Tag: joke

Swollen Parotid Gland

On By Michel McDonaldIn Doctor, Health, Pain15 Comments

swollen parotid gland

There is this strange thing that happens to me at the very least 1 time and at the most 4 times per year.  My Parotid glands swell up because there is a blockage and it hurts like a mother effer.  I wouldn’t normally use such profanity, but it really hurts lol.

What is the Parotid gland?  Nobody has ever heard that term, but apparently it’s a saliva gland.  This is where your saliva comes from, well, one of the many glands anyway.  I am not a medical professional or even a student so don’t listen to what I’m about to say if you expect to get an education from this, this is only my assumption based on my experience with this.

So you have these glands that produce your saliva.  They release saliva through veins that run from the gland to the inside of your mouth and it oozes out into your mouth.  If there is a block, your gland fills up with saliva and you can literally push on it and you can feel, and even see saliva squirting out of the inside of your cheek either into your mouth, or on the bathroom mirror depending on the direction of the vein and the position you are facing the mirror.  No joke lol.

When I feel it filling up, I push on it and it releases the saliva which gives me some relief, but sometimes the block is so bad that even pushing on it won’t release the saliva.  This happens to me all the time.  Although, pushing on it really hurts until the saliva squirts out, but then it still hurts, but it does give me some relief for a while until it fills back up.  I try not to think of anything that will make me salivate, but then everything makes me salivate.  I can’t win.  It’s like trying to think about baseball when you have an erection, it doesn’t always work.

About 2 weeks ago I could feel swelling and pain from my Parotid gland and we went to our regular appointment and the doctor gave me some antibiotics which was supposed to help.  The doctor told me that if it doesn’t help then I may need surgery.  When we went back a week later it seemed like it had gotten better because it wasn’t as swollen.  The doctor asked me if I wanted surgery and I said it wasn’t necessary.  Oh boy was I wrong.

Saturday evening the Parotid gland had swollen up again so I pushed on it and the saliva went through the veins, but then got stuck so there was a little bubble with saliva sitting in that vein and it couldn’t exit.  It’s still there.  That one little tiny mistake has given me massive amounts of pain since Saturday night.  I’m not the kind of person who cries when he’s in pain because I am literally always in pain so I’m used to it.  When I broke my arm earlier this year I didn’t cry once.  This swollen Parotid gland and saliva bubble pain is so bad that I want to cry.  I haven’t, but I want to.  Or maybe I’ve just bottled my pain emotion so much that I just want to let it out lol.

So I called the doctor’s office yesterday and they scheduled me to come in today at 11:30 a.m.  The doctor gave me a prescription for Norco as well as 2 antibiotics which he said I don’t take right away, he said to wait for it to get worse.  WORSE?  Holy crap!  I went to Truxton Radiology and had an ultrasound then went back to the doctor’s office to have blood drawn for a test specifically for this problem.  He said I will get a letter in the mail with the information for the surgeon referral which will most likely have the appointment in the letter with an address.

I am ready for this thing to go away.  You have no idea how ready I am lol.  I am just sick and tired of being in pain all the time.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another.  If it’s not my curving back which turns out to be scoliosis, then it’s my freakin’ Parotid gland.  I guess that means I’m getting old lol.

Harmful and Disturbing Images on Facebook

On By Michel McDonaldIn FacebookLeave a comment

facebook-police

What purpose does Facebook serve for most people?  They get on there to talk to their friends, family, co-workers and classmates.  It’s a great way to keep in touch with everyone, despite those pesky views and opinions that they might have that differs from yours, which can sometimes hurt your or their feelings.  But besides that, it’s a great tool for keeping the lines of communication open.

Pages are different from profiles because they promote books, games, musicians, actors, movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, bloggers etc.  You name it, there is a page for it.  There are some pages however that are more of an idea than a brand and anyone can make one and have thousands or millions of fans.  Every time you like their image or status update, all of your friends see it too, which is good for the page because that is how things go viral.  That’s not always a good thing.

