I really hate going to the VA hospital...

and have to get it off my chest.

See, it smells there.
It smells like sickness and suffering... it smells like slow death.
The VA hospital is not a place of healing- it's a place for soldiers (and sailors, Marines and airmen) to go to die.
It's a nursing home for terminal cases. Some of us just take longer than others.

Going there makes me feel sick and sad and unworthy.
The clink of the gas cylinder, the rasp of the lungs it supports; the shuffling click of the walker or cane... they are reminders of stoic suffering. Little snips of stories far more horrific than mine, riffs of ballads far more heroic.
All of these heroes, come to this dismal place to die.

Some have family there to help them, friends to prop them up. Some have nothing left but pride in comrades long dead.
I lament the multitudes that are yet to come- those yet to join our ranks. Yet to contribute to the miasma of broken hearts and minds, broken bodies and spirits. Those yet to rage and weep in frustration and pain- but never at the hospital.
There, we bear it stoically.

Because whether we acknowledge it or not, we're all there to die.

Heh. Heheheh.

My brain's sizzling. It's gonna be one of those nights.
The question is: do I dope myself into a coma, or do I just roll with it?
See, it's not necessarily a good fizz I've got going. I'm feeling a bit irritable and belligerent.
As I put it to my brother and sister earlier: 'the cosmos is lucky it doesn't wear trousers, or I'd kick it right in the fork.'

~sigh~

So. What are you doing tonight?
I'm toying with all sorts of ideas- most of them require power tools, which I can't do here, so I'm also toying with the idea of going over to the shop.

Of course, that indubitably lead to people running around, shouting, 'What's the meaning of this,' or maybe, 'WTF?!?!?' Admittedly, the second is much more likely, even from friends that are at least as well-read as myself.
Anyway.
When people get all excited like that they get annoying. And inconvenient.
I'd rather not be inconvenienced by anyone I'd regret killing later. My brain chemistry's just not right for casual annoyance.
I toyed with the notion of running down a bicyclist earlier because he was riding slow and wobbly, and that caused the red blinker on his seat post to bob and weave in a way that I found off-putting.
The prospect of the much larger annoyance of coppers dissuaded me.

See? Even with my crazy-eyes on, I can maintain a modicum of control.

The doctors with the cattle prods would be so proud of me.