Jonah’s Blog

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I’ll never forget my faithful blog readers. Just because you don’t comment, don’t think I don’t know you’re there.

But it is the end of a year, and time to start another. I hope you all enjoyed 2006. I sure did, but I’ll be glad to start 2007. I resolve in the very early weeks of 2007 to fix whatever has been bothering my fretting hand and start picking banjo again. Yous should all resolve to stretch your hands and warm up before you pick, otherwise you could end up with your own banjuries, guitar wounds, and mandolincidents. In fact, my good friend Dennis recently suffered a mandolincident. It appears to be spreading, so be careful in 2007.

In 2007 my baby sister, Abby, will move to Texas. Don’t worry. It’s just Austin, but it’s still pretty far away. She and her boyfriend, Jim, will pack all their guitars, two mandolins, a banjo, a fiddle, and at least one electric piano - not to mention clothes, furniture and other niceties - into their cars and hit the road a week from today. I may not fully grasp the finality and the distance of the move until my first 2007 trip Upstate, when I can’t call to see if she’ll be around. But it’s a huge step, and I’m pretty excited for them both.

Hopefully they’ll be doing gigs in the first few weeks of the new year. New year, new town, new venues, new bandmates. Go Abby!

Throughout 2007 I’ll probably cheer for Abby periodically, so if you want to know she is, just check in here.

Hope you all enjoy every one of those 365 days in 2007. And keep picking. 

Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year. I know you are all very upset that I’ve not been blogging much lately, but I’ve been trying to rest my hands. I suffered a major banjury to a couple joints in my left hand, while picking bluegrass last June. I’ll be back blogging and playing music real soon, so just keep checking this and my homepage, for very cool messages and updates on my very cool life.

Speaking of which, I go up to Albany next Monday to take my master’s comps. Soon I will be a very cool master of history. It’s like a black belt in academia. Show no mercy!

I went to the Tea Lounge on Seventh Avenue and 10th Street in Park Slope today. For those of you not living in Brooklyn, there are two Tea Lounges in Park Slope, both very trendy, and both have great tea.

But in many ways the Tea Lounge really sucks. It is not uncommon to hear ridiculously loud crappy post-punk alternative music blaring over the stereo while customers try to read.

Today I had probably the worst experience I’ve ever had there.

There was this dark-haired woman in her early twenties behind the counter with the other two employees when we got there. She was going on and on about how drunk she got last night and how she and whoever she was with got to the Tea Lounge at around 3 a.m. and started closing the place, including counting the money in the cash register.

“You have no idea how long it took us to count out the drawer,” she told her coworkers. Apparently it takes longer to count large sums of money drunk.

Then my friend Kate tried to put in an order. The girl with the dark hair told Kate she would not help her, because she wasn’t working.

“Normally I’m a lot nicer about it, but I am so hung over today,” she said.

We were eventually served and took seats on one of the couches to read our newspapers. Steadily the music got worse, and as it got worse it got louder. Sick of hearing me bitch about it, Kate suggested I ask the people behind the counter to turn it down.

I walked up to the counter and asked a woman – not the same one – to lower the volume. She called to one of her coworkers in a slightly annoyed voice, and turned to me and said, “Just give me a minute.”

“That’s fine, no problem,” I said and sauntered back to Kate and the couch very proud of myself.

A half hour later the music was just as crappy and just as loud as ever. We left.

It’s pretty embarrassing, but I have nothing to bitch about right now. I was sick all week, but now I feel all right. My hand still hurts, but it’s getting better. I voted against Hillary Clinton last week in the primary.

I was all set to rail against Congress for raising the price of Sudafed, but it seems to have come back down to its normal levels, after the big Meth Scare of ’05. Last winter politicians in the bigger crystal meth states of the southwest pushed for higher prices on products that contain ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, believing that meth dealers would actually go to the drug store and buy 100 packets of cold medicine to use in the manufacture of crystal meth.

But it seems things have calmed down, as I went to the store today and found Sudafed for less than $7. It had been as high as $12 to $14 last winter. Glad that’s over.

On another topic, some asshole reporter (actually a friend of mine named Jotham Sederstrom) told me yesterday I wasn’t a writer anymore, because I quit my newspaper job last year and crossed over to the dark side, as they say.

Looks like I wrote something today, Jotham. Published it too, ya’ jerk.

Since I hurt my hand in June I have not been able to play the banjo any more than once every couple weeks. Even that sets back the healing. So I’m at the point where I’ll try anything. About a month ago someone suggested acupuncture.

Some people swear by acupuncture. My sister says it cured her allergies. My cousin says it healed his injured back, and my friend’s mother got it for her dogs’ arthritis. She says it worked. My experience was less successful.

Because my problem is with my hand, the acupuncturist had to put needles in my hands and wrist. People are so sold by acupuncture’s curative powers and painlessness that they can’t believe having several needles in your hand for a half hour would hurt. It hurts. And my hand has been sore for several days after each treatment.

