I have asthma, 'beginning stadium' (so where's the soccer field, huh?') I was afraid of a lot of other diagnoses, believe me....
I went to my appointment like a good little boy.... Yech!
Everything very professional. I whipped out my card, gave the secretary my Überweisungsschein.... That is a document where your GP passes you on to a specialist.... and got sent to the waiting room. About half an hour later, an attractive young lady called me in to the )))))Belastungsraum((((. To see how much your lungs can take. If I were a tea-bagger, I would have been certain that I would get waterboarded, or something even more crass.
But it was worse, I tell, you worse! There was a great big glass cabinet in there, With a pipe coming into it, and she put a plastic mouthpiece on it, and told me to breathe. And shut the door. Which caused anxiety. And if I had been a Deather, I would have been certain that poison gas was going to come through that tube and put out my lights forever. Death Panels!
And she kept yelling through the door: Breathe in deep! Now exhale all the way! Breathe in! Now breathe normally! I was really and truly skeered---if I had been a birther, Deather, Becker, or loon, except whaddaya know, I wasn't. It was just oxygen....
So that ordeal was over... and I was still alive, and the Socialist death squadrons hadn't killed me yet, But more was in store. 'I am going to have to put a needle in your ear', she said. And I was shocked. 'INSIDE?' She was shocked, 'no in your earlobe, it is sort of like getting pierced.' I was relieved. She explained it was so they could take some blood and measure the amount of oxygen in it.
And I said, 'Ok, always wanted an earring and be 'cool'...' So she made me go into the waiting room with a horrible bandaid on my ear to anaesthesise it. So I went back in when she called me, and had a prick in my ear. Just a pinch mind you...
And I said, 'well, that wasn't like my last piercing, and I am not gonna tell you where...'
The Socialist Death Squads have a sense of humour. She laughed.
So then I got to wait in the waiting room, reading a book, and got called into the inner sanctum. THE SPECIALIST. She is about forty, no-nonsense. We went through my records, she was no-nonsense, but she listened. I explained. She told be to go into another room, and take off my shirt, she wanted to look at my insides more closely. I had to go up two steps, and my multifocal glasses make me uncertain. She kept saying, 'Why are you so dizzy?' And thought, 'Oh-oh, here it comes, the death squad.' I explained, and she ran that machine around me like I was the three dimensional visible man.
And THAT is when she told me I have the beginnings of asthma, prescribed two meds for the next four weeks, and told me to cut way down on smoking.
And then I was FREE, I tell you FREE!
I am not going to get billed for anything about this, by the way....
Seemingly, my time hasn't come yet.
But you know what? No one is going to pull a plug on me ever unless I wish that to happen.
We do not have 'death panels'.
But I have decided what to do if I leave this world. I will do something useful.
Next week, I will go to the university. The anatomy institute. And I will see to it that my remains are used for the students to study. What little remains after that will be buried in a very quiet little cemetery not far from here.
I know what that all entails The first time I came here, my friend Günther was just beginning a very prestigious career in medicne, and he wanted to frighten me. So he took me to the anatomy room in a cellar.... with bodies being dissected.
And it didn't frighten me at all. It was fascinating.
And I asked, 'People DO this volunarily?' And he said, 'Yes.' And was disappointed that I wasn't shocked.
So if I leave this irritating world, I want to do something constructive. It isn't as if anyone would come over and weep over my grave, so I should make that constructive, and maybe be of help to someone else.
I have gotten off topic here, but 'Death Panels' and all the idiots, and especially the death of Edward Kennedy got me to thinking over the weekend, and since am not feeling so wonderful myself, time to make some plans. I hate messy endings.
And most people wouldn't make that option. They have family who can come and mourn or talk to you.
I wouldn't have that.
So why not....
I know that is maudlin and morose, but am at a point where, if you are feeling ill for months, and can't do what you did before, wouldn't mind leaving the planet.
So it should be dignified.
Another day in health care....
Another special edition... Riding the Busses....
This morning, I got off to a half-way late start, and in the summer, the public transportaton isn't usually over-filled.
And there was a late mom and her daughter, and the litle girl went to look at the poster above, and said, 'Mommy, LOOK!' Well it just was a poster of a commermorative issue of a magazine that gets published Sundays in a newspaper here, and that was the title cover. I believe it was a photo by Herb Ritts 20 years ago. It's above. And her mother said, 'It's ok, and if you don't like it, you don't have to look. Some people LIKE doing that.' End of discussion. And the kid, she was maybe five, studied it and turned her attention to other things.
And I thought, OMG, if this were 'Murka, there would be screaming jeebie Baptists and puritans out screaming in protest. I hadn't really paid much attention to the poster heretofore, it was up for several days. It was a healthy thing to do, that lady, and her kid won't think much of it in the future....
So I had to smile. That must have been the most HEALTHY reaction I have ever heard live. And sensible.
So I thought the day was starting out nicely, it was sensible.
Then the bus came. One had broken down somewhere so mine was overfilled, and the pushing and shoving and stepping on your feet and agression were something to behold. Rudeness, no one excusing themselves for stepping on your feet, it was the other side of the coin, and by the time I got off there I was one very pissed off person.
But.... I got a hiatus waiting for my transfer....
Which turned out to be a sad sign of a coin. A boy of about eight or nine or so with his mother, and he was very frightened, with his mother, whose eyes looked so devoid of life and joy and full of hurt. And all the way down, it was, 'Mommy, is the needle going to hurt?' She was very attentive to him, and said no, but the look in her eyes was... just dead. At first I thought he was being taken to a vaccination, or something. He had very thick glasses for a child his age, and was very clinging to her. Again and again, she calmed him, told him the needle wouldn't hurt, and he asked where they would put it in.
And then she put her finger on his inner thigh to show him, and promised him it wouldn't hurt. I died inside for those poor people. Because I knew it meant insulin, and that child had diabetes 1, the worst form. And his mother was hanging on to every shred of dignity she possessed, and it was formidable. I could hardly look away, and it was rude to observe, and made her uncomfortable. A very dear friend of mine had that form from childhood on and died at thirty. I wanted to go over and say a few words, but that would have hardly been appropriate. Or taken wrongly.
So I shut up, and kept on looking out the window. But hearing, and sometimes observing.
I was so happy to get off at my stop. It was heart-rending.
Obviously, I got off to Peter's in a very bad mood.
But calmed down.
And did what I do....
Coming back, there were two teenagers just behind me arguing about what goes best on their Wurst when they go to hot-dog stands, and the one was for mustard, the other was for ketchup, and they went on and on, as kids will do. I found it funny. And we got to Jacki, the end station and were getting off, and I said, 'Kids? Next time try it with mayonnaise and horseradish.'
They didn't get the connection at first, till I was about twenty feet away, and heard them falling apart laughing, because they found it so funny, yelling 'Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise!' and laughing to beat the band.
So what can we gain from this? Riding the busses is like riding a roller coaster of emotions. And I often can't keep my mouf shut.
So it is time to keep my appointment with my lung expert. Werner called me this morning at six thirty a.m. No sense of propriety. And he came up with one of his horrendous fart jokes.
'You have to blow into a machine as hard as you can, so take a deep breath. And then, THEN, you let it all out the back door.'
And I said, 'If I do THAT, she'll throw me out the third story winder onto the Hauptplatz!'
