There are the physical indignities that dying imposes on a human body with which the dyee must contend. Most are to be expected. After all, if you were doing swell and feeling great, you probably wouldn't be dying, now would you? Makes sense to me.

There are, however a few human-imposed indignities that see to accompany the process with which I wish to take humbrage in the strongest possible way!

I am tired of sharing my bared buttocks with half the conscious population of the eastern seaboard of the United States! Someone PLEASE elucidate for me exactly what medicinal purpose there is in 9,874,316 strangers viewing the hairy state of my bared posterior several times per day! I really want to know! Now I know that Honey, BunnyHunny, mysticSis, Draggie and Sage all collapse against one another in gales of laughter over that image and eventually manage to snicker out some snot-drooled something about the "cuteness" of my tushie, but it is nonetheless downright humiliating to have 20-year old nubile nursebodies tittering in an elevator as Satana, the stretcher bearer rolls your only partially covered bottom through several teen-aged female sadists conventions for all to share as a pre-dinner aperitif of hilarity.

Why is it that nurses seeking to insert an Intervenous Blood Tap (IV) will speak soothingly and lovingly of attempting to find a location that has not already been folded, spindled and mutilated multitudinous times --- then bury their prison yard shank in the most tender spot extant on your arm? Of course, they always preface the immolation with the words, "You might feel a little stick now," said in the most diminuitive of voices. This occurs as they attempt to insert something the size of the Alaska pipeline's main run into a vein mean to carry nothing larger than perhaps a well dissolved chocolate malted.

Here's a news flash the medical profession has just ascertained as well. They have devoted great deals of thought and even more tax dollars at the situtation and come up with an astounding discovery. Of course there are two schools of argument on the matter. Audiologists think the correlation has to do with auditory responses and therefore there field of study is entitled to the lion's share of research dollars, while their brethern of the mindmuddlers' union, Local 654, AFL-CIO, claim it is more an emotional reaction. They're both talking about their joint discovery that telling someone he or she has a terminal disease with a short life expectancy can cause depression in the patient. For their part, the audiologists put forth a fairly good argument. When they tell this information to totally deaf patients, they tend to get limited, or no, immediate response. On the other hand, the shrinks like to point out that as soon as they can get such deaf patients beating one another about the head and shoulders with heavily padded bats, then pass on the information in writing to the semi-conscious saps, the number of such patients with nearly exactly corresponding depression are noted among even among the unhearing. Perhaps it is a question never to be answered?

Now I am forced to go to the local Mental Health Center tomorrow morning for "evaluation" as a follow up to his satrap soothe-saying.If you guys don't hear from me for a few days, come down to the harbor. I'll try to get them to charter a boat for all of us and I can show off my new jacket with the reaaaaaly looooong arms.