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Thursday, May 12, 2011

Mr Grumpy Stoned Out

I think I've mentioned the core of this (the last two or three paragraphs) before, but as I have forgotten whether or not, you probably have as well, so I'll repeat myself (or not, if I haven't mentioned it before after all).

~~~~~~~~~~~

Mr Grumpy was shopping for some obscure objects he desired, one of which was tamarind paste (a jar of which, unbeknownst to himself, was already at home in his fridge) and some fragrant jasmine rice. Fortunately, though at the time he did not realize it was fortunate, the Chilled Repository was bereft of said items, or at least of the former item and so he did not bother to purchase the latter at that time.

There was another Chilled Repository across the way (i.e via the tunnel under the road) that might have a small jar of the (seeded, strained) paste of the fruit of tamarindus indica, said the helpful young man who had been unloading bottles of sparkling mineral water (of which, damn Mr Grumpy had forgotten to buy any, for it was sparkling mineral water he really had wanted when he had walked to the shopping mall in this sticky Singapore heat, and such is what happens when you don't make a list of things you need before leaving home, whereas not being able to find tamarind paste when you don't even need it, I mean didn't anticipate you'd need it, even though you really didn't - need it I mean - is another matter all together, basically due to only thinking of using tamarind paste after you had browsed through a recipe book in the Chilled Repository so that you were now looking for jasmine rice and tamarind paste, and you forgot about the sparkling mineral water, all because you saw a photo of a dish - stir-fried chicken with lemongrass and tamarind - that made your mouth water and that you have all the ingredients for, conveniently, but not, you incorrectly assume, the key ingredient, tamarind paste), the young man who had looked at the same display that Mr Grumpy had been examining and re-examining just prior to his enquiry, a display of jars of various curry bases, chili pastes, sambal olek pastes, black bean pastes, but not, Mr Grumpy could have told him (what, is Mr Grumpy blind? Is Mr Grumpy stupid? he almost thought but, in the end, didn't), tamarind paste, and said there was no tamarind paste here, and who had then gone off to ask someone more intelligent and approximately omniscient in the matters of this particular Chilled Repository's stock, and who had come back to report that not only was the store out of tamarind paste but also that the supplier of tamarind paste was similarly shocked by the absence from his own stocks of the sour, sweet ingredient Mr Grumpy thought he needed, but didn't really.

Mr Grumpy said to the young man, thanks, that's great, he'll try over (through the under-pass) there.

So he walked out of the Chilled Repository sans tamarind paste, sans jasmine rice (to go with the chicken and tamarind dish as he only had brown rice at home which is healthy in a low glycaemic way, but yuck in a low appropriate taste for rice to go with this Vietnamese dish way - well, it was in a Vietnamese recipe book), sans, he now recalls, sparkling mineral water, and into a throng of pedestrians caught in a bottleneck between stores and stalls in the shopping mall, adjacent to and blocking his path to the escalator he needed to descend.

This ambulationary stenosis had a variety of causative agents, and of predisposing risk factors. Some pedestrians were floating in the absent way of people (oops, he nearly said 'people in Asia', phew!) who want to buy to something but are not sure if this is the shop that sells that something or if that might be it in the window over there or if it might be better to come back tomorrow. Some were precessing on one spot as they rotated and counter-rotated while conversing with shouts and gesticulations (some might have interpreted this as arguing) about which way to go next. Some were iPoblivious and ambulating irregardless of the traffic in the slow-time-warp of some hideous Asia-pop ballad. Some (particularly the old and infirm) were just on-coming, relentlessly, in the manner of those who don't give a fuck, a broken hip would finish the day off nicely thanks.

There was a width of maybe five people available between the stall selling revoltingly sour sweets (those made of tamarind) and the pretentiously unpretentious Shoppe d'Body, but fifteen had converged to that one area and more were coming....