And he said, 'But there won't be any more air, and you'll land on the ground like a new-born sparrow and light as a feather.'
So he finally beat me at my own game. Sorry Dad... but that was funny. But then again, you know my humour....
So I finally got a diagnosis. I have the first stages of asthma. In Harvey Fierstein's 'Torch Song Trilogy', the main character alsways says, 'Now isn't THAT a kick in the pants?!?!'
But that is a post for later.
This is about riding the roller-coaster of emotions that can be riding the busses. You see a cross-section of everyone, and some things are very funny, some things are very sad, and some days are just normal----little grey people riding to wherever they are going.
So it became a favorite topic of mine lately. My 'special editions' are when extraordinary things happen on them, and fun for me to share. The ones that make me thoughtful, or smile, or make me sad. You get on, and you never know what you are going to get.
And this is one fucking class act....NOT
Am not going to qualify it with a comment, just watch. What the FUCK did that country become while I wasn't looking?
I was watching the internets this morning....
And saw a great deal of the memorial speaking at the Kennedy Library in Boston. A good Irish wake, I would say....
And I was... amazed.
I never really followed Teddy Kennedy's life in news or anything else. Which was probably, or after listening today, he kept himself out of the limelight, but helped very many people.
It was beautiful to see so many people from all sides of the spectrum get up and speak about what a wonderful man he was. And it wouldn't have been an Irish wake if some people had you laughing out loud with very funny anecdotes. But the bottom line was the caring for other people, helping them if they were in need.
So I learned a mess of stuff I hadn't known about his life and career.
To say I'm impressed would be absurd. But his issues were and are my issues. And it seems he was a giant among the rest of us. I like the fact that he did so much for others when they were in a time of need. And never hung it out on the 'news'. He did it because he cared. And kept quiet.
My father would probably call him a 'caretaker'. And it seems he was. I couldn't think of a better term for him, truly.
When I pass on, I will wish I could have lived up to that and have lots of people telling horrible stories about 'Flipper' (me) when I would go off the charts for what I perceived as injustice, and tried to do something about it.
And that is the Kennedy legacy.
It was my region, my life, and they affected me immensely, and taught me what empathy and good works were.
The whole thing moved me more than I can describe.
Madonna has been in Rumania....
And got roundly booed for advocating understanding for gypsies and gays. It's only the first part of the clip, I didn't like the number she followed it up with. And will have to follow up with full disclosure here. I dislike Serbs, Rumanians, and am not fond of gypsies. Based on experiences with all three groups that were less than pleasant. I just make a wide circle around them if I happen to run into them, they aren't my thing. I do not hate or ever would harm one of them, they just are so out of my experience, I can't deal with them on any level whatsoever.
Her statement may have been politically correct, as they say, but it wasn't appreciated.
Tomorrow...
is the fourth anniversary of what I call 'the day of infamy' which happened in my lifetime.
Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Missouri, and up to 1600 people drowned in New Orleans, in an unprecedented act of negligence on the part of the US government. Whose officials had the unmitigated gall to suggest it was their own fault, because they were poor, Black, and didn't get out of town. Those people just can't get enough of blaming the poor for mishaps... oopsie...
Cold-hearted bastards and bitches who seem to come out of some parallel universe and torture us all.
Those of us who have some sort of conscience, I mean...
I remember this day so well because I was corresponding with a woman there, half-way between NOLA and Baton Rouge. And got a US weather report on-line and it was all in caps, which is screaming, on-line.... So I cut it, pasted, and pleaded that she get OUT of there, and go to Atlanta for a corfee or something. She thought I was being a drama queen, with the caps, and all, but that is how it was published, not my doing.
As it turned out, she turned heroic, got a mess of donations, and spent thirty some odd hours bringing supplies to the refugee places people had fled to, and injured herself.
So I have a very intense emotional and personal connection to that event.
I do NOT want to get into the egregrious, horrible things that were said on the right about the people who died there. I'm not sure I could stomach repeating what they said at the time, I would throw up. But that was the day I knew, the America I had grown up in had died for good.
And it was the worst feeling I have ever had.
Early this morning I saw that Greg Palast has a new film up, four years after, and how the City of New Orleans doesn't want their people back, because they are poor.
You can start HERE.
Everything about this entire story SUCKS.
Not the documentary, but how it was reacted to at the time.
And I still feel ashamed on a personal level, that my former country let that happen. Yes, ASHAMED. And I think that should be shared by anyone who considers themselves American.
So tomorrow... stop for a moment of silence, and think of someone there, whomever, up in their attics, with the water rising higher and higher... till they drowned.
Without the government doing anything constructive to help them.
Because THAT was the day America died...
Happy anniversary... NOT.
Mr. LImpballs just went over the top for hyperbole and fear mongering....
I have never been so disgusted....
Link Here.
At the risk of sounding like Johnny-one-note....
NO ONE should have to deal with this sort of discrimination, or be punished for it. Link HERE.
I've seen Mr. Fehrenbach on a few tee-vee shows since his ordeal started, and this is not what you do to honourable veterans, and it disgusts me.
Earlier today I played the film 'MILK' for Peter, who hadn't seen it before. We have a rule that it gets shown in English, with German subtitles, to keep his mind alert. I haven't seen him so alert in a long while. Nor so sad, while watching it. He knew the story, everyone of my persuasion does. But it made him cry just the same.
Oddly, I did not. All I felt was anger. Harvey Milk just recently received the highest award the US has to give, posthumusly.
And forty years later, Victor Fehrenbach is being punished for being who he is. That is like putting a band-aid on a cut artery instead of a tourniquet.
It is time to stop this nonsense. WAY past time to stop punishing people for being an aspect of who they are.
And YES, it set me off the charts for indignance. It is fine to want to honour the dead, and give them 'a day of remembrance', like Ahnuld fucking Schwarzenegger is considering, but it would be far more constructive to honour the living, who have been utterly brave, and served their country with dignity than to throw them out ignonimously after so many years.
I think if Milk hadn't been assassinated, he would have been out their with his voice, even in his dotage, and spoken out about the injustice of DADT, and Fehrenbach, and Dan Choi, and all the other brave people who served their country and then got thrown under the bus.
This is a DEMOCRAT???
I am NOT going to say what I think. As far as I know, Grassley is a whore. A whore is someone who takes money for services rendered. And have read he's taken in millions from the insurance and pharma industries. To vote in their interests. Greed is a terrible thing, and makes them taker smaller than a bug. As it is, people should be judged on what they say, and ignored when they turn out to be ... as small as a bug bothering you. So what the FUCK is he doing on that panel, hey.... So how much did this guy get?
This speaks for itself, and have been thinking the same for quite a while now.
with thanks to Pam Spaulding for putting it up... so much gets lost in the noise otherwise...
These facts have been circulating for a long while now, and it turns out they are true.
In the America I grew up in, we got taught differently. I really do not understand the level of hate there....
Sometimes — very seldom actually, but sometimes — a blog post by a fellow blogger is so good — so salient and timely — that it needs to be lifted in its entirety and posted here for all to see.
This post by Glenn Greenwald is one such post and it concerns the prosecution of CIA torturers and the Right’s depraved belief that torture is good.