“It’s not supposed to hurt,” they say.

I answer, “The needles were on the tops of my hands between my fingers and in the joint where my palm meets my wrist.”

“I’m surprised it hurt, because it’s not supposed to.”

The pain, my terrible fear of needles seemed like things to be overcome if I wanted to experience the magical healing powers of China’s ancient medical arts. And the truth is that it did help my neck pain, though only for a few days.

Someone recommended a website that had the names and numbers of hundreds of acupuncturists all over the city, but the problem was that all of the people listed there were American. I wanted someone Chinese, so I found a place in Chinatown which had been recommended to me by a Korean woman from work.

The place was upstairs from an herbal medicine store and looked surprisingly like a doctor’s office. There was a desk in front of a small set of shelves holding files with colored labels. The walls were white, and though the lighting was dim, the waiting room was very clean.

A Chinese man with a thick accent and wearing a long white coat led me too a narrow stall, in a row of stalls. It had a small a small bed, like a massage table. I sat down and explained to him that I was a musician and demonstrated with a little air guitar. I showed him where it hurt. He bent my fingers around in several directions gently.

“Hurt?” he said.

I told him it didn’t. The guy’s English was not that great. As he put the needles into my hand he pointed to my wrist at the heel of my palm and said, “This one hurt.”

It did. He left me with three painful needles in my left hand for a half hour. At one point I heard someone from the other stall leaving.

“When I come next week should I see you or Joanne?” the patient asked.

“Yes,” my doctor said. “No problem.”

I decided I needed someone who spoke better English, so I found a place on the Upper West Side, also fully staffed with Chinese immigrants.

The doctor there put more needles in my hand, put a couple in my uninjured right hand, and lined them down my back, from the top of my head to my ankles. He was also treating some neck pain I get sitting all day at work.

He was tall and thin, very nice and reminded me of the Western-medicine Jewish doctor from the Midwest who treated me when I was growing up. His office was even more like a regular doctor’s office. The stalls were actually little rooms, with walls that reached the ceiling, pictures of families. In the rooms soothing Chinese classical music played over hidden speakers.

The first day he prescribed me a bottle of tiny, sweet-smelling pills labeled entirely in Chinese and instructed me to take 10 three times a day. He said they were good for tendon injuries, and charged me $16 for the bottle.

I left that day feeling like I had just done some heavy drugs. It was like I was floating down the street. So I went back the next week.

The second visit lacked the euphoria of the first, and I had begun to grow skeptical. I almost canceled the third visit. My intense fear of needles, coupled with the fact that one in three needles hurt bad going in made the whole experience like a game of Russian roulette. All it did was stress me out and make my hands sore for days.

After the third visit he “prescribed” two other little bead-shaped pills in bottles with Chinese labels. He told me that when the needles hurt me it was because my Chi was being blocked and that it had to be treated.

I asked him what the pills were for. He read the only English lettering on the label of the one bottle and said, “This one, Chinese Eight-Flavor pills.” It didn’t help much, and I was beginning to realize his English was no better than the guy in Chinatown.

“What about the other one?” I said.

“Oh, this one is for your fire,” he answered, making a fist in front of his chest. “For internal fire.”

At this point I was beginning to get the idea that the whole Chinese medicine thing is just as much religion as it is science, if not more so. So I paid the extra $20 for the pills and told him I would not be making any more appointments for the time being.

But I still take those damn pills three times daily. Ten of one, eight of the other two.

Lately it seems like I see more and more street preachers and evangelicals passing out fliers and pamphlets around Downtown Brooklyn. And I’ve noticed that all these assholes are Christian. I am sick of it and am considering my own type of evangelism, to spread the good word about atheism.

You’ll see me on the corner shouting, “Don’t repent! The end is not near!”

Maybe some days I’ll alter it a little. “Oil is running low, and there is no God waiting to welcome you to Cloud City when you choke to death on the fumes of your own SUV.”

Or how about, “Accept yourself as your personal savior.”

I’ll point out signs, like natural disasters, which strike indiscriminately, sending no message from God, except that nobody is safe. As examples I’ll show pictures of upturned trailer parks in Kansas, flooded streets in New Orleans, and washed-out villages in Thailand. If there is any pattern at all, it’s that natural disasters strike people of all faiths, which I’ll use as proof that if there is a God, He wants us to be atheists.

Just think of the benefits of a grassroots evangelical atheism movement. We could get scientists and secular humanists on board too.

In fact, scientists should all be required to do missionary work before they can get their doctorates. Send them to places with excessive godliness, like Kansas, where they can chastise themselves while proclaiming the merits and truth of evolution and cosmology.

“The end is coming!” They’ll shout from street corners in Topeka, standing on broken glass and wearing placards with pictures of the earth from space. “In several billion years the sun will expand into a massive red giant, swallowing the inner planets whole and scorching earth beyond recognition! We will all be dead by then.”

