Skin and Bones

Todays P&L: GBP 0.00

Todays Booze: All I need is a little water of life...

Todays soundtrack: AOR, soft rock


So finally after much delay had my skin graft yesterday evening. There were some complications as it is a big graft, (if anyone has a strong stomach, I might attach a photo of my wound), they took skin from both sides of my thigh and patched up my skinless calf. I am glad they finally got around to it as I was feeling quite naked without any skin. When the dressing was off you could literally see the muscle and the white ligaments and tendons surrounding it as there was about twelve by five inches of skin missing. I am reliably informed that I will have some rather impressive scars, so if the stalker sees sense and dumps me at least I have a conversation starter. The stalker tracked me down in the hospital and last night when it looked like they were going to bump me off the theater list, she got angry and went and told off the consultants. she came back with her bad attitude intact though and gave me a hard time, couldn't help pointing out to me that I had been in the hospital for a week and had no visitors while the other inmates all had regular visitors from family and friends.

Speaking about health care,I may be complaining about the NHS but at least they are taking care of me, although I have paid plenty of NI contributions in the past, this is just one of the many times I am glad not to be an American. As usual it seems that Obama is once again proving himself to be the most ineffectual president since Jimmy Carter and backing away from any decisive action. He is withdrawing from any plan to curb the bankers and seems unlikely to make any significant push on the healthcare issue. It is worth bearing in mind that the unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities of the US are estimated at around sixty trillion dollars. I wonder why America is so afraid of universal health care, perhaps they think it smacks of socialism, but after bailing out the banks and the auto sector and receiving funding from Asia and the Middle East, can the US really be considered a true capitalist nation? Obama is suffering the backlash of course, his approval rating is falling faster than the pound. I remember the optimism when he was elected, although it has to be said that most of the people yelping in the streets were the middle-class white types, you know lots of women in ethnic clothes and blonde dreadlocks, liberal arts students, all saying things like now America can sit proudly at the table of advanced democracies. Still the guy picked up a nobel prize and his wife, who reminds me of the predator beast in Arnies movie, got a few magazine covers out of it. Actually Obama will probably win a second term because if, as I suspect, the world is just building up to a bigger crisis than the recent one who is going to want to be President. Obama had more goodwill than any recent president and now he is fading fast. The boundless optimism of the talking heads on the business channels and the obviously self-serving bankers is merely compounding the desperation of the politicians who do not want to be the ones in power when the music stops. The trigger for the credit crisis maybe have been the American mortgage crisis, (which can be summed up easily enough. The overpaid and overeducated but woefully under experienced quants had computer models that told them that it was ok to give mortgages or even third mortgages to bell boys and strippers in Vegas because if you mix enough bad mortgages in with a sprinkle of good ones you can turn crap into gold). The reason that these dodgy mortgages were wrapped, as we like to say, into CDO's and given a lick of gold plate by the rating agencies that were paid provided they gave good ratings, (conflict of interest, what conflict), is an insatiable demand for yield by investors caused by global low interest rates. The low interest rates allowed private equity funds to amass fortunes to take over any company they say a profit in reabilitating, (cost cutting) and allowed countries like Ireland, Portugal and Spain to expand their economies based on literally free funding. Meanwhile Iceland decided it was more profitable to be a hedge fund than a country and Dubai, recognizing it had little oil left decided to turn itself into a theme park complete with palm tree shaped islands. America decided to prove its commitment to capitalism by encouraging corporates to use the low funds to improve profitability not by top line growth, (which means increasing revenue), but by increasing bottom line profits which means cutting staff and off shoring anything you can, laying the grounds for the jobless recovery. The UK of course is no stranger to this I remember doing some consultancy work for an American bank which was being acquired by a competitor. the Americans came over with their list of redundancies, starting with the European headquarters in London, the plan was then to go to the other European financial centers and lay off staff in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan and close own some offices in other countries. They didn't last long in Europe however as they quickly found out that it cost a minimum of six times as much to lay off a worker in Paris or Frankfurt as it did in London. So the smaller European offices were left alone and a new list of additional redundancies were made up for London. It seemed a little unfair, but it didn't matter to me as I was a contractor and if anything it extended the length of my contract. The point of course was that workers of any type in the UK have little or no rights and that the politicians care little about the ordinary people in this country.

Today I have been listening to album orientated rock, which if anything proves I am in the right place as I must be sick - I put it down to the painkillers I am on which are good but no match for the Czech Absinthe I used to drink. According to iTunes these are my top five:

Africa - Toto's finest moment, I suppose in the eighties this seemed impossibly exotic, Reminds me of my experiences in Africa, sharing a room in Monrovia with about five thousand spiders as big as the palm of your hand, sailing down the River Bonney to Port Harcourt as the jungle got closer and closer to the sides of the ship and probably most of all moored across from Lagos at Apapa getting drunk in the sweltering heat listening to good music.

Waiting For A Girl Like You- Anyone remember Foreigner? This was a great song with an ice cold synth line. It may be about finding the right girl but for me its about all the girls I have hurt and the chances I have blown, maybe the Stalker is onto something and there is a reason I am the only person in my ward who doesn't get any visitors.

Don't fear The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult, a song that seems to be about final death but is actually about eternal love, "Romeo and Juliette are together in eternity".

I Want To know What Love Is - More Foreigner, I remember this song being in the charts for what seemed like forever when I was fifteen. I think I liked the video more than the song the sort of slow-mo scenes of people struggling through ordinary lives but being happy with the simple things. In my cocky teenage years, I was sure I was never destined for an ordinary life and never could imagine being happy with the simpler things in life.

Suzanne - On the album Raised On radio by Journey, reminds me of probably my first ever serious relationship, a girl of italian extraction called Suzanne, she wasn't the first or even the tenth girl i slept with but it was a relationship and it seemed real even though we were only in high school. I remember I was still a dreamer and nothing seemed impossible to me, but she was already for the treadmill of life, getting a job, getting married, starting a family. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had married her. In the school I met her a lot of people married their girlfriends. i just can't see how it could have worked out and i shudder to think of all the adventures I would have missed out on, still she was a great girl I hope she is happy now.

So thats it, i don't know why these songs all seem to be by American bands, one things for sure if you were driving in say, Arizona and switched on an fm radio station, there is a good chance you would hear one of them or at least a song by one of the groups. I better go now still need to rest - the quacks say there is a good chance that my graft may not take and the infection could still spread.

So Good day and...
in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!