Thomas Paine v. the Right’s torture defenders
GOP Congressman Peter King — the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee — had this rancid outburst today in Politico regarding Eric Holder’s decision to investigate whether laws were broken by the Bush administration’s torture:
“It’s bullshit. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on. [It's' a] declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense. . . . When Holder was talking about being ’shocked’ [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys’ fingers off or something — or that they actually used the power drill. . . “
Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn’t think the Geneva Convention “applies to terrorists.”
Never mind that the Supreme Court in Hamdan ruled exactly the opposite: that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees, including accused Terrorists. Never mind that the War Crimes Act makes it a felony to inflict “prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from . . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering. . . .” and that these acts are therefore criminal whether or not King likes them.
Never mind that scores of people have died — not merely been threatened with death — in American custody as a result of “interrogation tactics.” Never mind that Ronald Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture which compels the U.S. to prosecute anyone authorizing torture; that the Treaty proclaims that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification of torture”; and that Reagan himself said the Treaty “will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.” And most of all, never mind that King has no idea whether these people are actually “terrorists” because the people we tortured were never given trials, never proven to have done anything wrong, and in many cases were — as federal courts have repeatedly found and as the CIA IG Report itself recognized — completely innocent.
My email inbox and comment section are filled with King-like accusatory sentiments that to oppose Torture is to defend Terrorists, because Terrorists deserve to be tortured, and that to oppose their abuse is to be treasonous because it’s terrible to care if Terrorists are abused, etc. etc. In his 1795 essay, which he entitled Dissertations on First Principles of Government, Thomas Paine wrote this as his last paragraph:
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Can that be any clearer? Of course, Paine also wrote in Common Sense that “so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king” and “in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” And in his Dissertations, he also wrote:
The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case; for it can act no other thing than what the laws decree, and it is obliged to act conformably thereto. . . .
For anyone who believes in the basic principles of the founding, the fact that these acts of torture are illegal — felonies — ought to end the discussion about whether they were justified.
Few things are more repellent than watching the contemporary Right in America invoke the principles of the Founders — in general — to justify their warped and lawless authoritarianism. But nothing is more repulsive than watching them pretend that Thomas Paine — of all people — has anything to do with them (Glenn Beck actually wrote his most recent book based on the explicit pretense that he is the modern day Paine). Any casual reading of Paine makes clear that, today, he would be so far on what is deemed the “left” side of the spectrum that you’d be unable to find him. Paine is nothing but what Joe Klein refers to as a “crazy civil liberties absolutist” and what Rush Limbaugh similarly calls “far, fringe, lunatic kooks, far left radical lunatic fringe.”
The Right today argues that condemning torture is wrong because the people who were tortured were just Terrorists — barely human — and they deserve no defense, not even the force of law. Thomas Paine argued as a first principle that those devoted to liberty “must guard even his enemy from oppression.” Could the contrast be any more stark?
Nice country you have there.... really admirable....
This one from CNN. I fairly am certain that this Senator's ass is grass when he is up for his next election. His lack of feeling is so indicative of what the Republican party has become.
Hoorah! Yuck Hay! Suuuper! Extrafuckin' ordinary!
I got my results from my x-ray back. After forty-six years of smoking to beat the band, and like a chimbley... my lungs look very pretty and normal, thank you very much.... My trick was from quitting the last time and gaining 40 pounds, don't inhale it into your lungs. Just take it in and blow it out, to curb appetite.
I could do a snoopy dance... if I didn't feel so well....
But I was afraid of what the results would be when I picked it up today. Some bad news... a slight curvature of the spine that comes from bending over non-ergonomic desks and studying for two decades.... As if I didn't know.
And oh yes, my nipple piercing looks really cool in the full back position....
So I happily hopped over to my GP and presented him with the result, and said, 'This isn't solving my problem.'
He was blasé as ever, and told me the x-rays are MINE. To keep them... in other words. And is sending me to a lung specialist. Hokay... And if that doesn't bring results, I get to do another EEG. With the internist I most hate in the world.
(I am so upset that my biological mother isn't alive. She was always harping on me to send a recent picture. So the last time I got an x-ray, I sent her my latest 'picture'. She stopped harping, and yes, I really did that. She wasn't usually very nice. Now I have no one to send them to.)
The second 'hooray!' is that W., my couch critter, didn't get put in jail today. He showed up at 6:30 this morning and was shaking in his shoes. He misread his summons and thought it was a preliminary hearing, but it was the TRIAL.
Set for ten a.m.
Oh, he was upset... you get a free defense attorney if you get accused of something, and he just let it go... thinking it was a preliminary hearing. Except it wasn't.
And he gave me a lot of stuff for safe-keeping, and so on. He was so wrecked mentally, I thought, 'oh, you are going to do something SO STUPID...'
So I calmed him down as best I could, and then I did something I never did before.
I gave him a very close hug, and said, 'keep your head up, and don't let anyone get you down.' And added, 'That wasn't a come-on, just concern.'
So ten o'clock rolled around, and I was biting my fingernails. He didn't want me there.
And from all my babbling, I think I gave him his out this morning.
Because I was thinking for a change... The accusation is that he beat up his girlfriend. He crashed at my house, totally paranoid. And landed on my floor for another three weeks. But if it was if they describe in the legal brief, that he beat up on a woman. He reveres women. He would never hurt one.
If that had happened, she would have scratchted, bit, hit him everywhere it hurts, and he would have turned up with the bruises to prove it.
He never did.
She is after something, and it is usually money.
Whatever, it looks like I am going to court (again...) as a witness (again...) but what the hey...
Meanwhile, he is still free.
Stones dropped from my heart.
I don't know what this has to do with anything...
But Dark Black always makes me want to reach for the eye bleach.. IS that Gadaffi as Hammer? He drives me nuts, but I usually laugh...
Faux news is bringing it ON....
Thanks to Google, they have pulled every fucking video I have posted with their crazy fucking liars from my blog, obviously thanks to Google, thanks to a provision that they aren't licensed here and I 'broke some rule'. while posting that what was all over the internets.
Righhht.... it was all over the fucking place.
So where is MY freedom of speech and the right to give out information?
Rupert Murdoch is Mr. Burns. I wish I were young enough to be Bart Simpson.....
But the stuff is still out there.... showing them off for whom they are....
I hope their soup got cold, trying to eat it up.
New attack on disseminating info that is already out there....
I just saw that two vids I put up have been pulled 'due to copyright evaluations'. Guess which ones.
The Glen Beck one saying Obama is a reverse racist.... And another of the same ilk, 'birther' Orly Taitz, the Russian woman who has dual Israeli and US citizenship, and both crazy as squirrels who would be funny if they weren't unbelievable....
This has been popping up the past few weeks.... 'There is no copyright, and you can't watch it out of the United States. Ok....
Why shouldn't we see what you do?
It is seemingly nefarious enough....
Beck lost thirty advertisers on his show last week. Orly Taitz is a joke.
We will not get shut down.
And I smell corporate fear.....
Will go on the hunt, and reinstate them, believe me.
Looks like hardball politics, and am up for it.
Outlyers of Hurricane Bill, and people go out to watch...
