WordPress is Ridiculous

WordPress must be “web 1.0″ technology that has evolved to “Web 1.5″ and then “Web 2.0″ and finally to “Byzantine Piece of Crap”

I’ve discovered that sometimes if I tell it to start a posting, I get this complicated dashboard of options, other times I don’t. I don’t care whether I get it or not, just please don’t make it random. Other times I get a panel flipping out from the side, which I can’t get rid of. My first attempt to post this went onto the wrong blog, entirely (my “mjranum” placeholder) because there was no indication what “new posting” is attached to.

This is really laughable – it’s what happens when people write some solid basic code then go feature-mad for years trying to compete in pointless feature-races with other writers of pointless features. The result has no intellectual consistency – no central metaphor for publication – you just push and poke your way through pointless menus. Apparently, that must be how the code-monkeys at WordPress design software, too, which is why the system works this way.

November 22, 2013

My surgery was relatively uneventful, so I didn’t write much about it.

Basically, I got to the surgical center, took my clothes off and put on the stylish robe, then sat there. I talked to nurses and the anaesthesiologist and the doctor and filled out paperwork and read. Eventually they wheeled me into the operating room and sometime in all the bustle of getting me arranged on the table, the anaesthesiologist must have started a drip of something into my feed, because I was unconscious and I remember nothing of the transition.

When I came to, it was a matter of feeling woozy for a while, then being in the car with my parents, then getting into bed and everything got warm and Zzzzzzz….

All in all, as non-traumatic as surgery can be.

Before they started on me, I had to sign a consent form, in which the doctor’s assistant ran me through a list of all the stuff they were going to do – and might do – to me. So it started off with:

• closed reduction of mandibular fracture
• orthostatic immobilization
• possible open reduction of fracture

I helpfully translated those for the assistant as:

• Push it back in place
• Wire it together so it doesn’t move
• Possibly, you get a pirate scar

As it happened, I didn’t get the pirate scar.

November 15, 2013 – part 2

At Clearfield General, things were a blur. I remember flashes of getting checked in, handing around ID and insurance cards, then I was lying in an evaluation room on a gurney. Everything hurt. I was worried about her. I was worried about the weird way my jaw felt – my bite was wrong – it was probably dislocated. I appeared to be leaking blood from any part of my face that I touched.

She seemed pretty cool and collected, really. Which was great. I wonder how much my being weak forced her to be strong, and whether it could have gone the other way around if I hadn’t managed to screw up so badly? So, nurses came and went and someone came and stitched my chin together (5 stitches in one place, 2 in another) and there was various gauze and tape and a trip down the hall to a CT scan and then I started to re-organize enough that I more or less remember things clearly. The model had a leading role in a play that was being performed that night, so I was very concerned that she get stitched up and sent on her way so as not to miss that (I still wasn’t thinking clearly, huh?) which she did – apparently she did a fine job and, as they say, “the show must go on.” Good for her! Later that night she went to the hospital where she lives and they put 18 stitches in to hold her leg together.

I got discharged and called my former renter, to see if she’d be able to give me a ride to the pharmacy to fill my prescription for Percocet, then to the studio so I could lock the place up and collect my jeep and drive home. She showed up and was a tremendous help, running around CVS collecting useful things like individual applesauce servings and whatnot, while I found an ace bandage and immobilized my jaw with a sort of “ace bandage ninja” head-wrap. By this time my jaw was making horrible grinding noises and really really starting to hurt. I felt pathetic and asked her for a hug, so she hugged me and I bashed my chin on her shoulder and nearly passed out again.

I got home, took a percocet, and let my day end there.

November 15, 2013 – part 1

“I hope you’re not going to be really mad at me….” her small worried voice came from the doorway and I turned my head to pay attention. She was standing a bit funny and her voice continued “I saw that knife in the hall and it was beautiful, and I used it on my leg.” This, about the same instant my brain registered something weird on her upper thigh. It sunk in: that’s a cut.

Let me back-fill a bit …  I’m getting ahead of myself in the interest of adding dramatic tension; here’s what was happening: I was doing a photo-shoot with a model I’ve worked with several times, a beautiful young lady who I really enjoy working with. She’s a “cutter“. I don’t at all understand cutters but when I’m photographing them, I just emphasize or deemphasize it with the lights, or photoshop it out, or whatever, as I see fit based on my creative intent. It really hasn’t affected me so I have always treated it as a “lifestyle choice” even though I know that depression and self-image/self-harm are hardly a choice. I realize now that it can also become my problem.

There is a blade I was working on as part of a cooking knife set, which I had left lying on a cart in the hallway; apparently she thought it was pretty and tried it on her leg – and it was a whole lot sharper than the knives she was used to using. My mind has a permanent image of a cut that looks about 7″-8″ long with subcutaneous fat showing clear yellow on the edges where it’s pulling apart, and dark muscle underneath.

I have a first aid kit in my studio, which I immediately grab as I get her to lie on her back, and I hand her micropore tape to start taping the edges together with. I’m – well, I’m “freaking out.” She seems calm. I’m not.

See, here’s a thing: I go into shock at the sight of blood. When I was in high school, working at my friend Willy’s dad’s shop, I sliced the top off one of my knuckles on a piece of steel I was cutting. I went upstairs to ask Mrs Moore for bandages and passed out, fell straight over backwards, and gave myself a horrible concussion. The time after that when I cut myself with a samurai sword, I had the presence of mind to duct tape everything together, lie down and tape my wrist to the leg of the sink to elevate it, before I passed out. A couple years ago when I ran a high-speed drill bit up the back of my left index finger and tore it apart from nail to middle knuckle, I taped it together, lay down, passed out, came to, poured isopropyl in it to sterilize it, passed out, came to, and thought “I’m getting the hang of this.”

She worked on taping her leg together while I incoherently coached her, then I started to feel like I was going to throw up and decided I needed to leave the room – also to empty the passenger seat of my jeep – and, my memory gets muzzy from there out. It seems I got up, ran out, and face-planted on the concrete floor.

So instead of being the heroic rescuer with the first-aid kit, I was semi-conscious and she helped me to her car and drove me to Clearfield General where we both limped into the ER looking like something out of Fight Club.