Politcal cartoons

I really like political cartoons, at their best they manage to say trenchant, acute, illuminating expositions on our society. It can humanize the wonky policy debates and remote principles into something real and emotional. I regularly read http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons which has some of the best. It also has an amazing amount of crap, particularly the right wing cartoons, every once in a while someone on the right draws a good one but for the most part they are lame, stupid of screamingly inane. Chuck Asay from the Colorado Springs Gazette is a particularly egregious example of a bad right wing political cartoonist.

On the other hand Kirk Anderson really blows me away on a regular basis,
( like this example )

Kidney

Monday I noticed my lower back was starting to hurt and peeing felt wierd. I'd suddenly need to go so badly it hurt, then not being able to generate more than a couple good splashes.

I started drinking more water and hoping it would pass but it has been escalating pretty steadily. The other night I woke up with a need to pee in the middle of the night with a sharp ache like someone had kicked me. Finally gave in and called the doctor yesterday and got to see her this morning. Damn good thing, I had a bitch of a time getting to sleep last night night, not just my back but my front hip too.

She said I'm bleeding into my urine, it's probably a kidney stone and I need get a spiral CT to verify that, find out where it is, how big it is and if there is an infection with it (that would be bad). Since I was only gimping around and not writhing on the floor she figured it could wait until monday and gave me an antibiotic and some vicodin es to keep me until then with instuctions that if I spike a fever, start puking, or otherwise get much worse go to the nearest ER.

I took a couple vicodin this morning and felt much better, Good enough I went out to take care of a couple things this afternoon, unfortunantly after a while I started feeling like crap and sweating profusely. Went home scared, but after lying down a bit and cooling off I felt better. There was a warning on the antibiotic about sunsensitivity and I think that was what that was about, but I can't find a frigging thermometer.