I have seen this behaviour before. When Yugoslavia began to fall apart, the local people made outings to the border, to 'watch the war' as the Serbs ran over Slovenia. And that with Serb planes flying up over our airport and we had nothing to counter with.... Said 'border' being a river that wasn't much wider than the one in town here, and it isn't all that wide. So you had the Serbs raising havoc on the other side of the river, and the locals watching what was happening. They were generations of people who hadn't been touched by WWII, and had no sense of the danger, or that someone could be killed by stray bullets across the way. Luckily, no one suffered any damage.... but at the time I thought, 'how crazy can you BE, hey?'
In Maine, some people seem to have lobster brains.... Check this out from Pam's House Blend... I wouldn't take my children out in that weather if you paid me for it.
But another aspect of it is understandable to me. With the exception of a class two hurricane that wreaked havoc in NH in the Thirties, people there aren't USED to that weather, so it is sort of a 'wonder' they want to watch without knowing how life-threatening it is to them, because it never happened before....
It it had been a 'Noreaster in winter, they would have taken precautions and stayed indoors, and kept their kids safe... I hope....
Perceptions. Always perceptions.... and a repsitory of knowledge, I guess, that some people put into the very back of the file cabinets they call their brains.
And to top this off, some poor 70 year old lady up north of here got nervous in that last bad thunderstorm we had that half-knocked off the chimbly of our last house. She was concerned about her freezer in the cellar, and went down there to do something about it? The house must have been near a brook, or something, there isn't a river there. But a brook is something tricky. You get a storm like it was there? Water broke in with such violence, she didn't have a chance, and seemingly being frail, she drowned. All because of the little she had in there.
(Have since learned it knocked off every electrical appliance in the building where I last lived, they still don't have electricity, one family has a private company and it killed their computers as well, so that was gawd retribution if you wish to look at it that way...)
Oh... Dimitri! How not to approach a woman!
In Toronto, an obnoxious man approached a woman eating with her friends in a restaurant, and to get rid of him she gave him her card. So he leaves two very aggressive mails on her answering machine, the second of which left me speechless. So she turned it in to a radio station there, they played it, and much hilarity ensued. h/T to Crooks and Liars for this entertaining audio. Dimitri's ego must be as vast as the universe....
You can hear this vastness here.
I hope their broadcasting of it demolished a glaxy or two of his ego away.....
gawwwd.,,
Oh, OH! OH! Yesterday's thunderstorm....
Hit the chimbley in my former residence.
I know for a fact we had a Blitzableiter, a grounding, that would run lightening into the earth and spare the people inside.
In a bizarre variation, it went down a chimney, knocked half of it onto the fucking sidewalk in front of the house, and killed E VERYTHING in my nemesis' house. The Tee-vee, radio, stove, EVERYTTHING electric, including the ceiling lamp he gave her.
I had my winders opened yesterday, and went to sleep. Got wakened my Ball lightening. They are always the worst, so closed the windows.
Karma spared me.
But just to hear that she gave her disapproval to the people who were so horribly disapproving.... is balm for my nerves.
I hope they have fun with it.
Now THAT is what I call a bite in the fucking ass.
Good so.
Ok.... Jon Stewart went off on vacation with a big bang.
His guest yesterday was.... the bitch who thought up the 'death panels', and he was waaaay too polite.
Fortunately, someone at Daily Kos pulled it apart in all its' ungloriousness.....
Link here, and well worth the read. Update: she was so awful, she 'resigned' from her job at the medical company she was representing.... although mean people say she got voted off the team for exposing the stupidity of their arguments. Kudos to Jon Stewart!!! Bravo. I don't know how he could stand sixteen minutes of that idiot...
Now this is just my perception...
But I think President 'Cumbaya' needs a reality check very quickly, and find some nads.
Sort of like Madeleine Albright's brass ovaraies....
He needs the platinum ones.
Nads, I mean.
For all the nicety of 'wanting to get along and play nice with everyone', it is waaay past time to put his foot down and get up to the bully pulpit, especially in his own ranks. And push his vision on health care through his own ranks, and make them heel like the little dog bitches they are....
I know that he is up against incredible foes. Rachel Maddow has been exposing them daily for weeks now. Grass roots my ass.
If one doesn't believe the hype, FAUX News, that the US health care system is 'the best in the world' according to Glen Beck, (after he trashed it 18 months ago....) and in reality, it is off the charts for bad and at the end of the list for industrialised nations... just ahead of Slovenia, and hadn't been aware they were that badly off...
It seems to me that the majority of Murkins are getting the rawest of raw deals, as per usual, because they aren't paying attention.
Sometimes I think they have Attention Deficiency Disorder, and just go along because after all, Britney Spears just lost 2000 pounds, or something like that.... And that is far more interesting, of course.... And oh yes, it is so important to show your real guns and AK 47's at the edge of crowds attending a health-care meeting. Because the law says you can...
Someone put the country on Ritalin, please, because there is an attention deficit, but I do not think that will help either....
Why the hell don't people get excited and embrace a change that will better their lives? I just do not get it.
Instead, people are going around, poisoning the wells. Obama is gonna murder your folks. (Scream). And on and on...
It's insane. If you want death panels... well, the insurance companies are doing a FINE job already, and no one complains. I was especially shocked yesterday to learn that the 'average' cost of a hospital stay and operation was twenty to thirty thousand dollars, and there is a move in the Senate to make the insured people pay up to thirty-five percent of that cost incurred.... in addition to the premiums paid monthly. Who the fuck can afford that, pray tell?
THEY are the death panels.
The outright greed is so stunning it leaves me spitless.
I know, I know... have been going ON about this for quite a while now. But I just cannot fathom how dense people can be or how they can distort truth, and fire dummies up to disrupt a sensible discussion.
Bottom line? You'll get what you never paid for.
From the clip below, I found these blowhards, from FAUX news and an unfortunate member of congress....
So that is what everyone is up against.... ARE YOU ALL OUT OF YOUR MINDS, OR OUT SHOPPING, OR BRAINWHASHED FOR ALL TIME?
Jeez...
Oh...
I am not so a fan of Barney Frank... But I do like his zingers.....
There are DAYS... when gay guys got the sarcasm gene along with the gay gene.
Or maybe you just learn to fight.
OMFG!
I don't even know where to file this....
Was 'busy' sleeping. And the doorbell rang, over and over and over, and I thought who the Hell is driving me nuts, so I went to see....
So I went to see who was so crazy as to want to see me.
And opened to find the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, with a tall young beautiful man behind her whom I had never seen before. And she was going ON, how ARE you, and he as well, although I now know I had never seen him before. She was tall, and had dark hair, wearing a beautiful summer dress in blue. And I thought, Whaa?' And this Oliver guy is going 'HI René, nice to see you!' and I knew I had never seen him before in my life. Tall, long haired, very well dressed, and I thought 'WHAAA?'
I was so upset.... It freaked me out.
Now, ok, but she was immediately so concerned, she came in and hugged me and hugged me... and asked what was wrong.
And then I saw the tattoo on her shoulder. Holy shit, hey! It was Olga. And the voice, hey, I should have known, but I hadn't seen her in YEARS. And I didn't have my glasses on. She must be near thirty now, but she is gorgeous. Long dark hair, looks like a model, and has that voice that makes me melt. I didn't have my glasses on. But can see enough to know she is beautiful.
