Today is the second blogiversary of the psych rehab project that ate San Francisco.

Congrats, Justin!

HuffPo contributor Beau Friedlander proves that douchebaggery is not confined to any one political affiliation:

“It is time to pop the tea baggers’ favorite balloon (so what if it will be replaced by another?), and with that in mind I hereby offer to negotiate a $100,000 payday to the person who will come forward with a sex tape or phone records or anything else that succeeds in removing Glenn Beck from the public eye forever. I am not offering the cash myself, but I will broker the deal and/or raise the money for what you bring to the table. (And it better be good.)”

Ummm, leftists? Try attacking the man’s ideas. Doing it this way just smacks of desperation.

I find it hilarious that the left expends so much energy and hate on people who are not even running for office, or people who haven’t been in office for two years. Way to keep your eyes off the prize.

(Hat tip to the Beck you should be following: Billy Beck.)

*sniff*

It seems like just yesterday, Epijunky was my cute little EMT-Blogchild, all full of promise and wide-eyed wonder, and now she’s all grown up, a paramedic, and a member of the JEMS FireEMS blog network!

She’s still full of promise and wide-eyed wonder, though, and about as intimidating as the Snuggle fabric softener bear. I’m going to have to work with her on developing her Paramedic Face.

Y’all also welcome Lt. Michael Morse of Rescuing Providence to the network. He’s one of the better EMS storytellers out there, and if you don’t have him bookmarked, you should.

I’ve got a Facebook friend, a fellow EMT, named Robert J. Wilson.

Robert’s gay, and proud of it. He’s also been in a committed relationship with his partner for at least ten years. I’m cool with that. We spar occasionally on his blog because Robert’s a  godless, atheistic, liberal Democrat type, and I’m a red-blooded, God-fearin’, gun-totin, libertarian, hunnert-percent Murkin type. Naturally, our views are going to differ on many things.

But hey, if political leanings were big enough to stand in the way of friendship, TOTWTYTR and I would never share Mule Breath’s wonderful company, much less his world-class chili and barbecue.

Anyhoo, Robert brings to our attention one Baton Rouge area business, Southern Style Granite. They have a really nasty attitude toward gays, to the point of refusing to do business with them.

And that’s fine, really. If they’re afraid of the gay cooties, that’s their business. The libertarian in me tells me that, as a private business, they have the right to refuse service to anyone.

But they don’t have the right to be immune from the consequences of their intolerance and bigotry.

Um, do they not realize how many interior designers are gay? Jeez, talk about not knowing your clientele!

So do me a favor, and link this post in your own blogs, or link Robert’s post, and let’s Google bomb these backwards-assed yahoos into the 21st century. You did it for me with those mouth-breathers at Cycles and More, and now I’m asking you to do the same with Southern Style Granite. This post or Robert’s needs to be the #1 Google result by the end of the week.

And if you’re of a mind, go to one of the online review sites and spread the word about their business practices.

Thanks for your help.

Y’all welcome Medic 999 back to the EMS blogosphere.

We missed you, Mark.

… you really, really should.

Good stuff.

AD (after shooting a Ruger #1 chambered in .450/400 Nitro Express): “Beautiful gun, TD. A little light for an elephant gun, though. Good thing it’s only a single shot. It’s got enough muzzle rise that the elephant would be on you before you re-acquired your sight picture.”

TD: “Yeah, it’s got some kick, all right. On both ends.”

AD: “Jay G.would freakin’ love it.”

TD: “Jay would try to turn it into a pistol, first. And then he’d probably mount a bayonet on it.”

AD (doing a spit take): “True, that.”

Jennifer sums up my opinion of celebrities and their political advocacy very nicely:

You make your living pretending to be someone else.  Playing dress up like a retard*.  You live in a make believe world in front of a camera.  And often when you are away from one too.  Your entire existence depends on my patronage.

I’ll crank the organ grinder; you dance.

RTWT.

Or, at least by early afternoon.

I’m headed to Blogorado for a week of shooting, food and fellowship, courtesy of Farmgirl and family. I’ll pick up Gay Cynic in Amarillo, link up with Matt G. and The Expert Witness, and together we’ll convoy on Secret Location, Colorado.

Time to recharge my batteries, in the way that works best for me – with recoil therapy, good food and better friends, and maybe whacking a prairie dog or three.

