action figures sold separately

Have you ever gotten a crack or fissure at the corner of your mouth that was painful, annoying and yucky looking? Well, with all of my travels as of late and spending 5 days in the gorgeous and incredibly arid southwest- my lips got super dry and I got a crack in the corner of my mouth and it hasn’t healed yet. As I’m going into family practice I love medical issues like these that plague and bother folks but are not as sexy to manage as more complicated and exotic stuff.

Saliva is the enemy- at least for mouth cracks. What happens is that in young folks you get an initial insult from wind chapping, thumb sucking, agressive flossing, or perhaps even a cold sore or zit. Older folks may be missing teeth or have diminished facial muscle tone from stroke or may simply have wrinkles in the wrong place. Then, saliva comes into play- capillary action draws fluid from the mouth into the fold and causes chapping, fissures, redness, oozing, and secondary infection with Candida organisms and/or staphylococci. The infection causes a sore fissure in a deep part of the skin fold. The sides of the fold or fissure will get crusty and red. To feel better, folks will lick the area and moisten it to prevent the painful cracking sensation upon opening or moving the mouth. Also- the spit situation is even worse in a person who normally mouth breathes or is super congested and has to mouth breathe.

Treatment Usually a combo of antifungals and steroid creams are employed. The antifungal is put on first (2-3 times a day) to get at the candida and the steroid cream (hydrocortisone is a good one- go for 1% which can be over the counter) is applied several hours later. If its really bad and there seems to be a pretty raging bacterial infection then a topical or oral antibacterial can be used. I’m going for an over the counter jock itch cream with fluconazole in it followed by an over the counter 1% hydrocortisone cream. I can stop when the redness and discomfort subsides but then I’ll be using pretty heavy duty lip balms to protect the area from spit. I know that there are good anti-fungal herbal treatments out there but I am not familiar with them otherwise I would suggest them- anyone want to school us in the comments section??

remember that discussion we had going back and forth for a few days after the (s)election in november?

it was interesting, but now looking back, i see that nader didn’t matter. gore didn’t matter. “democracy” didn’t matter.

i’ve said before in a rather general and open-ended way that i don’t believe we live in a democracy. well, i can’t imagine there’s any of us who could look at this evidence and say our system is in the smallest bit truly democratic. true, people are not routinely being shot in the street for trying to protest and vote, or to wear, or say, or pray what they want. instead, we let these kinds of things happen to allow bullies to be in power who will support those actions in client states and “friends” worldwide.

sorry to be a bag o downers, but before we launch into the collective cheer of the holidays, i had to get out that one small rant.

i love you all and am looking forward to recharging my batteries to renew my efforts in 2002 for a sane and just society.

• bob is still way too hot. anyone that hasn’t seen him in action is missing a genius of our time. grace, strength, and ingenuity that inspire one to kick ass in all areas of life… but with humility.
• this weeks free speech TV special report covers Afghanistan, an interview with internment camp survivor Yuri Kochiyama, and Valery Alzaga from Justice for Janitors.

After my residency interview in Tuscon on Friday I watched the 25% solar eclipse through telescopes with special filters with folks from UofA astronomy. Very cool.

This is BICAS, a bicycle action community cooperative which takes old bikes and fixes them up either for sale or to donate to folks. They have all kinds of cool workshops and make art out of bike parts which are all around town.

Then it was on to ALBUQUERQUE where I’m interviewing at UNM’s family practice program on Monday. I have had an AMAZING time so far- the residents I have met so far are fun and open hearted. I ended up at a hilarious clinic holiday party for a community clinic serving mostly latino folks and refugees from Cuba, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. The FP residents I’ve hung out with are deeply committed to serving marginalized and undocumented communities, willing to take risks in order to provide the type of health care that they believe in. They also know how to have a good time, I’ve been invited to snowshoeing and cookie making today and we’re going to check out OZOMATLI tomorrow! I’m loving it but very much looking forward to coming home to Eli and the dogs! ALMOST DONE with residency interviews- Wooo hooo!

Dmitry Sklyarov is being deposed. You can follow the story here. But let’s not forget that this case is really about Adobe n friends trying to commodify all text experiences. Watch out folks, the end of the public library and other such socialisms is what they want. No joke. The EFF and anti-dmca are also good sources.

anyhow, congrats Dmitry, have a great winter with your family!

Wild Nights: Nature Returns to the City is the amazing book by Anne Matthews:

Deer in Manhattan, coyotes in the Bronx, wild turkeys flying down Broadway: among the traffic and tall buildings of America’s most urban terrain, another city — suppressed and segregated during daylight, exceedingly lively from twilight to dawn — has begun to stake a new claim. Wild Nights is a startling tour of this other New York, revealing how stubbornly nature reasserts itself, adapting its survival strategies to even the most violently resculpted terrain.

PBDEs are now everywhere. European researchers have found PBDEs in freshwater and ocean fish (salmon, herring, sprat), in air at remote rural locations, in sewage sludge, in deep ocean sediments, in eels, seals, shellfish, bottlenose dolphins, porpoises, pilot whales, and crabs, among other species.

both Rachel’s Environment & Health News and the NRDC have detailed info about this stuff the EPA is telling us not to worry about. Huge quantities of PBDE’s are present at the wtc site, a toxic legacy that will persist for generations…

On the good news side, GreenAction announced today that “In a huge victory for the community, health and environmental justice, the controversial IES commerical medical waste incinerators are closing immediately.” Wow. A long, hard-fought campaign comes to a close.