We go back a long way.... She grew up with a former neighbor of mine, and was so radical, I couldn't place it at first. Said neighbor was... well long story. I don't know what the hell to say about that. He was bi-curious. But I never went there, and he died very young and tragically. And I have regretted many things about that since he died so senselessly. Olga was his first girlfriend, and was on heroin at the time. With rasta locks, and very funny, and you never noticed. His other friend Philipp was also around at the time. He married Olga, they got divorced, and only heard that it was because of a certain 'Oliver', who seduced her into a further life on drugs.
Except it seems it wasn't so. They wanted to take my old carcass out of this dump, and go out on the town.
You wake me up out of a deep sleep, and I am just... 'Huhhh?'
So I excused myself, not possible for today. Need my sleep, and tomorrow is another day, ok?
Olga looks radiantly beautiful. People come into and out of your life... it is disconcerting when they come back in sometimes....
I hope that what is good for her inside is how she looks outside. That was awesome, that they would even think to look me up. But it opened up memories I do not want to re-visit, at the moment. And all I could think was, 'WOW'.
She was very soft and cuddly... yup.
Another day in health care....
Have been feeling under the weather for weeks now, so I decided to get off my arse and do something about it, because it wasn't going away with a lot of sleeping.
Besides which, Hedwig the Angry had scheduled me for my quarterly inspection, regarding my inner high pressure which was so bad she scared me into taking my eye drops, which are anathema to me, with the promise I would go blind if I do not. So I got there with much tredipidation, because she drops my eyes to dilate my pupils, and then there's this machine with an ultra-blue light and she drives it right up to my eye-balls, measures the inner pressure and looks around to see what is going on in there.
I don't feel it, but I have a horror of anything in or on my eyes.
She was satisfied, because I was a good little patient, and did my hated eye drops.
Just an aside, but I believe she is part of the LGBT community. So am proud to be her patient. She is no-nonsense, but obviously good.
An excellent doctor, in any case. 'Do I have to continue with the drops?' OF COURSE...'
(sigh...)
She is no-nonsense.
Next stop. My GP. I have been putting this off for weeks. I esplained what was wrong. or thought was wrong. And he asked me to take off my shirt. He's heard my lungs from the back before, but I didn't have to take my shirt off. So when he saw the pierced nipple in front, his expression was priceless. And no, he didn't say anything.
So it was 'Scepethope Time', yay! Not. Breathe in, breathe out... blah blah.
I got an immediate appointment for a lung x-ray tomorrow morning.
And have to bring the X-Ray and the findings to my GP right after. Upon which he wants me to go in for an EEG, which is heart monitoring, and I think it is EKG there, not sure...
So again, single payer insurance.
And again.... you go in, whip out your insurance card, there is no fee, you might have to wait a bit, but not more than forty minutes, so bring a good book or read the magazines in the waiting room, and then you get called in to the inner sanctum, so to speak.
I refuse to understand why people there are so afraid of this. Or why they think it is somehow evil. We all get treated the same way, we can change doctors if we don't like them, we paid into the system all our working lives, and still pay out of what we get in pension money, so where is the hurt to anyone?
The hysteria doesn't make any sense to me.
Well, so much for Salieri
New studies out on why Mozart died at 35 years of age. Complications from strep throat, or maybe even scarlet fever, which led to kidney infection.
Link here.
I liked the Salieri killing him theory better... (smile).
In France, they kiss on Main Street....
That was a Joni Mitchell number from the Seventies. Well, seemingly, two guys got arrested a few weeks ago in front of a Mormon Church in Salt Lake City for kissing. Nothing like in the video, btw.
So seemingly, yesterday, they staged a nation-wide 'kiss-in'. People kissing on the street, omg...
The clip was from San Francisco. AND... I love the song. The composer and singer is Sean Chapin, according to Joe.My.God I go there so you don't have to. Beautiful lyrics, nice voice. Enjoy. You can always look away if it isn't your thing. But I liked the fact that heteros seemingly also participated, and kissed on Main Street. I will bet that Harvey Milk was somewhere looking down on this pitiful planet, smiling.
This post is going to be fun. Social Sneakurity
Looking in the mail-box going out every day is a must, but never top priority on my list of things to do. I seldom get snail mail... like twice a year or so, lots of ads I throw away, and an occasional bill. Unless I ordered something at Amazon and am looking for a delivery notice, then it gets exciting... (ha)....
So imagine my astonishment when I opened it this morning and found a HUGE orange DIN-A4 envelope sent from The United States of America, official business on the upper left hand corner of it!
Sent by the embassy in Vienna.
Three questions shot through my brain at that point:
What the FUCK do they want with me after twenty-five years, why is this so heavy, and OMG, they discovered my blog???????
Well, I got on the bus, going to Peter's, ripped it open, and pulled the whole mess out. There was a cover letter. It seems, my pension people contacted them, to point out I am on an invalidity pension, and not sixty-five yet. And since I worked in the US for nine years plus, I might be eligible for benefits, which eligibility they will determine in the coming three to five months or so, so I should apply, and please fill out the forms.
Now, since I got retired 'early', I only get 70% of what I would receive if I were sixty-five, so that was sort-of welcome news....
And then I looked through the forms to be filled out. My GAWWD! There is such a wealth of questions for hilarity and satire in there that I bust out laughing. Now, Lawrence O'Donnell
trashed a Texan congressman yesterday on the tee-vee. (Click on the name for the vid).
Social Security and Medicare are 'socialist', you see.... and wanted him to admit it.
Now, 'here's the different', as Peter used to say....
We moan and groan about the forms we have to fill out here when applying for things. And the forms are only four pages long, usually, and half of the stuff requires 'only the facts, Mister...' and a lot is irrelevant and so you can leave them blank. No stupid questions. Awful, isn't it? Oh, how we complain... 'they're turning us into glass people who know our every instinct, urge, thought... POLICE STATE!' And I would usually just smile.
I would LURVV to show some of them what I just got in the mail! One of the questions that caused me the most hilarity was: 'Is there a warrant out for your arrest?' Followed by 'Have you been convicted of a crime?' Right, am gonna lie of course, and say no if that were the case, but they have a Catch-22... If they catch you lying, you get taken up on federal criminal charges, so you better tell the truth, hey...
Another: 'Tell us what you do from the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep.'
And on another questionare: 'Do you speak english?' 'Can you READ english?' 'Can you write your name IN ENGLISH?' (To the latter: um, excuse me? How the fuck do you think I am filling out this form, hey? Sign language from an interpreter??? And since when do people sign their names in hyrogliphics? Just askin'...)
Ok, could go on and on and ON about this form. Really. I ended up laughing my ass off.
But there is a darker side. They want to talk to your doctors, and see into their records on you. They want to see your diagnoses, in the original, 'and will send them back to you per registered mail.'
I really, really do not see why I should do that.
So, Mr. O'Donell.... that isn't socialism. That is pure fascism.
Will think twice about filling it out.
Gawwd....
Listen carefully, there is some great subtext here....
This was the last MGM cartoon to run in theaters. And yes, you can see it as anti-coportate, but can also see it as a message about gender identity, or race identity, or a number of other things.