Updates (with pics!) to be posted throughout the week…

On today’s date, 1977, Elvis Presley died trying to grunt up a big one.

To celebrate the day, dope yourself up with handfuls of prescription narcotics, get terribly constipated because of it, and strain yourself right on into cardiac arrest trying to expel that big one that keeps prairie-dogging your anal sphincter.

You know, just like the King of Rock ‘n Roll, baby.

And now you know why paramedics call the cardiac-arrest-on-the-toilet calls “doing the Elvis.”

[/Elvis sneer]

… there’s a new, EMS-centric, blog network in town.

EMS Blogs boasts a roster of excellent bloggers such as Too Old To Work, Too Young To Retire, Rogue Medic, and Dave Konig, among others.

The network hasn’t yet fully launched, but some of the bloggers are already posting in their new digs. There’s a good reason that some of these guys are my Everyday Reads, and others I follow regularly; they’re some of the most experienced, insightful EMS voices on the web.

You should check them out!

… and tells the story of how, as a novice pistolero,  he earned the most unfortunate nickname this side of Jay “Minute of Berm” G.  This quote just kicked over my gigglebox:

“And for those wondering, until then I couldn’t hit a damn thing with the Vaquero, either. I was convinced that the name was Spanish for “shoots low and left”.”

Y’all welcome Rick O’Shea’s Bullet Points to the reciprocal blogroll.

… to be found here.

I’ve had Mule Breath’s chili. It’s awesome.

Four times yesterday we transported him. That’s four times he asked someone to call an ambulance.

Four times he was taken to an Emergency Department. And all four times, he left before a doctor could see him.

I knew he was lying the fourth time we picked him up, when he told us the ED staff refused to do anything for him. Yet I loaded him in the rig, and took him back there anyway. I had to.

He has renal insufficiency, hypertension, diabetes, and poor circulation in his extremities. He’s already lost several toes on each foot, and the remaining ones on his left foot are so necrotic that I was genuinely concerned that they’d fall off as I gently wrapped his foot.

He’s also a surly, ill-tempered asshole, which doesn’t make it any easier to treat him. Those of us who try, do so with an air of resignation, any inkling of compassion long since burned away by the futility of caring for someone who absolutely, steadfastly refuses to help himself. He’s been given medication. He’s been offered wound care. He’s been hospitalized.

He doesn’t bathe himself, he doesn’t fill his antibiotic prescriptions, and what prescribed painkillers he doesn’t use himself he sells for alcohol and street drugs. Vicodin tabs fetch a nice premium on the street, after all, and crack is cheaper. Gives a better high, too.

Soon enough, one of those 911 calls will be for him in cardiac arrest, and we’ll try our best to resuscitate him. We may even succeed, despite the doubts that each of us secretly harbor but would never give voice to, that maybe society would be better off if he were dead.

And God help me, I hate him because he makes me ask these questions of myself, makes me wonder how much of my soul I’ve subverted over the years taking care of him and people like him. Will I have anything left for the next guy? I hate him because he makes me suspect that compassion comes in a finite supply, and I fear that I’ve used up too much of mine.

Pundits and policy-makers, people whose understanding of health care has been formulated within the reality-insulating walls of a think-tank, would use him as the perfect example of someone who has fallen through the cracks of the system, and the reason we need universal health care.

Those of us who have had those maggot-infested feet within inches of our faces as we loaded him into the rig, have a different view. We know that, no matter what, some people will. just. not. be. helped.

And he’s not unique.

I’ll be chatting with Breda and Bonnie tonight on the BB & Guns show on Blogtalk Radio tonight at 7:00 pm Eastern.

Tune in to listen live, or call in at (347) 215-8643 with your questions!

… Episode 9 of the Confessions of an EMS Newbie podcast is up.

Ron’s White Cloud Syndrome continues, and we discuss a potentially lucrative career of hiring himself out to overworked EMS preceptors in need of a break.

Other highlights include the ineffectiveness of national and state EMS organizations and why you should join anyway, advanced airway insertion by EMT-Basics, and legitimate reasons to call a helicopter.

It’s Confessions of An EMS Newbie, the only podcast guaranteed to taste great and be less-filling!