There are people out there, very sick, twisted and disturbing people who create a page with the intent of harming others or causing drama to stir the pot.  I have seen and even reported pages because they had pornography (child and/or adult) or they had harmful images like dead animals or even children.  Yes, I said dead children.  Believe me, it’s not an easy thing to talk about, or an easy thing to think about.  I saw that image tonight and when I tried to report it, I got a message saying I couldn’t report it.  I thought that maybe it had been removed, but it hadn’t because I tried looking for it again and it was there.  I finally did report it.

Nobody should have to see such graphic images like that.  I don’t care if it’s an animal rights organization showing pictures of dead animals in a pot (yes, I had to see that image too) or if it’s dead children being posted as a joke just to get a rise out of people.  It’s not a joke, it’s not funny, those were someones children and they died and they are making fun of them and it’s not right.  I don’t want to see that and I don’t want you or your children to have to see it either.

What is happening in the world when people post such horrific graphic content and think it’s funny?  What kind of sick people are out there?  That is not funny at all!  I am avoiding bedtime because I know that I’m going to have nightmares about those children.  I saw a “Faces of Death” video clip many years ago and I had nightmares for weeks.  I am just not mentally prepared to have to see things like that.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to vent like this but I’m just so disgusted with the human race.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion and free speech and blah blah blah, but there has to be a limit to free speech.  Those “free speech” images shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.

I am not the internet police, but you can be damn sure that I will report as many harmful images or hate speech posts as I can.  I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

I honestly feel sick to my stomach right now.

Update:  Okay so I just got an email from Facebook about the image of the dead children.  This is what they said:

“Thank you for your report. We carefully reviewed the photo you reported, but found it doesn’t violate our community standard on graphic violence so we didn’t remove it.”

Really Facebook?  If I was sick to my stomach a few minutes ago when I published this post, you can bet I feel really sick now.  I need to go soak in a hot bath and just meditate for a bit.  I’m out for now.

My Return to EverQuest

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuest2 Comments

 

I stopped playing EverQuest in 2007 because something tragic happened in my life and I just couldn’t justify playing a video game while shit was hitting the fan, so I quit.  I had paid for a whole year and I didn’t want to waste it so I forced myself to play out of principle, but I found that I had lost all of my enthusiasm for the game after playing for 6 years.

It has been 5 years since I’ve played and I’ve wanted to get back into it for so long, but I couldn’t really justify spending $15 a month to play a game when I could play Lord of the Rings Online for free.  I have already started getting bored with LOTRO so I haven’t really been playing that anyway.  I wanted to get back into EQ so I did.

A few days ago I started playing again and I got on my character named Xanapus and walked around for a bit to look at all of the places that I had missed all those years just to see if anything had changed, and it hadn’t.

I decided that I really didn’t know what the heck I was doing anymore.  You would think it’s like riding a bike, you never really forget, but I have.  I’m sure I will get the hang of it again, but it will take time to relearn my class and which spells are appropriate for which region and which mobs etc.

Instead of playing my main character that I missed so dearly, I thought I’d get on one of my newbie characters that I created but never really progressed.  His name was Voldamort, but someone apparently took that name over the last 5 years so it had an X on the end.  I logged into the account and it said I was eligible for a name change.  What better time to add an “Evilxanapus” character lol.  People joke that Xanapus is evil some days because I accidentally killed the mob that I wasn’t supposed to kill during someones EPIC quest.  Oopsie!  This level 12 necromancer is now my evil guy.

I managed to level him to 16 in just a few days of playing, which back in the day wouldn’t have been possible, but I guess it’s easier to do now.  I swear, it took me at least 6 months to get Xanapus to level 16, so it is a bit frustrating that I got this necromancer from 12 to 16 in just days.

My old guild is still active, but nobody is ever online.  There are maybe 2 or 3 active players, but they aren’t on everyday.  I don’t think that I will leave my guild that I have been absent from for 5 years, but at the same time it’s lonely in there all by myself.  I don’t really know if I will be playing the game full time or if this is just a 1 month thing.  I want to play full time again, but I have too many things to do in my real life to focus on a game.  I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.  Being in an active guild with people who want to play with me and talk to me would justify me paying $15 a month that I would normally spend on something more useful, like oh I don’t know, a small bag of groceries.

