I can’t bad for the Whos, and I’m glad they get robbed. Yeah, I said it. Because I too, have been driven to madness by all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise!

The problem with X-Mas music, is that very rarely, is it sung or performed by actual musicians. People play X-Mas music because its X-Mas, and not for any artistic merit that it may have. The record labels know that, and will mint a metric fuck-ton of CD’s every year of whatever scuzz they could scrape from soup kitchens and plasma centers to sing the same damn songs, over and over, because they know people will buy those discs without ever looking at them.

I remember back when I was at Miami, there was this one radio station that would switch to all all-X-Mas 24/7 format on November 1, and stay that way until January 1. That’s 16.71% of a goddamn year. I shared an office with this one chick who kept her radio on, and tuned to that station, even when she wasn’t there.

Because of this, I wanted to stab people in the face, all day, every day. After class, to prevent face-stabbing, and its legal repercussions, I would leave immediately, with a note on the door reading “Office hours have been canceled due to incessant X-Mas music.”

I asked her to please stop, but I was only met with the “You’re a Grinch who hates Christmas,” which would lead into the “you’re with us or against us” rhetoric that was popular at the time. If I wanted to hear that crap, I just would have hung out with out delusional neo-con department chair.

The only reprieve came from Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band. Only the Boss knew X-Mas. Well, the Boss and Bowie.

Then I went home. My sister replaced her text-message ring tone with the Whos singing their Whoville song. So anytime she recieved a text, at maximum volume, her phone would blast:

“Fah-hoo-door-heys Dah-hoo-boor-hays… Fah-hoo-door-heys Dah-hoo-boor-hays…”

Ten seconds later:

“Fah-hoo-door-heys Dah-hoo-boor-hays… Fah-hoo-door-heys Dah-hoo-boor-hays…”

Ten seconds after that:

“Fah-hoo-door-heys Dah-hoo-boor-hays… Fah-hoo-door-heys Dah-hoo-boor-hays…”

This repeats until I go to karate, go to a bar, or leave to start the Spring semester. Sometimes she’ll take a nap on the other side of the house and just leave her phone on, so it just keeps going off until she answers it in a few hours, or until I snap and pull the battery in a few minutes.

Also, around 2000, for reasons known only to her — and in spite of all evidence, which only points to the contrary — my mom became suddenly and irrevocably convinced that Yoko Ono was the single best thing that ever happened to music.

Yes, you read that correctly.

My mom bought one of those cassette tapes of butt-ass horrible X-Mas music explicitly for “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” and nothing else. My mom would play it as we came into the dining room for our Christmas Eve dinner, and when it ended, she would get up, go into the other room, rewind the tape, play it again, sit back down, and get up three minutes and thirty-seven seconds later to do it again.

After the fifth time, I dropped my fork.

“I can’t do this. I refuse to be part of a family which enjoys the music of Yoko Ono.”

“Oh come on, Ryan, why not?” said my mom.

“Because that malignant cunt broke up the Beatles!”

“Don’t use that word!” said my mom.

“Sorry. That vorpal cunt broke up the Beatles!”

My dad wanted to be mad, but couldn’t because he knew I was right. He used “Rocky Raccoon” as his CB handle back in the 70’s, and was the one who turned me onto the Beatles, and taught me the importance of hating Yoko Ono. The soundtrack of my high school years drew largely from Sgt. Pepper’s, so we were both offended, just I was more vocal about it.

All these stories went on in tandem, and became annual traditions, like the January 8^th Party, Mouthpiece Cleaning Day, or Indiscriminate Thursday. So once X-Mas degraded into Post-Halloween Psychological Torture Season, it became pretty easy to hate X-Mas. It became hard not too.

Fortunately, I no longer feel this way. Apparently, the rest of the universe must have felt as I did, because the then-novel Trans-Siberian Orchestra quickly became mainstream, and an annual favorite. On top of that, other artists followed suit, and began to produce much-needed unshitty X-Mas music. My sense of hope in mankind was momentarily restored in 2006 when it was announced that Billy Idol released a X-Mas album.