It is from 1967. Created by the brilliant Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin. Gawd, 1967.... Was soooo young, and harboured a secret wish to be a cartoonist. But was told I wasn't good enough by my art teacher, who hated 'me and my kind' on sight, only I didn't GET it
(the reason for it, I mean.) My second-last assistant mgr. in our theater even offered to get me an in to the Boston school of Fine Arts, or something like that... after seeing me work on my free time to make displays for upcoming movies we were going to show. And my boss one day very proudly showed me a letter of praise for the 'wonderful' fake volcano I set up in our vast lobby. A volcano, for Island At The Top Of the World, a terrific bomb... but the kids loved it.
So I took one of the low long wooden boxes we had lying about, can't remember what they were for. Took chicken wire, and papier machér, and covered it with it. (Try to imagine Richard Dreyfuss in 'Encounters of the Third Kind', ok? Then painted it. And cut out all the letters in rubber foam to put the title of the movie on it, but it wasn't enough. It had to flicker and smoke, as it was a volcano, you see.... So I didn't know shit about electrical stuff and so on, and spoke to our oldest projectionist, and asked him how I could do it.
And he smiled. (He was the old guy who caddied for Katherine Hepburn on a hot summer's day in the 1920's, where she suddenly reached under her dress, and threw her underpants in his face with the remark 'It's too damned hawt.' Excuse the deviaton from the theme here.... I wouldn't want to know what he could have sold those for on E-Bay, if they had been existant, boggles the mind, hey....)
And he said, go over to Moreau's (a dept. hardware store across the street), get a lamp base cheap with two sockets in it, and an orange light bulb, and a yellow one. And a blinker to put in the socket I put a yellow bulb in, so it flickers. And, of course line the insides with crumpled tin foil, run the electrical cord into the nearest socked hiding it under the rug, and voilà, you have a volcano flickering.
It worked. But I still wasn't satisfied. So I went to a head shop on the corner, got a metal incense holder, and before every show, when people were gathering, I would light the incense, and the volcano smoked as well.
And that was my vision, as stupid and simple as it turned out to be. I doubted my talent, I doubted everything about myself, but I did have the urge to create.
I will never know who turned over pictures to Disney at the time, or why... but will never forget the look of pride on my boss' face when he received that unbelieveble letter of praise. He kept it as a trophy, I guess. But was always like a second father to me. Saw my inner conflict and would be 'tacit', telling me about 'third sexers', as he called them, and saying they were 'ok', nothing to worry about. And would clench. Boy, would I clench inwardly.
Such denial. And Bill wanted to be supportive, but didn't know how without freaking me totally out. He was a wonderful, caring man.
So when I saw this on Fire Dog Lake today, I GOT the context, and the criticism of corporations, grew up in one which controlled the entire city. But watching it... a bear who needs a shave and wears a fur coat? There is another context there too.
And the studio got totally scared of the Lefties.
Yeah, have gone ON. Probably a result of having seen Milk. Don't know.
And now you know how to build a display volcano.... (bangs head on keyboard)
Things tend to get squirrely sometimes...
Link here The other two links in the Guardian article are spuirrely as well...
Oh... we have another horriday today...
Maria's trip to heaven. Mariahimmelfahrt.
Now the word 'fahrt', means trip. ot travel, whichever you like.
But when you pronounce it, it can cause confusion, because the 'h' is silent.
And if you grew up english-speaking, it can be embarrassing.
It reminds me of something an old teacher told me on a train once, who could speak English very well. And after the war, she was on another train with an English soldier, and they got along famously. And then he had to get off the train, and she pipes up with 'I hope you have a good fart.' 'And he LOOKED at me. Of course I knew what I had said wrong, and was totally embarrased.' She said.
Language is treacherous, believe me.
So ok, Maria's fart to heaven. I hope she and her son ate enough beans beforehand. You need rocket sized ones to get the fuck up there....
This has been another episode in your daily silliness chapters.
And wasn't meant to offend or be mean...
Just saying.
Men seemingly wish to be pregnant...
It is not a joke. The NY Times said so today.
If you have a 'Wampe'. big belly, you're sexy somethow?
Whoever wrote this piece of malarky deserves to be force fed till his abdomen stretches out and he looks nine month's pregnant and feels that way.
This is what passes for journamalism nowadays?
Just give me a break, hey...
DVD review... Milk
This just came out this week....
Sean Penn deserved that Oscar, and how...
I found it very moving, and it brought back some memories, and cried buckets at the end.
Because I remember following that when it happened. I was already in Europe, but he made international news even before he was assassinated. He gave a mess of young people hope and the belief that you can live your life in a dignified way, even if 'the outside' put you down.
One scene, a young man in a wheelchair, calls him and says his parents are going to 'fix' him and send him to a mental institution. Well, I had this 'wired connection' to my experience and had to think of a cousin of mine. Who was only sixteen, he got caught experimenting with a friend by his parents, and they threw him out on the street.
Yes, just like that.
He was incredibly nice. And one day, in the early 70's, he turns up where I worked, and was all warm and friendly, but so shrill, I backed off with my eyes, just didn't wanna know him. And I hurt him... badly. Because I didn't know where I belonged.
If we had had a Harvey Milk at that time, that would never have happened.
Everyone thought they were alone.
And outside the parameters of 'normal'.
And I wish I knew what has happened to him since, if he is alive at all.
So... the film brouht back the past when someone had the balls to say 'Fuck YOU', and demand to be treated equally.
Reading what happened in the NY Herald Trib, and the result, and the aftermath, made me very very angry.
And made me come out, as painful as that can be.
But it gave me my freedom back.
So yes, this is a very subjective review. It brought things up where 'hope' is so often brought up.
But for me.... Harvey Milk was a very positive influence. Where you have an issue in your life, and say, 'Yes, I can DO this, and just fucking don't cross that line in the sand, and get out of my way.'
His nephew just received the highest honour of the US posthoumosly. The medal of freedom award. That's been a long time coming... But gratifying.
And I hope some young people (am thinking late teens here) will see the film, and take courage, and not be afraid of who they think they are.
So... this review is decidedly biased.
And I have never liked any of Gus Van Sant's films till this.
But this one was good. Near perfect. You can't get any better than that.
The DVD I got has some good documentaries from contemporaries who were there.
Very interesting.
I can highly reccomend it.
Am going to the doctor tomorrow... promise, cross my heart....
And I fucking hate it already, but am going, promise... cross my heart....
And I just KNOW he's gonna put me in the fucking hospital, and I don't wanna go.
But at the moment, I do not see any other way.
So I can suck it up, hey.
If I am gone for a few days, well that is why.
No one should feel like I feel at the moment.
And every time I go to the bathroom... there is blood.
I am so going to hate what they are gonna do to me.
I am supposed to go out with my former bosses tomorrow.
My phone keeps ringing off the hook. I do not pick up.
What am I supposed to say? 'Sorry I can't go, because I tend to throw up in public, and when I do number two, I see blood in my stool, and around it, and my one hemmaroid isn't active at the moment?' That would NOT be an ice-breaker, belive me....
So YES, will go to the doctor tomorrow. And he's going to slap me into a hospital, and I don't wanna go....
A very nice lady from Texas has been encouraging me to go, but not like Annti, just using logic....
So I guess I am gonna haveta go...
Have been using every excuse in the world not to go... but had to face the fact that I can't be of any help to anyone if I feel so sick myself, that I can't do what I wish.
At least I will not get into debt.
They keep calling, and so I finally picked up.
It was my old boss.