Matt G: “So anyway, the guy’s an engineer, and he crunched the numbers. And he discovered that, if you believe all this homeopathy stuff and the concentrations they recommend, you wind up with a vat of water with a few lonely molecules of whatever it is you’re diluting in it. You have to be winning-the-lottery lucky to get anything other than a bottle of distilled water.

AD: “So why does he put up with it?”

Matt G: “Oh, he knows it’s bullshit, but his wife is a true believer.”

AD: “So he keeps his mouth shut to preserve peace and harmony in the household?”

Matt G: “Exactly. I’m lucky, myself. My wife is a pretty level-headed sort. If anything, I wish she’d put out more, but I think all husbands wish their wives would be more interested in sex.”

AD: “There’s a homeopathic cure for that, you know. You dilute wedding cake to one part per million in sterile water…”

No, not me. Actually, I have one less gun. It was my gift of one of my .22 rifles to our hostess Christina at the Inaugural North Texas Epic Blogmeet that prompted such an exclamation.

Normally, such an announcement is cause for the sheeple to duck for cover, but amongst our crowd, it garnered only applause and congratulatory shouts.

God, I lurves these people.

Among the blogger luminaries present were Phlegmmy and LawDog, the latter sporting the moustache of fame and legend. Matt G., Johnny and Holly were there, as were Bob and his wonderful wife, Swamp Rabbit (who doesn’t blog but should) and Mrs. Rabbit, Mulligan DoOver, Mike of The Holster Site and his lovely wife, Jennifer, Daniel Scott and his wife, AEPilot Jim, OkieRhio, John the Texaner and…

… crap, I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody.

Much good food was eaten, many guns and holsters were coon-fingered, and an excellent time was had by all.

The following day, there was a planned range day, but that was scuttled by a flat tire on Mike’s car and less-than-hospitable range owners (that one deserves a post of its own), so we spent the day tooling around lake Ray Roberts on my jet ski instead.

Suffice it to say that Christina’s spawn now have the perma-grin, and Mike and Jennifer are calculating how many holsters they need to sell to purchase their own ski. Everyone also got a glimpse of the daredevil assassin that lurks beneath my daughter’s adorable exterior.

Seriously, the kid is fiendish when it comes to slinging people around on an inner tube. I kept having to remind her that 60 mph is a wee bit too fast to be skipping across the waves in anything but a boat.

I followed Jennifer and Mike home to Oklahoma Saturday night to make sure their donut spare tire didn’t leave them stranded on the side of the road. I spent Sunday visiting relatives in Oklahoma City, and awoke in the wee hours of Monday morning to make the 10 hour trek back home. I made it home just in time to wash a uniform, grab a bite to eat, and head to work.

Right now, I’m beat. I’ve spent 24 hours of my weekend off behind the wheel of my truck, and a full day on the lake that left me sore in muscles I didn’t know I had. Still, it was a great trip, and at least work doesn’t require me to sit in a truck for 12 hours while I…

… oh, wait.

Crap.

Not five minutes ago, I just had a chat with a paramedic from Saudi Arabia who seeks to immigrate to the good ol’ USA, and practice his craft over here. He had a million questions about certification, paramedic schools, reciprocity, and so on.

I’m afraid I didn’t leave him with a good impression of the fragmentation of EMS in the United States, but still, how neat is it that two guys from different cultures and countries can communicate so easily, limited by little more than our language barriers and typing skills?

As-Salamu  Alaykum, Khaled. May you find success in your endeavors here in our country.

… you step onto the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

I sense the hand of my archenemy Sumdood in this.

I’m sure the young victims were just sitting in their car, minding their own business, holding their weekly Bible study and drinking a wholesome glass of milk, when all of a sudden and for no reason, Sumdood just started bustin’ caps.

They should have known better. Standing around minding your own business is one of the most dangerous things you can do in a city.

Business Week ranks Louisiana as the nation’s laziest state.

I’ve always said that hard work and diligence pay off in the future, but loafing pays off right now.

Britain’s NHS begins to drastically ration care in response to economic crisis.

There’s a word that I vaguely recall that may apply here… right on the tip of my tongue… now what was it?

Oh, yeah. Unsustainable.

Drastic cuts in services, rationing care, terminally ill patients being told to fend for themselves (death panels? What death panels?), hospitals and nursing homes closing…

… wow, that’s pretty grim. I’m sure glad that sort of thing isn’t likely to happen with the system we have in place over here.

Oh, wait a minute…