The only thing better than news of a Billy Idol X-Mas CD was Mike’s reaction to it. It went a little something like this:

Do you want to know what the real dicked up part about the Billy Idol X-Mas album is? Your grandma will love it. No, seriously:

I thought that was the non plus ultra of holiday-themed awesome. I thought wrong. A year later,  We Wish You a Metal Xmas…and a Headbanging New Year was released, featuring every single type of awesome. No, seriously it has:

• Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice (Dio; Black Sabbath)
• Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath)
• Lemmy (Motörhead),
• Dave Grohl (Nirvana; Foo Fighters)
• Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top)
• Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche)
• George Lynch (Dokken)
• Jeff Scott Soto (Yngwie Malmsteen; Journey)
• Chris Wyse (The Cult)
• Ray Luzier (Army of Anyone; Korn)
• John 5 (Marilyn Manson; Rob Zombie)
• Rudy Sarzo (Quiet Riot; Ozzy Osbourne; Whitesnake; Dio; Blue Öyster Cult)
• Scott Ian (Anthrax)
• Bruce Howard Kulick (Grand Funk Railroad; KISS)
• Carlos Cavazo (Quiet Riot)
• James “JLo” LoMenzo (Megadeth)
• Simon Phillips (The Who; Big Country; Toto; Asia; Pete Townshend; Jeff Beck)
• Tim “Ripper” Owens (Judas Priest)
• Steven J. Morse (Deep Purple)
• Tracii Guns (L.A. Guns; Guns ‘N’ Roses)
• Steve “Luke” Lukather (Toto)
• Joe Lynn Turner (Yngwie Malmsteen)
• Tommy Shaw (Styx; Damn Yankees)
• Kenny Aronoff (Cinderella, Bon Jovi, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Smashing Pumpkins)
• John Tempesta (White Zombie)
• Stephen Pearcy (Ratt)
• …and Alice Cooper

I mean, listen to this shit! It’s perfect!

If there’s one thing which Christian holy days need more of, it’s Black Sabbath.

(Yes, I know that Toto is totally not metal, but I don’t care. Toto IV is a great album.)

I wouldn’t go as far as to have ever called myself a “Conservative Christian,” but up until I started graduate school, I was both conservative, and Christian. Shortly thereafter, the neocons went mad with power and began to force their Christo-fascist agenda onto most aspects of American life. Upon realizing that the Religious Right was neither, I renounced my erroneous ways in an attempt to atone for my past.

Lately, the whole US is ranting and screaming one way or another about Obama’s plan for universal health care. Last I checked, LBJ and Reagan were the ones who socialized health care in the United States, and no one goes around bashing them for that, or even talks about Reagan’s socialist policies.

I could make all kinds of rants about health care, like the ones available at 10^34 other places on the internet, but I don’t want to go through all that. Instead, I want to show this video i found of some guy, because this is the true face of health care in the United States of America. This is what the greatest country in the world has chosen to to offer its citizens up to now. Keep in mind, this guy could have been sitting next to you at the movies:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a video is worth 1000*[frame rate (frames/s)*video playtime (s)] words. This passes for health care in the US. Beer and some paper towels.

This is Chapter IV of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapters I, II, and III.
______________________________________________________

As I sat there talking to Joe about my research, I saw this off-white rumbling steel cube inching towards me.

Eventually I saw that it was being pushed by a petite brunette woman, 1/17^th the volume of the cube, putting all of her weight into the cube to get it to move inches per second. X-ray Chick was machined from a single block of steel, with a nurse’s uniform heat shrunk on to her. I could have bounced quarters off of any part of her person. She was probably so fit because she had to push the x-ray machine around all day, kind of like Conan the Barbarian. She wore no rings, and thus, she was a legal target.

Clearly, I had to bed this woman. I would be a crime not too.

“Hey, I’m here to take a few x-rays, it won’t be long,” she tells me.

“Yay! High-energy photons!” I cheer. She smiled. Being a physicist and nuclear engineer, I occasionally with x-rays, so I know exactly what they do. Still, I hadn’t got my hormesis in a while, so it wasn’t that bad.

Apparently, the doctors didn’t think I could make to the x-ray room, partially because I was a shoutin’ shirtless karate ape-man on drugs. Instead, they brought the x-ray room to me.

At the speed of thought, X-Ray Chick threw some levers and the cube deployed into a complete x-ray lab, like something from Command & Conquer. It seemed familiar to me, for some reason.

She came back with a leaden washcloth to cover my penis and testicles.

“Thanks, I need that,” I told her.

She smiled and threw some switches. A small box lit up, except for the black crosshair-pattern on the front. As she aims the shadow of the crosshairs on my shoulder, I remember where I’ve seen this machine:

“Dude! It’s like 70’s Hulk!” I shout to Joe.

I know how radiation works, but deep down, even though its foolish,  and irrational, there will always live a little part of me that thinks this:

…and says. “Yes. Hell yes. This.”

Because of this simple joy, the first x-ray went off without a hitch. The second, not so much.

“Now, I know you’re going to hate me for this…” said X-Ray Chick.

“Why’s that?”