And Mr Grumpy stood back. He let the macrame of human bodies untangle itself and he waited to move, obligingly avoiding kids who would be described as feral were they not so impeccably attired (patting the delightful creatures on the head as they attempted to blow the legs from under him with irresponsibly fast and furious public games of chasey, or hide-and-seek or kill the ang-moh, on the slidey, slippery floor) by their completely inattentive parents, and wheel-chaired centenarians, and he smiled.

I say again, he smiled.

He did not curse, nor did he wail, nor did he ger-nash his teeth (Matthew 13:42). He allowed it (them, the kids) to slide by, to let it (them, the parents, wheel-chaired) pass (as must all things, a phrase that is incorrectly attributed to that unknown someone who is known as the apostle Matthew, quoted above, who actually saith "all these things [wars and the rumours of war] shall come to pass", that is, they will happen, not that all things will die or fade away, as the phrase is normally interpreted, particularly when the George Harrison album of that name came out, and E@L thinks this Biblization was perhaps an attempt to rehabilitate George back into the Christian fold although he was a deeply committed follower of the Hare Krishna movement ["Krishna is God," he said in that interview, and it's patently obvious that 'the Lord' in "My Sweet Lord" is Lord Krishna and not Lord Jesus] at the time, and that phrase is actually a variation of the Sufist mantra, 'This Too Shall Pass', i.e. fade away - the story is that it was inscribed on a gold ring [sound familiar?]) and Mt Grumpy bided his time until, as they say, the coast was clear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Point of all this being, Mr Grumpy is no longer grumpy. He is chilled, relaxed, in tune with the universe. Placid. Easy-going. He hardly retains the shadow of the former great whinging and whining Mr Grumpy - being E@L in a bad bad (but not violent, never violent, merely grumpy) mood.

E@L doesn't have those bad moods anymore. He does, fortunately have good moods, like when the words are flowing, as here, and when he works from home, in order to answer his few emails, be on stand-by for the return visit to the hospital that is just up the road, a mere three kms from his house, whereas his office is 15km and $25 in taxi-fare away, where yesterday he gave some training to eight young women and a Professor, all the time with his fly undone, in order to repeat everything with his fly done up, and nobody calls.

However, when he plans to spend this work-time in and/or sunning by the pool (phone at hand) and he sees that the pool-repairmen are disinterring the pump mechanism in order to preform a noisy repeat autopsy on it, and the pool's water level is dropping and the water, no longer circulating, is souping up with bacteria and viruses and germs, he is not necessarily ecstatic but nor, verily, is he majorly pissed off. Water, whatever, will swim in it another day, will write on it another story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~



Neither is he amazingly affronted when he is forced (kicking and screaming) to pay $2,000 for three months supply of the drug which is making him so benign. Money, drugs, since when haven't they gone together? Three dollars a tablet, five tablets a day, you do the math, or more correctly, the arithmetic.

It's sort of an ouroboros loop, you know the snake eating its tail (an Egyptian motif) - he doesn't worry about paying big for the drug when that drug is the one that keeps him from getting upset about things as temporary as money, for money, that too shall pass (into the hands of Big Pharma, in this case GSK).

However what won't pass is the underlying problem. Idiopathic peripheral neuropathy. Which is medical term for having sore feet (or hands, but not in E@L's case) and no-one knows the fuck why.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lamotrigine was initially prescribed for severe epilepsy, then for bi-polar disorder and other mood disorders requiring stabilisation. Off-label (non-FDA approved) uses include peripheral neuropathy, headaches, neuralgia, An expensive off-label use.

Foot pain almost gone - certainly the electric shooting pains and the hypersensitivity (gout-like in symptoms, but not gout) are passed away, but the side-effects?

Calm.

And of course you appreciate that with the foot pain being mostly gone, he would be less grumpy anyway, right?

... E@L examines his pre-neuropathy life...

