I just found the itemized list of all the things the hospital billed for during my recent hernia surgery. The total cost, $34,000+ is eye-popping.

But the interesting part, to me, is the Pharmacy details - the list of all the medicines they gave me, apparently in chronological order, for a procedure and recovery that lasted about 4 hours.

First, a hit of Midazolam (a relaxing agent, like Valium) to chill me out. Then, the extremely powerful opioid that killed Prince among many others, Fentanyl. Then the extremely powerful drug that effectively shuts off consciousness, and which killed Michael Jackson, Propofol. Lidocaine, to numb something. Rocuronium, to keep me from moving. Dexamethasone, an anti-inflammatory steroid (which is in the news because Trump got some as part of his Trump Virus™ treatment). Some antibiotics. Bupivacaine, another numbing agent. Ketorlac, another anti-inflammatory. Ondansetron, to prevent nausea. Neostigmine, to reverse the Rocuronium. Then a bunch of Hydromorphone, a powerful opioid for pain, which kills thousands every year. And then a couple more hits of Fentanyl for the road. All that, and a bit more, for just $500.

I appreciate the difference between just gobbling all that stuff on the street vs having it administered by medical professionals as part of a carefully controlled procedure - and their time and expertise made up the bulk of that $34K. But no wonder my pulse was in the 40s for most of the next 36 hours!

Eddie Van Halen, a guitar virtuoso whose pyrotechnic riffs and solos expanded the vocabulary of hard rock, inspired legions of headbanging imitators and propelled his band Van Halen to four turbulent decades of stadium-rock stardom, died Oct. 6. He was 65.

His death was announced on Twitter by his son, Wolfgang, who did not say where Mr. Van Halen died. He was being treated for throat cancer, years after losing about one-third of his tongue to the disease, and had attributed his cancer diagnosis to a habit of holding a metal guitar pick in his mouth while performing.

He has always been one of my favorites. Everybody knows him as a ridiculously great soloist, but I've always loved his rhythm stuff just as much. And this is one of my favorite examples:

He just sounds so happy.

I saw them in 1988, during the Sammy Hagar years. Don't remember much about it other than thinking "Who in their right mind would have the balls to play guitar on stage with Eddie Van Halen? And why bother? He can do it all by himself just fine."

I turned fifty last week.

Yesterday I got carded buying wine.

I literally LOLed.

Is a large roving sandbar off the tip of Cape Lookout, NC. There is nothing on it except seashells. Plants won’t grow there because it's always in motion.

Nice place to set up camp for the afternoon.

The camera on the iPhone 11 is wild. This is a handheld shot of the moon over the ocean. It automatically takes and blends multiple exposures.

A couple of hours earlier. Note the lights from a truck doing about 15mph on the beach. Handheld, again.

This is not actually true.

Atwood's inspiration was the People Of Hope.

The Federalist Society’s list of approved Supreme Court nominees, from which the nominee will be drawn, has a handful of youngish women wingnuts, two of whom seem to top the list for the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The two sucking up most of the oxygen in the speculation, and whom power-addled Donald Trump seems to be able to keep in his head, are over-the-top extremist and extremist: Amy Coney Barrett, representing The Handmaid’s Tale as societal model wing, and Barbara Lagoa, the quid pro quo choice.

Starting with Barrett: She does indeed belong to an extreme, charismatic wing of the Catholic Church called People of Praise, which actually did serve as the inspiration for Margaret Atwood in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was published in 1985 after Atwood “delayed writing it for about three years after I got the idea because I felt it was too crazy,” she told The New York Times Book Review in 1986. “Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book.” Specifically: “There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids. They don’t go in for polygamy of this kind but they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use in the book—sit down and shut up.” Yeah, that’s Barrett’s church. Except they’ve dropped the “head” moniker for male leadership and “handmaids” title for women who keep their fellow women in line because the television series based on the novel forced a change. They are now all called “leaders,” who direct such intimate life decisions of members as who they marry, where they live, and how they raise their children.

The autunmal equinox demands a song about the autunmal equinox:

Raleigh, N.C. — A pair of left-leaning activist groups said Friday that they uncovered a infiltration effort from a man with apparent ties to a Georgia congressional candidate backing a widely debunked conspiracy theory.

Common Cause North Carolina and Democracy North Carolina, two well established government watchdog groups, said a man calling himself "James Fortune" and a number of other out-of-state operatives posed as donors and volunteers, apparently in an attempted sting operation targeting left-leaning groups.

...

Common Cause, Democracy NC and two other groups – Advance Carolina and Fortaleza – were targeted, The News & Observer reported. They were approached about donations and volunteer efforts, but when they checked the source of those donations – a Georgia company called Blue Sky Med Labs LLC – things didn't add up, the newspaper said.

Incorporation papers for the company had been filed only a few days before Fortune showed up in North Carolina, and they listed a political consultant "whose many hats include serving as the registered agent for a political organization of a U.S. House candidate who supports the QAnon movement," the newspaper reported.