…at 31 weeks pregnant.

Add that to the List of Things I Thought I’d Never Do. It’s getting big this year.

This was taken by the fantastic photo talent of Chris Rasch at this past weekend’s NotEphemerisle (or NeoEphemerisle, or UnEphemerisle, or Floating Festival…)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Or was that the premium for being seen by an OB/Surgeon over in Labor & Delivery at St Luke’s, as it’s listed on this insurance claim item?

Oh, but wait a minute — I never actually spoke to or even SAW a doctor that day. It was all nurses.

Better yet: the next nurse I talked to, which happened to be on the phone, called me to say that my blood test results were back, and I’m “slightly anemic”. No mention of the bile test results, until I told her that was the whole point of the test.

Super. I’m still itchy, losing a lot of sleep, and not a single medical professional has been able to keep my file straight or give me advice beyond “have you tried cortisone cream”. And they’re charging me hundreds of dollars for it.

Fuck this noise.

Technorati Tags: cholestasis, hospital bills, itching, pregnancy

It pisses me off to have so little control over my well-being right now, but it’s also kind of my M.O. to see good in bad. Makes me a happy person in general, even when stuff basically sucks.

It’s nice to be writing again.

Technorati Tags: blogging, itchiness

Warning: upon inspection of my personal belongings after leaving Ephemerisle this past Monday, it has come to my attention that I have no idea where my ceremonial Mayan machete has gone off to.

From many different angles I’ve been confronted with a guilt-laden invective against the use of my handheld computer (i.e. iPhone) for ongoing communiques, most usually via Twitter.

Human traditionalists: I see your argument. I could go with it. But I don’t. You can go your way; I’m happy going mine.

What I experience goes beyond criticism, however. It generally breaches undercurrents of anger and fear (arguably the same thing), bringing implications of threat: that to fail to attack the exuberantly transhumanist (such as myself) constitutes tacit acceptance of subservience to technology and a rejection of such ideals as the purity of meatspace serendpity and community.

Well how about this: What if mastering a form of instantaneous global communication within a network of social peers of my own choosing isn’t dehumanizing — it’s extrahumanizing.

What if this quasi-Luddite conservatism of the everyday is nothing but quaint, irrelevant glorification of meatspace-exclusive experience, no more valid than drug war prudishness?

I honestly feel as though I’m sensing the newest incarnation of cultural backlash, a trend of discrimination against the hyperconnected that will amplify as we continue the inexorable march towards a post-human future of technological symbiosis.

I see the neuroplasticity of the brain and I disregard the Old World attitude of optimization for onboard memory; offloading to peripherals to allow for optimization of more uniquely human strengths such as pattern-matching, semiotics, and intuition makes sense.

I choose memes; cyberneticism; techgnosis.

Technology is not “it”. But neither is humanity “it”.

Addendum: I frequently exhibit cries of frustration with my gadgetry. But make no mistake: it’s their lack of efficacy and clumsy “integration” with the everyday that irritates me.  I’ll be the first in line for the Google Maps overlay implant in my retina.

Technorati Tags: experience, memetics, philosophy, post-human, transhuman, twitter