Some dirty stuff going on at Stanford Hospital. Subcontracting out for the janitorial staff. Lower wages, no ability to organize. One such worker came into the ER after a potential significant exposure to body fluids and hadn’t even been vaccinated against Hepatitis B and had no idea of the resources available for folks at the hospital who are exposed.

Well some rad undergrads organized and got arrested at the Vice President of General Services Lou Saksen’s office.

Then there was a march.

I am in a running slump and found this great link of advice. Most running advice on the net or in mags is all about losing fat or buying new nikes. I liked this down to earth and sweet approach to living and loving to run (I just kind of shortened their running mileage- a 50K is not my average, everyday distance . . .)

a win for disabled prisoners [l.a. times]

Go Katie!

amanda is making me sicky soup from the how it all vegan cookbook. (no david, I have the coolest girlfriend.) ;->

um, i think that putting teachers in jail for being on strike is at least proto-facsict. and way way stinky.

• completely missed link and think. ug. randomwalks had excellent postings. also see the link and think and world aids day pages.

• my ass, i have been working it off, at the new downtown oakland home of the Prison Activist Resource Center and the National Radio Project (and a few other nonprofits).
• i took a few photos to illustrate: 14 and 16 hour days, one stolen mobile phone, bad pizza, a wire-management mistake, and too much attic crawling with my probable meniscal tear have left me utterly depleted (and i’ve of course therefore i’ve got a small cold which today i will cure, damnit!).

before and unfortunately during the time that folks were moving in, i had to run…
over 2 miles of CAT5e wire for phone, fax, and ethernet (amazingly, CAT3 was not cheaper enough to make it worth it, so we went for the good stuff…)
and while i was running wire in the attic, i took a short break…
to observe the newly installed fox theater lights (yet another place the city of oakland put money instead of crucial social services, the party pooper said) and the bleak sears building.
yesterday was fun, cuz a critical mass of folks’ stuff was up and running and they so appreciated it and that sure feels nice. and soon, when this massive wiring-and-phone-and-voicemail-system-and-server-setup job is done, some semblence of order will be brought to this chaos (but as a, who is so taking care of me insists, no more getting up at 4:30 to be there at 5:30 am! whew!):

and by the way, seattle anarcho-bowler and fellow dogperson david greiner (whose site is so great i could spit) has a new post that would be worth reading just for his description of how cool his sweetie is, but he’s got a mound of really good links there as well. go david!

and by the way again, this week’s making contact features folks who work with the Indigenous Environmental Network.

We’ve been silent as of late thanks to my recent travels for residency program interviewing and Eli keeping a mad crazy whack schedule as he works to finish up a humongous wiring job over at PARC et. al’s fabulous new digs.

This blog is all about Portland! I got back from there on Friday after spending 5 days there interviewing and exploring and here are some highlights:

• I found out all about how to get around by public transpo on Tri-Met’s website which is great in that it allows you to plan trips with their trip-planner based on the addresses and when you want to arrive. There is a great train that gets easily between downtown and the airport.

• I rented a bike at Citybikes worker owned co-op and tooled around the USA’s 2nd most bikeable city in the midst of its season’s first major rainstorms. It did live up to its name in many ways but I found that until cars go away that there’s no getting away from the threat of being car-doored and other car nuisances even in a “bikable city”.
• I haven’t figured out yet what my favorite Portland Bridge is yet but I liked biking across the Hawthorne bridge and liked how you can cross the Steel Bridge pretty much at water level.
• I am very excited about all of the collective/cooperative businesses in Portland. After my last interview I took off on the bike and visited the IWW collective cafe Red and Black Cafe and then rode up Division to the anarchist bookstore Laughing Horse Books (3652 SE Division, PORTLAND, OR 97202, phone: (503)236-2893 , open: Mon-Sat 11-7). Then, down to People’s Food Co-op (3029 SE 21st St., Portland OR 97202, 503/232-9051, peoples@teleport.com) where you can work various shifts and be a member with discounts and benefits all over Portland. Then I dropped my bike off at Citybikes- I visited four collectives/co-ops in 3 hours!
• After dropping off my bike I stopped in at a thrift store called Miss Mona’s Rack whose proceeds go to Danzine, an advocacy group for sex workers in Portland. They work on all kinds of great stuff- health education, legal services, renters rights, violence, harm reduction, a “bad date” line to get the word out on violent and abusive dates. They put out a great Zine (called Danzine) with all kinds of great info and art from folks in “the biz”.
• Also on my trip I went to hear wonderful blue-grassey live music at laurelthirst which is just around the corner from an anarcha-bar called Beulahland (118 NE 28th Ave., Portland OR 97232, 503-235-2794) as well as a fun hot tub and Sauna place called Inner City Hot Tubs which has lovely outdoor tubs. Just a heads up that it is an all-gender place most nights and when I was there I appeared to be the only woman. I felt completely comfortable, however- esp with all of the signs up stating no-tolerance to “privacy violation” there are, however “women-only” and “men-only” evenings. They don’t go into what they mean by “men” and “women” so it may be worth looking into how trans aware/friendly they are.

Interesting Clandestine Radio Afghanistan link on the propaganda war in Afghanistan complete with pics of flyers, including one with surveillance type shots of the Mullah’s license plates with the slogan “We are watching”.