They can hand out pamphlets with those pictures of the Milky Way that have an arrow and the words, “You are here.” I see tables with pictures of man’s secular accomplishments, like the Great Wall of China, the Empire State Building, and Mount Rushmore.

Christians will pelt them with fruit. Some may get killed. But then science – and with it atheism and secular humanism – will have a few martyrs to point to. People we can get behind in an entirely secular way.

“Don’t forget the sacrifices of doctoral candidates who died in the Great Plains states so you could study science.”

Born-Again Atheists will run for Congress on platforms of getting the 10 Commandments away from courthouses and schools.

It’s a grand vision, I know, but one we can accomplish with a little help from ourselves.

So, how do you like my new blog? My cousin Christopher Collareta helped me set it up. He is a great web designer, and a Very Cool Dude for sure. You can check out his myspace page by checking my “Other Very Cool People” link.

Now people can finally comment on my blogs. I expect posting after posting of hate mail to start arriving any day now. Just keep it clean, asshole. Kids read this shit.

My cell phone contract is expiring this month, and with so many new phones out

there, I’ve been checking out the deals the various phone companies will give me to

switch. Ideally, I’d get a sharp new phone and roughly the same shitty deal I now get

with Verizon. But no. The deals get even shittier.

No phone companies will give me a free - or even severely discounted - phone

unless I sign up for two years. Now here is something I just can’t understand: how

can a company tell you something is worth $300, if they are willing to give it to you

for free, or $30, for jumping through the right hoops? Either it’s worth $300 or $30,

and no matter how you look at it, we are getting ripped off.

So if you sign up for one year, the phone is $300, and if you sign up for two years the

phone is $80, before the $50 rebate that they’ll mail in for you and have deducted

from your next bill. Why not just make it $30?

And why must you sign up for two years, or one year, for that matter? That answer is

easy. Because the deals they offer you suck, and they know that you would leave in

search of a better one if you had the chance.

But there is more to it. Sprint, for instance, offers different plans if you sign up for

two years than if you only take one. So if you agree to give them more money, they’ll

give you a better deal. Whatever happened to letting the markets dictate themselves?

In a fair and open market, we would give the companies more money for giving us a

better deal. If the phone company provided the best service at the best price, we’d all

sign up and stay with that company for two, three, or five years. Maybe all our lives.

Nobody likes to change phone companies; it is an inconvenience. It costs money and

takes time - at least now we can take our phone numbers with us.

Just like the phone companies required a law to allow us to keep our cell numbers

when we switched carriers, I think they require a law here too. It’s a shame, but they

can’t run a monopoly fairly.

The current system stifles competition. Ultimately, it is much more difficult for a

new company to break into the market if everyone has to wait one to two years to

even try it out. It also makes people less likely to try out a new brand. Who wants to

sign up with a no-name company for two years?

I’m calling on someone in Congress to propose a bill that would end mandatory cell

phone contracts and force the phone companies to offer the same deals and plans to

all customers - whether they sign up for one year, two years or month to month.

Where did these one-and two-year contracts come from anyway? Before cell phones

it was all monthly, and the phone companies made money hand over fist.

So let’s do it folks. Want my vote Hillary? Do something for it.

Welcome back. So glad you could make it. I’m sorry to have been gone

so long, but I really fucked up my hand and could not pick banjo or type

for a while. I was wearing a splint and going to a physical therapist

specializing in hands injuries. I also took various natural anti-

inflammatories, like Vitamin B-12 and turmeric extract. But now I’m

back.

The doctor said I had tenosynovitis, a “musician’s injury.” She said I

probably got it by playing too much banjo. One morning after an intense

weekend of long, loud gigs, I woke up with a sore left hand. I couldn’t

open doors, turn on water, or tune the banjo - though some would say

that’s normal - without pain. I tried to pick through it, but it just got

worse.

Physical therapy was a trip. They started each session by making me sit

in a room with my hand in a box that blew around a bunch of hot air and

ground-up cornhusks. The therapists told me the cornhusks were

considered good conductors of the heat.

Last week a guy came back into the room wearing a soft cast on his

wrist and hand. They sat him down at another one of the machines and

left us alone. After a few minutes I turned his way and said, “What are

you in for?”

He went on to tell me about how he found a cracked-out burglar in his

apartment at 4:30 in the morning a few days earlier. He said he punched

the guy in the face to subdue him while they waited for the cops to

arrive. He broke the bone that connects to his pinkie in his right hand.

He would be out of work for six weeks.

“What about you?” he said.

I really should have lied, concocted some story about whom I had

rescued and the medal I was going to receive as soon as I was well. But

I didn’t.

“I played too much banjo and hurt my hand. I haven’t been able to pick

for the better part of a month.”

I guess I’m lucky he didn’t break his other hand punching me.

I recently hurt my hand and can’t really type. I can’t pick banjo too much either,

so I’m conserving my strength for some upcoming gigs. I’ll blog again soon, I

promise. Thanks for dropping by.