So I told her what was going on, and wanted to excuse myself.
Over thirty years, we could drive each other fucking crazy. But it was always with the utmost respect for one another, when we differed. And I love her very much.
I understood where she was coming from... I think she understood me. And she never lost one mean word about my life choices. God, that word looks stupid... Am tired, I guess....
But she was always there for me when my life seemed to be falling apart. And always truly liked me.
And I have always truly liked her.
She has always been my living history person, family sort of from the dark side....
Whatever, tomorrow... I take action.
Riding the busses, another special edition...
So, hokay, I got on the number 40 which takes me to Jacki. Lots of Turks and Islamists on it for the first three stops, and Africans too, increasingly, who seemingly like to propogate often like the poor Lippizan horses, only the latter get forced to do that....
There was a poor woman in front of me who obviously had Parkinsons, which made me think of Rush Limpballs, and Michael J. Fox, and that was not a good place to be in my head, you know? So I was happy to reach my transfer stop, just before Jacki. And relieved. I didn't want bad thoughts in my head....
So along comes the 34, and was trying to think of what to make for Peter for his hot lunch of the day... Where I get off, there is a supermarket, you see. And one stop down, this tiny elderly lady gets on with her cute dog. A well-behaved cute one, probably part Labrador, black, and slavishly attached to her. And she made him sit, and slipped a muzzle on him--or her...don't know the gender...
And this idjit in the seat in front of her with his two children begins berating her for not having put it on it before she got on the bus. She was obviously hurt by his tone, and behaviour, but calmly said, 'My dog doesn't bite. I need it so he doesn't eat trash off the floor of the bus.'
Well, the whole thing escalated till the man got off with his kids at 'The Museum of Perception' stop. Now that is what I call ironic....
The poor thing was so agitated, as well as the woman across the aisle, they went ON about the incident, and then it was nearly time for me to get off.
So I pressed the button for the next stop, and said to 'no one in particular', 'Sometimes I think it is people who need muzzles so as not to blather on about nothing that is important. Your dog seems very gentle.'
She looked at me gratefully. And said, 'You know, I am eighty years old, and I don't understand how older people can be so hateful and biting.'
And I said, 'Well, I just got retired, so am not there yet. Except I 'never have time', which made her laugh. And added, 'After all, it is the 'dog days' of August.' Which made her laugh out loud. And then it was my stop, so I said, 'Just don't take it to heart, you hear?'
And she smiled....
I think you know what I am inferring here....
Yes, am talking about the below-the-belt level of discourse going on in the US.
Ok.
So... Peter's neighborhood is almost white and very poor. But one thing has struck me. You walk down the street? People greet you. Say 'good morning', or 'good afternoon', or whatever. The first time I went into that supermarket? A lady came up and asked me what I was looking for and showed me what aisle it was in. Helpful, but they have a darker side. They get into fights with their significant others and threaten violence. Mostly it stays with just threats.
Returning home, I just caught the bus and got on at the back of it. I LIKE the back of the bus, it is raised up, and you see really good, you know? And I have always thought, 'man, if I were of a different color, I would LOVE riding at the back of the bus. Because if that mofo driving crashes into someone driving crazily, it will be the ones in the FRONT who get killed....'
Just a satiric thought here... and no, I didn't get that one from anybody, gawd inspired me... whoever she is....
Whatever, I want to get off at Jacki, and it turns out there is a problem with the back of the bus, and my multi-focal glasses. If you are lost in your thoughts, you don't concentrate on what you are doing, and miss the last step, because you didn't see it. They can tend to compress things if you aren't looking correctly.
So I mis-stepped and landed on my arse on the last step of the back of the bus.
(See, it has it's drawbacks, as does everything....)
Some guy wanted to help me up, which I can do myself, thenk you veddy much....
Are you HURT? he asked.
And I said 'No, only my pride.'
And then....
SHIIIT!
Soooo... every day another adventure... if you look and observe....
Well trained....
Joe in NY finds the oddest things.... this one is creepy on many levels... but analogous to people who jump through hoops and fight health care reform, and become 'birthers' and 'deathers'.... Question is, who is dumber????
Here is the longer version
of the guy in Portsmouth who turned up in Portsmouth N.H. openly wearing a gun when Obama held a town hall meeting.... The link is here... not so edited, but he is still crazy and paranoid.
OMFG!!!!!
Rick Sanatorium, (where he belongs, he is so crazy,) yes the 'man on dog' super asshole is planning to run for presidink. His name really means this. But I like Sanatorium better, because it means where he should belong.
The guy who brought home his miscarried child so that the kids could take leave of it.
He should have gone into a Sanatorium right then and there.... but no one intervened.
Dammit. I lost my link. It said he is in Iowa, testing the waters to see if he wants to candidate as president.
Why can't that mind-aborted simpleton just find a lobbying firm to work for and earn kajillions of dollars off simarly simple-minded unsuspecting folks and not want to run for president?
If, which I do not believe, he were to win... he would turn Murka into moron-land once and for all. (I think I was on the site 'Think Progress', but couldn't find it again.
Update next morning: But Keith Olberman commented on it last night, so I didn't imagine it.
The debate is becoming somewhat frightening...
And this clown in Portsmouth isn't playing with a full deck. Why didn't they tase him and get him out of there?
Well, lookee lookee here!
I got my yearly letter from my health care people.
And noooo, it wasn't a bill.....
It is a PR sort of thing. They tell you what you have incurred in costs over the past twelve months, and how much they paid for you. So let's see.... hmmm...
My GP collected €78.34. Ok, cheap, I see him once a month. My internist got €99.33, and that was only one visit. My optomitrist got a whopping €82.31... that is Hedwig, the angry inch, as I call her, because she gets really testy if you don't follow orders. I had to see her three times. Some guy who did my one blood mock-up got €7.34 for letting me know my results weren't all so good. My blood pressure pills and eye drops were over €200.00
So all in all, I cost the system €478.32 for the past twelve months.
Again, this is not a bill. Just information, letting you know what they have done for you.
And an avviso that they have a new programme where they check you out, and try to catch early signs of diabetes for people of my age, the so-called diabetes prevention exams. They check your eyes and feet, seemingly. Again, this is also 'free', you do not get a bill.
And they aren't 'death squads', they want you to be healthy, and it is preventive, because if you do have that and they catch it quick, it will ultimately cost them less in expenses, ok?
The one thing I mock about these yearly reports is they don't tell you how much you paid in. Am fairly certain that I did pay in more than the costs I incurred. But I have said this before, and will say it again with emphasis. If it was more, that went to cover other people whose costs were higher than what they put in, and I really do not mind that at all.
My take on it is... if I really become seriously ill and not have the usual things that ageing brings onto us, I know that I will get good care. And that amount for my little ills would have hurt me in the pocket muchly.
No one will shove me aside in that case, or let me linger and die.
Am disappointed that the single payer model never got to the table there, and horrified at what is going on, and the gullibility of some people who believe the absolutely hideous and perfideous lies being bandied about these past couple of weeks.
People there deserve more than that and not being scared out of their wits till they nearly shit themselves.
And the stink of the undercurrent of racism beneath all that can make you gag even over here, so far away.
Those are no longer dirty politics. They are sewer politics.
