On The Money; What’s Weird About Health Care in America

On The Money

Economics for the 99%

What’s Weird About Health Care in America

 

I don’t read the New York Times because New Yorkers have all lost their minds. If “the Gray Lady” ever published an above the fold headline proclaiming “We’re Live in a Cockroach Infested, Piss Drenched, Rat Maze and We Fuck the World Over by Remote Control, for What? Spiderman?!?” I might believe New Yorkers had finally come to their senses, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

I don’t watch Fox News, or Comedy Central. I’ve seen Bill O’Reilly and Steve Colbert. One’s a little scarier and ones a little funnier, but it’s all the same idiocy, and that gets depressing, so I don’t bother with them. I don’t look at The Economist, The Wall St. Journal or Barron’s, because I figure that as long as they’ve got something to write about, we’re all doomed.

However, I do think it important to stay informed about the world around me, so I always make a point of reading Chuck Sheppard’s News of the Weird, and so should you. If you had read News of the Weird this month, you would have read the following story, which tells you everything you need to know about health-care costs in America. The following paragraph appeared in News of the Weird this month, under the heading:

Leading Economic Indicators

Scorpion anti-venom, made in Mexico, sells in Mexico, for about $100 a dose, but for a while over the past year, the going rate in the emergency room of the Chandler (Arizona) Regional Medical Center was $39,652 a dose, charged to Marci Edmonds, who was stung while opening a box of air-conditioner filters. She received two doses by IV and was released after three hours, to later find a co-pay bill of $25,537 awaiting her (with her Humana plan picking up $57,509), according to the Arizona Republic newspaper. The Republic found that Arizona hospitals routinely retail scorpion anti-venom for between $7,900 and $12,467 per dose – except for Chandler. Following the newspapers report, Chandler decided to re-price the anti-venom at $8,000 a dose, thus eating a $31,652 “loss.”

This was no typo or computer error. That was the real price Chandler had set for a dose of scorpion anti-venom in their ER. You’ll notice that Humana didn’t bat an eyelash about paying almost $60,000 for a three-hour hospital stay. They were quite happy to simply pass those costs on to you, in the form of higher premiums. It was only after The Arizona Republic reported the story, that the Chandler Regional Medical Center reduced its price for a dose of scorpion anti-venom to the lower end of the range of astronomically high prices charged by other Arizona hospitals.

Just for reference, a pound of marijuana also sells for about $100 in Mexico, but only retails for about $1,000 in Arizona. That’s because, compared to hospitals and insurance companies, Mexican drug cartels are run by good honest businessmen.

For the same price as her three hour IV drip in the ER, Marci could have spent the whole night in a luxury suite in a Las Vegas resort hotel, and enjoyed the services of sixteen Elliot Spitzer class, $5,000 a trick prostitutes, with enough money left over to cover the mini-bar bill and cab fare home.

Instead, she had the misfortune of being stung by a scorpion in a rural part of Arizona, where they have a lot of scorpions, but only one hospital, and she lives in a country where the whole health care system is set up to fuck you the hardest when you are the most vulnerable.

Scorpions only sting in self-defense, but hospital administrators and insurance executives intend to eat you for dinner. There’s a view of Health Care in America that’s On The Money

I Share My Collection of Homerotic Photography

I Share My Collection of Homerotic Photography

I’m not gay, but I do enjoy collecting homerotic photography. Robert Maplethorpe’s work in the 80′s really opened my eyes to the artistic potential of sexually explicit photography, but I did not start collecting homerotic photography myself, until last year. While auditioning photos for this blog I occasionally come across really inspiring homerotic images which I simply must have.

While you won’t find any Maplethorpes in my collection, or any of my own work, for that matter, the collection reflects my taste and artistic sensibility, so I’m proud of it, nonetheless. I haven’t shared my collection of homerotic photography here at this blog because this is a family blog.  I realize that that many people find sexually explicit, homerotic imagery offensive, but I like to share.

I’ve created a new blog specifically for my prized collection of homerotic photographs, called The Journal of Homerotic Photography at www.journalofhomeroticphotography.wordpress.com I encourage every adult, and no one under 18, to visit my collection and see for yourself.

Warning!!!! site contains sexually explicit photographs, duh!

Again With The Circuit-Bending

Again With The Circuit-Bending

Next Monday, May 21the Southern Humboldt Amateur Radio Club will host a circuit-bending workshop with the band CMKT4. I’m really looking forward to this event. I hope I meet all of the local musical odd-balls out there who find the proliferation of pointless electronica (used here to denote a genre of gadget, not music) fascinating, disturbing, or compelling enough integrate these devices into their art.

 

After this event, I will get back to producing the kind of vapid pointless pap that you’ve come to expect from me here. Maybe I’ll even get back to Zombie Rodoni’s write-in campaign for the Second District Supes race. I don’t know, I’ll find something to bitch about. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you pitiful drones desperately seeking sanctuary from your dreary lives in my words. I’m here for you.