EverQuest is fun and all, but their graphics don’t even compare to LOTRO’s.  I forgot how much I hated “zoning” in EQ.  There are only a few times in LOTRO when you have to actually “zone” so it was quite annoying having to zone every time I went from Crescent Reach to Blightfire Moors and to the Plane of Knowledge.  Ah memories of time wasted zoning lol.

I am playing this game for two reasons, one because I missed it and wanted to play it again, and two for research for a book I want to write.  I think it would be worth my time playing if I had some people to play with to give me ideas on a story or plot. Playing by myself isn’t going to give me any ideas for content.  Although I already know what the book will be about, I just want to add more interesting stories and conversations that I actually have with people.  Playing the game gives me inspiration, but playing it with people is where my story comes from.  We will see how it goes.

My Book for the Kindle – Issue Solved

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, KindleLeave a comment

I mentioned yesterday that I had a few issues with my book on the Kindle.  There was a lot of strange code in the .epub file that was making it look funny.  I spent countless hours over the last couple of days trying to fix the issue and unfortunately those fixes removed 200 words from the book.  I found out last night that all I have to do is convert the book to .mobi format to publish to the Kindle, which I did and it is now perfect.

I have learned so much from writing this book, it’s amazing how horrible my English was before.  I mean, I never understood punctuation because I just let the spell check do all the work for me.  Apparently the spell and grammar checker that I have been using is crap because it told me that I was right when I was clearly wrong.  Unfortunately, that has made me question every blog post I have ever written.

As far as I am concerned, my book is finished, but I am going to go through it one last time to make 100% sure that it is before I publish it.  I want to say that I will publish it on February 1st 2012, but I don’t want to promise it.  I will write a post the day it is published though.

I want to go out to Hart Park and have Darrin take a picture of me for the About The Author page.  I thought about doing a joke picture of me sitting in robe wearing an Ascot and smoking from a pipe in front of a green screen to add a picture of a library with a big fireplace behind me, but I don’t have any of those things.  I think it would look more genuine if I had a real picture taken, and not in a studio where they would charge me $60 just for the digital copy for publication.

So that’s it, I can stop obsessing over formatting and get back to the real issue which is making sure it is ready to publish.  Updates coming soon…

DUI Check Point

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

It’s Friday and it’s also April fool’s day so you know people are going partying tonight to celebrate… er um… pranks?  We were on our way to Hometown Buffet tonight with a family friend of ours and we happened to get trapped in a DUI check point.

There were traffic cones in front of 2 of the neighborhoods so you couldn’t turn into them to get out of the trap, you were forced to go ahead.  It wasn’t clear that it was a DUI check point right away when there was opportunity to turn into the AM PM, Taco Bell parking lot or the freeway so from a distance it just looked like there was construction.

So there was just 1 lane and then all of a sudden it turns into 2 lanes, there is a police officer with a stop sign signaling for people to go into the right lane with another stop sign or allowing them to go on past the check point.  They were using the church parking lot as their mini police department and it was full of cars too.

We were lucky to have been let go and not be checked because that definitely would have ruined our night lol.  I guess they profiled us because Darrin didn’t look young and he was wearing a dress shirt and a tie.  I think if he were wearing a regular t-shirt like I was and if he were a bit disheveled he might have been chosen to get checked.

As we were passing we could see people in handcuffs, and that was only at 6:50pm.  Imagine what may have happened later tonight.  As we were coming home we saw that people were still being arrested and they were towing cars.

It’s funny, I have never in my life gone through a DUI check point, granted I don’t drive but still, even as a passenger I’ve never been through one.  In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a DUI check point.  It was a shock to see there were so many people being stopped and how many cars that were sent to the church parking lot.  You know that if you got sent to the parking lot you are in trouble.

So is this a lesson for people?  Don’t drink and drive, and that’s not an April Fool’s joke either.