“I need for you to go like this…” she told me, as she performed the communist solidarity fist gesture, “…and then rest your elbow on this sponge.”

“Yeah, ok,” I tell her. I moved my arm to the desired position very slowly, because I did not have a functioning skeleton at the time. It was fairly excruciating; but I knew I had to play it cool to be able to score a slice of this righteous meow.

“Hey Coons! You’re sponge-worthy!” shouts Joe and she inserts the sponge to support my arm.

X-Ray Chick looks up in horror and disgust, for the jig, much like my girthy schlong, was up. To add insult to my injury, Joe used his camera phone to preserve this moment for all time:

Ever have a raging hard-on while wearing your athletic cup? Don’t. Just don’t.

So after dislocating my shoulder, putting a damper on my birthday and vacation, as well as having me pay to get stabbed, Joe fuckin’ cockblocks me. Amazing.

She was mostly silent after that, but managed to produce some wicked-grotundous images:

This is Chapter III of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapters I and II.

________________________________________________________

I walked into the hospital in my karate gi, and sauntered up to the first receptionist I could see and said in a controlled monotone:

“Hello. I have dislocated my shoulder. I would like to have it set.”

She pointed the way to triage, where I repeated the above scene. The receptionist there asked a few questions and lead me into the back. On the way there I ran in to Fred’s wife, Cheryl.

“Hey Coons! I didn’t know you were in town! What are you doing here?” asked Cheryl.

“Getting repairs,” I told her.

I was brought to one of the side rooms in the ER and laid on the bed, where I spent the next few two hours awkwardly shifting around trying to make myself comfortable, but couldn’t, largely due to the swelling and muscle spasms and whatnot.

It was at this time that the endorphins wore off.

“Hello,” said the doctor who had come to see me.

“I dislocated my shoulder!” I shouted through clenched teeth. “I need you to put it back!”

“Ok. My name is Dr. Anderson,” he tells me. “This will all be over shortly…”

“Alright! Let’s do this!” I told him, as I chomped down on my wallet, so I wouldn’t bite through my tongue. Dr. Anderson stared at me blankly.

“Oooookay… we just need to get some x-rays, and then we can get started.”

Dr. Anderson leaves, and the phlebotomist comes in, stating that he needs to give me a saline drip.

Fun fact: phlebotomists don’t always go to school. In some places, it’s all done as on-the-job training. As in, they just take interested parties off the street and show them where your blood vessels are, and let them slide metal pipes into them.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve never been real big on getting stabbed. I prefer to be the one doing the stabbing, as most people have it coming.

“Do I really need this?” I asked the stabber.

“Yeah, it makes it easier to administer IV drugs,” he tells me.

“Proceed,” I told him. I normally abstain from IV drugs, but at the moment, I was open to try new things.

So I allowed myself to be willingly stabbed and hooked up to tubes and furniture, leaving me with no usable arms. While this was going on, Joe was giving my personal information to one of the clerks who needed it to fill out all the paperwork needed to treat me. I spent most of the stabbing time shouting corrections at Joe. Mostly little things that Joe might not have learned in our eleven years of friendship, like I really do have drug allergies; and that Barbie is my sister, and not my mom.

Shortly thereafter, Cheryl came back and started preparing a syringe.

“What’s that?” I ask.

She told me what it was, but I was not familiar with that.

“It’s ten times stronger than opium,” Cheryl tells me.

“So… its heroin,” I tell her.

“It’s not heroin!” snaps Cheryl.

“Are there supposed to be bubbles in that syringe?” I ask.

“What? There are so many better ways I can use my nurse powers to kill you,” said Cheryl, as she filled my arm with bubbly opium. “You watch too many movies.”

So I sat there for a while with gritted teeth, waiting for the opiates to work their magic.

“Is there anything I can do Coons? Anything I can get you?” asked Joe.

“Yeah, take some pictures of this for the website,” I told him. “This should make for a few epic posts. I shall call it the Shoulder Saga!”

Joe’s camera was in the car, but he had his camera phone. The results were horrifying.

FIG. 1. Coons' left shoulder, a slightly-destroyed by still functioning human shoulder.

FIG. 2. Coons' dislocated shoulder. The bump is the the skin draped over the acromion and clavicle, since the humerous is somewhere else entirely.

Afterwards, Joe and I lounge about the room. Our conversation was mostly shop talk, about our respective grad programs. I start explain my research to him, and right when I started to get to the good part, is when the rumbling started. It was the x-ray tech, and she’s a story all her own…

FIG. 3. "Cheer up, Coons!"

Everyone stopped and circled around, Mr. Capela, who was running the seminar, rolled me onto my back and started feeling around my shoulder area.