Nope. He was always a grump.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L heard of a person who had been placed on 50mg per day in order to calm his mood swings, where was either yelling at the dog and kicking the kids (or was it the other way around?) or sitting in the bath for days on end with an electric toaster held over his head while downing bottle after bottle of Verve-Cliquot (all he could afford, he wasn't gone enough to drink domestic sparkly), during a period of "taking it easy" after being retrenched, and he (I may have been exaggerating a bit there about these symptoms) was back on the Mr Happy trail after merely a fortnight.

He was on 50mg. Per day.

E@L is on 500mg. Per day. Forever. If not longer.

No wonder Mr Grumpy is out of the office.

He is stoned.


E@L

17 comments:

Tom said...

Half way through the second para I wondered whether you were channeling David Foster Wallace. Then, just after "ambulationary stenosis" had almost convinced me, you used the (alleged) word "irregardless", which DFW would never use (thought I, the commentator here) without an explicit desire to indicate to the reader (being, presumably, me in this instance, which now puts myself in the tenuous position of referring to myself both in the first and third person) that the Authorial Voice is confused to the point of incoherence (as I've pretty much established here for myself). Which, whilst definitely possible, I would have thought would be foreshadowed by one or both of an earlier mention of Lamotrigine (plus obsessively detailed clinical notes on its mode of prescription and possible side-effects)(1), or some other slight personal failing of The Author that would lead us to mistrust him, or at least his viewpoint and his capability to render it brutally honestly(2).

The lack of footnotes is leading me (3) to question whether this is in fact a pseudo-Rashomon-like untrustworthy-narrator piece that DFW might have (ahem) tossed off one rainy afternoon; a piece of belle-lettre-istic blogtagsm such as The Author (2) is known to (ahem again) toss off; or perhaps even a New Voice, harking back simultaneously to the Author's voice of the Octets of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and the obsessed-but-happy stoner of the first chapter of Infinite Jest.

1: q.v. too many parts of Infinite Jest to list here

2: q.v. basically the whole of DFW's oeuvre, but especially the bits where he talks directly to the reader in footnotes while the Authorial Voice(*) carries on talking about the actual process of writing whatever we've presumably paid to be reading(**)

3: Both as Reader and as Commentator, since you ask

4: As We Know Him Well

*: Intended to mean DFW's not E@L's here, although I'm now all to aware that this is a footnote on a footnote, and hence it applies equally here

**: With the caveat that you're(‡) getting exactly what you paid for

‡: "You", here, meaning anybody who gets to the footnote on a footnote on a footnote

expat@large said...

Apologies to my beloved readers for the "irregardless" blunder, my only excuse being it was 1am at the time of typing and the weather fine.

And only Tom would a) take the time to read that piece and take it semi-seriously enough to make detailed and passionate (if misguided comments) and b), refer to a).

The lack of an early mention of Lamotrigine is due, again it being 1am and I didn't really think it necessary as the post was structured in such a way as to create a situation of disturbing conflict - Mr Grumpy, nice? - the then resolve that conflict with the explanation. Beginning, middle and end, in that order for once.

In regards the detailed analysis of the drug, I lazily (yes, I admit it) merely provided a link to the dubiously accurate Wikipedia, as it was 1 am.

In regards any resemblance to the style of DFW, I plead insanity. I have been aware of a regrettable dissolution of the E@L style into something of a Hemingwayesque minimalistic journalistic reportage of late ("I went to the supermarket. They did not have tamarind paste. There was a crowd. I am on drugs."), and after browsing through some Tim Parks (Europa), who does the digression and rambling thing quite well, and channeling a tad Nicholson Baker obsessiveness over minutiae, with merely the multi-sub clause withing parenthetic sub-clause of the early DFW, whom I haven't read as much of as you assume - OK the first chapter of IJ, I admit) as I feel the use of footnotes is a distraction and too easy on the reader who should work hard in my opinion as it is damn hard to write that way, and if one goes as far as footnotes to footnotes, then there is more than a touch of parodiical (new word - or should it be parodyical?) "Infinite Jest" adoration not to mention an enormous ejaculate of pretentious wanking (which some people are guilty of, present company for example).

Yes, I am rather fond of the 'ambulationary stenosis' phrase. What a wanker, eh?