Target Commercials with Maria Bamford

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog, JokeLeave a comment

wwwvh.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLyOdoBcE0

Ever wonder who this lady is in the new Target commercials?  She is comedian Maria Bamford.  I think I’ve seen all of her stand up specials on Comedy Central over the years, although she hasn’t had one in a long time.

What I love about her is her voices.  Her “normal” voice is like a little child, or at least that’s the voice she uses as her regular voice but we all know that it’s part of the joke.  She does these other voices that I’m pretty sure is her real normal voice.  I think she’s hilarious and I’m glad she’sworking at least even if it is for Target.

Cell Phone Popcorn

On By Michel McDonaldIn HumorLeave a comment

I was just sent this video that shows these people with cell phones sitting in a circle on a table with about 5 or 6 pieces of pre-popped popcorn and they each call their perspective cell phones and all of a sudden these pieces of corn just start popping.  Then they show another group doing it then another group doing it all getting the same results, popcorn.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pXg0TifZpQ

However, I went to YouTube so I can get the video so I can embed it in here much easier than just putting in a link and I found this one instead.  It’s from a radio show called “The Regular Guys” on 100.5 FM in Atlanta, Georgia.  They try the same thing but get no results.  I don’t know if it’s because one of the cell phones was vibrating away from the corn or not but the corn did not pop thus debunking this myth.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC4eeB2M7hk

There is a spoof video of these guys trying it with a steak.  Check it out it’s so funny.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przkFZJSkOc

I went to Snopes.com to get the whole truth about this and it’s false.  The snopes page that I actually went to was about cooking an egg with a cell phone but towards the bottom of the page they showed these videos about popcorn.  They show a CNN news story where they talk to the guy who created these videos for a blue tooth company who basically made this up to sell his product and these stunts are all for a commercial.  Not meant to scare people but meant as a joke and to sell their product.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOZZ6dJiIgo

Update 2011-02-09: Apparently it seems that 2 out of 4 of the videos in this post have become private.  I’m assuming because the people who put the first video up knew that it was fake so they made it private because they were probably getting negative messages.  The last video at the bottom (above this update) is private and I don’t know why.  I do know that this was a hilarious stunt and it should be back up for all to enjoy.

A Spell For Chameleon – Part 2

On By Michel McDonaldIn BooksLeave a comment

Well I finally finished reading this book about an hour ago. I thought it was a very good book. Although I didn’t get the puns at first because I didn’t think of them as puns but more I was thinking of them as what they were. In the fantasy world that I live in, if they say it’s a Jelly tree then it has jelly inside of it. I don’t take it any other way. So it was a shock to me when I was told that “Jelly Tree” was a pun.

I lived in the world of EverQuest for 6 long years plus I’ve lived in the fantasy realm for a lot longer than that lol. Some people may laugh at that but it’s true. I’ve always been a fan of science fiction and fantasy. So it is no surprise to me when Piers Anthony writes about a blanket plant and I have to assume the leaves are blankets.

Besides all that, I am always making up puns whenever someone says something I come up with this off the wall joke usually including a pun. Nobody laughs, they usually moan.

I had this friend named Bob and he was like me too so he and I were constantly making each other laugh. I would say something and Darrin would say Mike that doesn’t make sense but you could hear Bob laughing in the background because Bob got it. And he was usually the only one. For the rest of the people I had to sit there explaining my joke before they called the men in white coats to take me away.

Getting back to the book though.  I thought it was a very good book.  Every chapter had its own little mini quest or adventure and I was glued to it whenever I read it.  My jaw had dropped to the ground in the last chapter when you know who became King.  Hey, I’m not going to spoil it for anyone lol.  Because I wasn’t expecting that to happen.  But I guess it all ended good and everyone lived happily ever after.  Right?  Well, that is until I start reading the next one.

To be continued in The Source of Magic…

Les Grossman

On By Michel McDonaldIn Celebrities, Humor, Joke, MoviesLeave a comment

I just saw a commercial for Tropic Thunder and they are introducing a new actor named Les Grossman. LOL That’s hilarious. That is Tom Cruise under all that fat and baldness. He’s trying to make a new name for himself as Les Grossman either as a joke or to help boost his career again. Whatever, he was good in that movie.