people think and become creative themselves. If you want to be an artist you should accept the fact that you will always be poor but you will be doing something you love to do. And really that's how it should be.

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