Sigh.... I have been trying for over eighteen months now to do something in my miniscule way. Because I have experienced both systems, and felt I wanted to contribute something positive. And again, I have to reiterate... no system is perfect. So it hasn't been glorifying it as if it were, here. But it is much better than what most people have there.
So I have to say... am already disappointed, no matter what comes out of this. And will refrain from scathing criticism until I see what does get passed in the end.... I'm an optimistic pessimist, after all. Hoping for the best, and sort of expecting the worst.
Waiting for the bus today....
I had a wait of eight minutes for my transfer. We have these bus stops, that shelter you if it rains, and so on, and whoever was there before left all their trash on the bench, even though there is a trash can two steps outside of it.
So I dumped the trash, but there were wet spots where the coffee spilled out.
Along comes a guy and nearly sat in the mess. So I pointed out that that wasn't a good place, and we got to talking.
The first subject was about what 'the man on the street' is talking about these days. Two kids, 14 and 16... got shot some days ago in a burg in upper Austria, trying to rob a supermarket. The fourteen year old was shot in the back. The sixteen year old got shot through both thighs. Seemingly, they were working for a Rumanian guy who put them up to it. And seemingly, he had accomplices.
Can you please tell me why the first thing that shot into my head was 'Oliver Twist' ?
Tja, we have come so FAR since Dicken's day... Really. Not.
So this GUY was going on.... but blamed it on the parents, and said that the people now in their Fifties were the worst in the worrrrrlllld. 'How can you let a fourteen year old child be out at three o'clock in the MORNING????'
He was outraged that the kid had been shot dead in the back, but more angry with the parents. Apropos, the man is 70, had a very physically hard job in his life and is decent, and interested in what goes on in the world....
But what he said kicked off a memory in my addled head. From the Sixties. And they used to have this thing on the tee-vee.... Bong! It is eleven p.m. Do you know where your children are?
So I told him about it, explaining why... He thought that was like Zeus throwing a lightning bolt and illuminating your brain, hey.... He thought they should do that here.
So we talked a bit more, till the bus came, and cordially wished one another a nice Sunday.
I guess parenting is a blessing and a curse as well. Peter and I are agahst at how kids are out on the streets very late at an age when we used to have to be in bed at eight p.m. And we didn't get to be out till midnight till we were eighteen.
That wasn't a bad thing.. although we hated it.
Whatever, the local media is feeding on this. Big time.
But the guy asked the right question, and no one is gonna answer it. Where were the parents in all this shit? Too busy trying to work to FEED them?
And as to Dickens.... well, there must be a Fagin who pulls the strings, and the guy who put those kids in there was just another Bill Sykes.... with or without the pit bull.
Just sayin'
You should read this....
About what happens when a prominent US blogger has a health crisis in France, and what happens in their socialised medical system, and what the costs are, and how it all works out.
link Here.
Are there any 'question'?
So why all the yelling over there, huh?
I remember things like this....
You'd meet someone on a Saturday night, fall 'in-love', only to run into him Sunday morning, out with the wife and kids, and of course he didn't recognise you... Same principle here, and Dan Savage is right.
link HERE.
This man deserves to be arrested... or fired immediately
And contained in a prison for the criminally insane.
And I thought Bill O was just fucking pompous and insane.
But Glenn Beck just runs the asylum. Lock him up, call the advertisers and get him into the fucking gutter where he belongs.
Drop the popcorn, get out your wretch bag, and try to stomach this.
The man is unstable. He needs real help. And he is dangerous for all the nuts just ready to do violence.
This is all just not funny any more, and dangerous white men who feel they have gotten cornered somehow, because they cannot deal with the fact that the majority of the world have sorta kinda different colors of skin they have, and don't play by corporate rules....
MAKE THEM DANGEROUS.
Have fun with that one.
Except.... I have to ask... what gain do corporations get if they can start of civil wars they instigated themselves?
Cui bono?
So let's get this right... Beck isn't a clown. He is fucking dangerous and inciting unstable people to violence. And as such, I believe he should be fired at the least, and imprisoned at best. Inciting people to riot.
Sure, Beck is just a tool. And with all his eye-rolling, and histrionics? Gay, hate to even say that because I do not want him in my ranks. And to counter his self-hating self, and his oh so righteous stuff about family and so on. He's gay, and frustrated, and afraid, and attacks.
If I had acted like he does now in high school, I would have gotten beaten up... every day.
As it is, I'd like to humiliate him so that he NEVER gets out of the corner I would put him in.
But even better, I would like to see him indicted for inciting riots and violence that I think are going to come if he and his ilk, 'O'Reilly, Limp-balls' are doing the same.
We KNOW what corproations pay them.
We should hurt them in the pocket.
Oh dear... of course it is only soap opera....
but they can DO this on tee-vee nowadays even if it is only 'One Life To Live'?
I am shocked, I tell you shocked.... on a couple of levels. Back in my youth that wouldn't have been even thought about. Here, never a theme. Was with a person way way back, and he said, 'I'm a cop.' I thought it was an entrapment. So I asked if I were arrested. And he said, 'No, am just confused.' Life imitates art, so to speak... or vice versa...
NSFW
La Tal from Spain with 'Carillo'
Ok, kept my promise and the weather held, thank whomever. Peter was so happy to be out of the house, as you can see, and since we got to the main square early, I let him have his piece of apple Strudel at café Sacher before the show started.
As above, he was happy to be out---except for the woman next to him with a young baby, when she popped out her breast to feed him. 'Take a picture of THAT, ' he said. I asked, 'Why, it's the most natural thing on earth...' 'Because they would arrest her in America,' he replied. Well, I guess in some places they might, but saw no reason to take umbrage... He can be so weird, hey.... or Europe ruined me...
And all the kids got the front seats, as it should be...
So it starts with a gnome-like figure who comes out with a key, puts the hands into the clock and then winds it up.
And then a Glockenspiel, carillon, begins to play....
Now a good Glockenspiel has lots of figures who come out of doors and go round and round for a while. Graz has a boring one, but those of you have been with me in Munich will know what I mean. It was sort of like that... at first...
There were only three artists, but you could have sworn there was a whole troupe, they changed so fast.
Whereupon came little 'stories'. I had seen the first one last night. A guy with his gal, he goes to get a newspaper, a 'filou' tries to horn in on him and steal his girl, and they go confrontational.
Wherupon it comes to a duel. Of course. They miss, both try to kiss the damsel, miss, kiss each other instead, and go off together, with the damsel beating them with her umbrella.
And by the way, all movements are as if they were mechanical figures....
Every fifteen minutes they set the hands of the clock ahead.
Then there was slapstick of the finest sort, with sledge hammers that kept bigger and bigger.
Followed by one of the funniest Carmen parodies I have seen in years.
And then a boxing match between a big guy. The little guy wins and the macho goes Rambo on the judge.
By that time, the crowd was huge.... they loved it. And then the gnome took off the hands on the clock and went off stage right. It was a nice show, and typical of 'commedia dell'arte' of the 1500's onward from whence comes slapstick and Punch and Judy, for instance. I know, lots of pictures this time, but was making up for the rained out days. And yes, Dad, I took extra batteries this time, but didn't need them. Last night my extras were being re-charged. Hope you get a sense of the good side of what this festival can bring. Free of charge, but... oh yeah... that must be Socialist or something, so must mind my mouf.