I could wiggle my fingertips now, and my shoulder hurt. Pain is your friend; he lets you know that you are still alive. I’d been through worse, but that didn’t mean that this didn’t really, really suck.

“It’s not your collarbone,” said Mr. Capela.

“Good,” I replied. “A guy I work with broke his collarbone the same way, it’s been nothing but trouble for him. “

Mr. Capela  continued to feel around, and assess the situation. He had no medical training, however he is an expert at breaking and mangling people, so he could draw upon his vast experience with broken and mangled people to diagnose exactly what was wrong with me.

“I…I think Joe’s knee his the nerve, and gave me a stinger or something, my arm’s kind of numb,” I told them and I sat up.

“Look at his shoulder. Now look at his other one,” Mr. Mullins said with a smile. “That’s horrifying.”

Mr. Mullins chuckled and with a grin and a friendly upward nod told me: “Your shoulder’s dislocated. Go to a hospital.”

I stand up, gritting my teeth in pain, last time this happened it fixed itself, I had no luck this time. Mr. Zielinski tried to comfort mt pain, in vain.

“At least it will go in easier this time,” said Mr. Zielinski.

“No it wont,” I told him. “I dislocated the other one.”

He stopped in horror and a general lack of words.

“At least they match now,” I told Mr. Zielinski. since there was no point in complaining about what cannot be undone. Seeing no point in morning, I find humor in the situation.

I sauntered over to my gym bag, where beneth my hat, regular clothes,  my pair of sai, my nunchaku, a kubotan, a wooden tanto, my mouth piece, my knee brace, a pair of tonfa, a pair of kama, a jutte, my notebook, the Chinese ring daggers, belated Xmas presents for some of the other black belts in my school, the comics August returned to me, a roll of athletic tape and my emergency underpants, I was able to retrieve my glasses case and to pluck my wallet from my shorts.

“Is there anything we can help you with?” asked Mr. Capela.

“Yeah, can you put my shoes on? That’s kind of a… two-handed job…”

Mr. Capela put my shoes on my feet for me, which really says a lot about the guy he is.  Me? I just sat back and let the initial endorphin burst to finally sink in and do its work.

“How is he getting to the hospital?” asked Joe.

“You broke him, you take him,” said Mr. Mullins.

Joe lugged my gym bag to his car, while I slowly shuffled over, with my limp arm fluttering in the breeze the the handlebar streamers of a little girl’s bike. After running a few red lights and never-ending series of painful bumps in the road (because it was Erie), I make it to the hospital.

“It’s okay Coons, you’ll be fine…” Joe tells me as he drops me off in front of the emergency room. “…unless you get that one nurse I made out with a bunch of times, then never called back for no reason, and she remembers you. Then you’re screwed.”

I had major plans for July 11. We’re set that Saturday aside for celebrating my birthday, and I had a full schedule of fun planned. I was going to a karate seminar at August’s new dojo, go to a cookout, watch UFC 100, and get the fuck drunk.  I was only able to do three of those.

About three hours into our training, Mr. Capella was having us work on harai goshi. I was going pretty well. I was a judo player when I was studying at Oxford*, and harai goshi was one of my signature moves. I was kind of leery when people were practicing on me, because four years and nine days earlier, I had dislocated my left shoulder in a harai goshi accident.

I was practicing with August for a while, then I went to work with Joe for a bit. He was throwing me, but it wasn’t harai goshi. He was having problems with working the swinging leg into the equation, as Joe throws are typically of the “pick them up and drop them” variety. They work, but tits not compatible with the sweeping part, which makes harai goshi a faster and more brutal throw.

In order to help Joe get the feel of rolling the opponent over the hip,  Mr. Capella was showing him how to do seoi otoshi, which is basically the standard body drop (tai otoshi) executed from a front stance rather than a side-facing stance.

Seoi otoshi is a good move to have.  Seoi nage, the standard judo throw, can be easily countered if your opponent places the palm his hand on your hip when you comes in to throw him. This way, you never get close enough to have good leverage, and you opponent retains his balance, making him impossible to throw. If this counter is used you on,  the setup for seoi nage can quickly be changed to a seoi otoshi setup, allowing you to counter the counter.

Rather than pulling me straight forward, Joe pulled at an angle, so rather than fall forward, I fell at and angle. On my way down, my arm hit his knee.

I laid face down on the mat motionless.

“Ahhhh,” I said lackadaisically. I didn’t feel a thing, but I knew something was wrong. My arm was numb and paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my arm, but if I could have felt my arm,  it would’ve hurt.

That’s when my day got weird.