Michael McClung said...

1) I am the anti-DFW

2)You use all these words like they're free and unlimited in quantity.

3)I am glad that your grump is in a slump. And sorry that you have to pay an exorbitant amount to make it so.

4)my word verification is 'mandik'. Is there some other kind?

knobby said...

using medical terminology pretending to be english is just cheating.

expat@large said...

Mike: yes I noticed that just last night reading some draft of something or other. Anti-DFW, fortunately for the rest of humanity, does not mean not funny or smart.

Words are all (mostly) in the dictionary, it's just the arrangement that's tough.

I still crack the shits if someone maligns The Mouse, as happened at dinner tonight.

She: "*They* all do that!" i.e. claim to be in trouble with the family...
Me: "I am sorry but I don't stereotype or generalize in that way. *Editha* is a person I know, and love, and I know and love her family; she is not part of any *they*..." (and has more, honesty, kindness and goodness in her little finger than you do in your entire body let alone that great fat (chinese)arse...)

Me, stereotype and generalize? Never!

Knobby: (I forgot what I was about to say after that; a severe case of cognitive insolence.) Ah yes. Well, let's talk finance and see how long you stick within the vocabulary of Shakespeare. Or me.

expat@large said...

Not sure what happened here... This post seems to have dropped off the end of the world for 24 hrs for some reason (maybe those bottles of red on Thursday night?) Lost some great comments by Tom - damn!!!

DAMN! Must be something to do with Blogger fucking around yesterday with some alleged upgrades as I was commenting when it when it went down...

expat@large said...

From Tom:

Half way through the second para I wondered whether you were channeling David Foster Wallace. Then, just after "ambulationary stenosis" had almost convinced me, you used the (alleged) word "irregardless", which DFW would never use (thought I, the commentator here) without an explicit desire to indicate to the reader (being, presumably, me in this instance, which now puts myself in the tenuous position of referring to myself both in the first and third person) that the Authorial Voice is confused to the point of incoherence (as I've pretty much established here for myself). Which, whilst definitely possible, I would have thought would be foreshadowed by one or both of an earlier mention of Lamotrigine (plus obsessively detailed clinical notes on its mode of prescription and possible side-effects)(1), or some other slight personal failing of The Author that would lead us to mistrust him, or at least his viewpoint and his capability to render it brutally honestly(2).

The lack of footnotes is leading me (3) to question whether this is in fact a pseudo-Rashomon-like untrustworthy-narrator piece that DFW might have (ahem) tossed off one rainy afternoon; a piece of belle-lettre-istic blogtagsm such as The Author (2) is known to (ahem again) toss off; or perhaps even a New Voice, harking back simultaneously to the Author's voice of the Octets of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and the obsessed-but-happy stoner of the first chapter of Infinite Jest.

1: q.v. too many parts of Infinite Jest to list here

2: q.v. basically the whole of DFW's oeuvre, but especially the bits where he talks directly to the reader in footnotes while the Authorial Voice(*) carries on talking about the actual process of writing whatever we've presumably paid to be reading(**)

3: Both as Reader and as Commentator, since you ask

4: As We Know Him Well

*: Intended to mean DFW's not E@L's here, although I'm now all to aware that this is a footnote on a footnote, and hence it applies equally here

**: With the caveat that you're(‡) getting exactly what you paid for

‡: "You", here, meaning anybody who gets to the footnote on a footnote on a footnote

Tom

expat@large said...

From Me:

Apologies to my beloved readers for the "irregardless" blunder, my only excuse being it was 1am at the time of typing and the weather fine.

And only Tom would a) take the time to read that piece and take it semi-seriously enough to make detailed and passionate (if misguided comments) and b), refer to a).

The lack of an early mention of Lamotrigine is due, again it being 1am and I didn't really think it necessary as the post was structured in such a way as to create a situation of disturbing conflict - Mr Grumpy, nice? - the then resolve that conflict with the explanation. Beginning, middle and end, in that order for once.

In regards the detailed analysis of the drug, I lazily (yes, I admit it) merely provided a link to the dubiously accurate Wikipedia, as it was 1 am.