 

I know you are out there. I know you count on me. This blog has averaged over one-thousand hits a day for the last two-and-a-half months. Almost a hundred people an hour, and over thirty thousand people a month come here, for what, I don’t know, but I appreciate every one of you, even if you just look at the pictures. I won’t let you down.

 

But right now, I just want to keep writing long enough to use up this disposable pen. I need the spring from it for this electro-acoustic cigar-box drum-machine I’m building. I know these cheap disposable promotional pens really don’t have much ink in them, so if I just keep writing, I know I can use it up. Then I can take the pen apart to get the little spring I need, with a clear conscience.

 

I feel inspired, for the first time in years, to make music. This time with an odd collection of hand-made, circuit-bent, highly idiosyncratic instruments. I don’t have any idea how to get people to listen to my music, and I know that even if I could get people to listen to my music, most people won’t like it. I won’t let that stop me from making it though.

 

Like all the world needs is more fucking music,… played on jerry-rigged children’s toys, no less. Some of you might wonder what I find so appealing about these annoying, noisy, electronic toys. Not only do they sound profoundly unmusical, they’re ugly, they’re plastic, and they’re full of unrecoverable toxins and heavy metals. They offend everything natural and wholesome in this world. Even children don’t really like them much, and parents hate them, which is why you find so many of them in our thrift stores.

 

By all accounts, these things should never exist. No one should ever buy for a child, a toy that makes electronic noise whenever the child pushes a button. Kids should have to work harder than that to make noise. Banging pots and pans, screaming at the top of their lungs or jumping up and down all take some energy, and will eventually tire the child out. Noisy electronic toys make it too easy for kids to be loud and annoying, the way cell-phones make it too easy for adults to be loud and annoying.

 

Though I consider myself a musician, I don’t care much for music, at least not the music of our culture. I don’t like classical music much, because I can smell the tuxedos. I don’t like country and western or bluegrass, because I can taste the alcohol, incest and bigotry. I don’t like rock, because its too loud and stupid, and I don’t like techno, because it has no soul. I don’t care for gospel, because it reminds me too much of church, and I don’t like reggae because it reminds me of the blood-sucking dope-yuppies who ruined this place. No, I prefer something else. Something I find in little black blobs on circuit boards embedded in brightly colored plastic toys from China, or in the spring in this pen.

 

To me, these little machines sound more brutal than death-metal, more comical than Spike Jones’ Jazz and more transcendent than trip-hop. They are more sophisticated than the Space Shuttle, and yet they produce the most crass and banal sounds ever heard on planet Earth. In many ways, these circuit-bent toys reflect what we have become as a society: a cheap imitation of an infantile fantasy, hopelessly short-circuited, and malfunctioning spectacularly. At least that’s how they sound to me.

Or maybe I just love the sound of electricity and the smell of solder. Either way, I killed off that pen about two paragraphs ago. Now I can get to work on my drum machine. Adios!

P.S. I just recorded an interview with Terri Clemmentson of KMUD news in which I demonstrated a circuit-bent teddy-bear’s innards, and a baby rattle miked with a CMKT4 contact microphone. Here’s a short etude for these two instruments.

Occupy Wall St., The Opportunity of a Lifetime

Occupy Wall St., the Opportunity of a Lifetime

 

I really want to acknowledge the amazing phenomena that started on Wall St.,but is now spreading all over the country. I support the 99%, 100%. I think the Occupy Wall St., and Occupy Everywhere campaign are great ideas, both conceptually and tactically. Possession is 95% of the law. Wherever you stand is liberated territory. So, I think its great to take back this land by occupying it.

 

I think this is also a great tactic for people confronting foreclosure crisis. There’s a good chance that your bank cannot prove they own the home you have stopped paying for, in which case, it is now rightfully yours, free and clear. Don’t walk away from it now, just because you got some threatening letters. You might be sitting pretty, right where you are, in a couple years, if you stand your ground now.

 

If you are under water in your mortgage, find out if your bank can actually produce the deed, if not, stop paying and call it yourn. If you don’t have a place to live, take your tent and tarp to the Occupation taking place near you. Liberate some territory and occupy it. You have as much right to inhabit the space beneath your feet as anyone, so stand your ground.

 

I know nobody gives a fuck what I think about tactics. I just think these protesters deserve some attention and appreciation right now, and I encourage everyone to support them any way they can.

 

Now, I’ve seen protest movements come and go, but there’s something different about this one that makes me think that they may succeed where others have failed. For one, I like the fact that no one single issue dominates the discussion.

 

What are they protesting? What have you got? Wars, government corruption, dirty elections, racial injustice, environmental collapse, gender inequality, unemployment, housing, health care, wages, the wealth gap and corporate capitalism for starts. They recognize that all of it is important, and all of it is entwined in one rotten system, and they have finally focused on getting to the root of it all. That looks like a major step forward to me.

 

Another major change in the Occupy Wall St. movement, is the protesters themselves. If you went to any of the big anti-war marches just before the start of the Iraq war, or just about any protest rally, anywhere in the country, you saw the same fading has-been baby boomers who have protested everything since the Vietnam war.