In regards any resemblance to the style of DFW, I plead insanity. I have been aware of a regrettable dissolution of the E@L style into something of a Hemingwayesque minimalistic journalistic reportage of late ("I went to the supermarket. They did not have tamarind paste. There was a crowd. I am on drugs."), and after browsing through some Tim Parks (Europa), who does the digression and rambling thing quite well, and channeling a tad Nicholson Baker obsessiveness over minutiae, with merely the multi-sub clause withing parenthetic sub-clause of the early DFW, whom I haven't read as much of as you assume - OK the first chapter of IJ, I admit) as I feel the use of footnotes is a distraction and too easy on the reader who should work hard in my opinion as it is damn hard to write that way, and if one goes as far as footnotes to footnotes, then there is more than a touch of parodiical (new word - or should it be parodyical?) "Infinite Jest" adoration not to mention an enormous ejaculate of pretentious wanking (which some people are guilty of, present company for example).

Yes, I am rather fond of the 'ambulationary stenosis' phrase. What a wanker, eh?

E@L

expat@large said...

From Mike:

1) I am the anti-DFW

2)You use all these words like they're free and unlimited in quantity.

3)I am glad that your grump is in a slump. And sorry that you have to pay an exorbitant amount to make it so.

4)my word verification is 'mandik'. Is there some other kind?

MM

expat@large said...

Knobby said:

using medical terminology pretending to be english is just cheating.

K

knobby said...

That's not fair! I was referring to your use of medical terminology to describe pedestrians :p

I cringe too when I hear people use words like "leverage" in normal conversation, as in, "he leverages his big fat wallet to pick up SPGs". But even that has the minor redeeming virtue of being understandable. Who da hell knows what "stenosis" is without Googling it!

knobby said...

this was one of your comments:

Mike: yes I noticed that just last night reading some draft of something or other. Anti-DFW, fortunately for the rest of humanity, does not mean not funny or smart.

Words are all (mostly) in the dictionary, it's just the arrangement that's tough.

I still crack the shits if someone maligns The Mouse, as happened at dinner tonight.

She: "*They* all do that!" i.e. claim to be in trouble with the family...
Me: "I am sorry but I don't stereotype or generalize in that way. *Editha* is a person I know, and love, and I know and love her family; she is not part of any *they*..." (and has more, honesty, kindness and goodness in her little finger than you do in your entire body let alone that great fat (chinese)arse...)

Me, stereotype and generalize? Never!

Knobby: (I forgot what I was about to say after that; a severe case of cognitive insolence.) Ah yes. Well, let's talk finance and see how long you stick within the vocabulary of Shakespeare. Or me.

expat@large said...

Stenosis is a good word unless you have one in your coronary arteries.

Yes, I do leverage my medical vocabulary to upset you! Just not often enough!

~~~~~~

Thanks for resending those comments.

Michael McClung said...

Stenosis- sounds like a side effect of being a stenographer.

marke said...

Funny to see others giving a serious "review" ... as I also just jumped in here to say "I loved that "voice"" ... (AND I was intending to use those words exactly... but I see Tom has commented on a "new voice") ...

...this writing is uniquely "expat" - and good... book please.

Well ... that my two cents worth, but certainly worth far less ...

expat@large said...

Mike: a steonographer might have carpal tunnel sydnrome, a veritable stenosis of the um, carpal tunnel and so the median becomes swollen and entrapped. (You wan't the normal range of median nerve dimensions?)

Marke: seriously, writing that was fun but gees it was tough work! Getting all those sub-clauses and phrases to scan correctly... Part of the problem was I'd keep going back and adding more or correcting the tense and soon enough, my god, it was all swimming before my eyes... Took just over 4 hrs to write.

There's also a fair bit of Beckett's fiction in there (I adore Murphy, Watt, the early short stories), at least I think there is, or maybe it's become so submerged an influence that it is more a reef influencing the waves above than an earthquake and tsunami combo. Stylisticially.

Isabella said...

Medical language at least has the advantage of being precise without being incomprehensible.

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