 

When you get them all together, they are the most insufferable bunch of louts that ever walked the face of the earth. Between their nostalgia for “the ’60s”, self-congratulatory attitude, and complete obliviousness to class issues like soaring housing prices and sinking wages, these gray, baby-boomer hippie-fascists do more to crush young people’s spirits than they do to smash the state.

 

Fortunately most of the boomers have gotten too old and creeky to sleep comfortably in a tent for weeks at a time, and they have not yet added RV hookups to the occupation at Foley Square. At least so far, you don’t see too many of them skulking around in their tweed jackets handing out copies of Plowshares Magazine.

 

“Thank God” I say. These people haven’t had an original idea in thirty years, they remain as effete and ineffectual as ever, and they get uglier every day. If those old boomer protest-vermin have any presence in the Occupy Wall St. movement, people have had the good sense not to photograph them.

 

Instead, who do we see at Occupy Wall St.? Lots and lots of hot-looking young women! You can imagine how much more attractive a movement crawling with hot chicks is, compared to one full of wrinkled, liver-spotted baby boomers. This movement looks more like a Tori Amos concert at Spring Break than any protest march we’ve seen in recent decades.

 

Take my advice. If you are a single young guy, Occupy Wall St. may well be THE BEST TIME OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Standing up to authority is a huge turn-on for these women. Right now, a lot of guys are discovering that taking a stand can get you laid. They are learning, right now, why all of those baby boomers are so nostalgic for “the’60s”.

 

These women don’t care whether you have a job, or a degree. They don’t care whether you have a car or an apartment. They are hot for revolution, and you can be a revolutionary. So, get yourself a tent, a tarp and a box of condoms and head for Zuccotti Park. to join the “girls gone wild” Occupation.

On The Money, Double-Dip or Banana Split

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working Class

“Double Dip” or “Banana Split”

I read an article by Paul Krugman recently. In it he expressed the opinion that a “double dip” recession is almost inevitable now. I think, however, that we should go for the “banana split” instead.

 

Paul Krugman’s predictions did not surprise me. What surprised me, was that the guy who played Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple, and Quincy, on Quincy, is now a Nobel Prize winning economist. The guy has won Emmys, played an Oscar, and now he’s won a Nobel Prize. What a guy!

 

So, according to Quincy, the US economy will almost certainly slide back into recession later this year or early in 2012. I can understand why bloodsucking capitalists might fret about this, but it sounds like good news to me.

 

For one thing, people turn into assholes when they think the are rich. The whole housing bubble turned a lot of people into assholes. The downturn in’08 really put a stop to that epidemic, but another downturn could really help build character.

Unfortunately, we have bigger problems than stupid assholes who think they are rich. So many of the real environmental problems in the world are linked to the economy. As the economy slows, we burn less oil, generate less emissions, produce fewer toxins, cut fewer trees, mine fewer minerals, and destroy less habitat. The best part of all, is that the slower the economy goes, the easier it is to stop it altogether.

 

The “smart banana” knows that without the global economy, even war becomes a manageable problem. Of course we’ll still hate each other. We just won’t be able to pay people to fight, nor will we be able to afford bullets, bombs, airplanes or missiles. Without the big budgets made possible by the global economy, war becomes a lot less attractive and draws fewer participants. This makes war a much more intimate personal experience geared towards truly motivated enthusiasts. I think everyone would agree that this would be a major improvement.

 

So this economy turns people into assholes and everything else into poisonous garbage, why on earth did we invest so much in this economy to begin with? I think most people would say that the single most beneficial achievement of the modern economy is an elevated standard of living. Running water, flush toilets, houses with thermostatically controlled heating and two cars in the driveway, because the garage is full of stuff, that sort of thing.

 

40 years ago, a guy with a high school diploma, could afford to provide that standard of living for his whole family. His wife had time to wash his clothes, cook his meals, clean the house and take care of the kids, because she didn’t need to work to help pay the bills. The whole family had full medical coverage, including dental, and no one knew what a co-pay was. He had a pension, and could afford to send a kid to college, or bail them out of jail, or a little of both.  Of course we all know that was a totally unsustainable lifestyle.

 

The jobs sucked. They were dirty, loud, repetitive and dangerous to your health. Long work hours often involved working overtime or graveyard shift. The houses mostly sucked too. They consumed too much energy, and required too much maintenance. People worked harder for their homes than their homes did for them, but they at least had homes.

 

Today, most workers with a high-school diploma, can’t afford an apartment, let alone a home. So you live in a room, that you don’t own, or a van that you do. If you have a girlfriend, and you both work, you can maybe afford an efficiency apartment. You can’t afford to get married, even if you want to. You have no pension plan, no savings, and no job security. If you have health insurance, a big if, you probably have a large enough copay that you can’t afford to go to the doctor anyway, and the jobs still suck. If you have kids, you probably get food stamps, but please don’t have kids.

 

Because, if we don’t stop this economy in its tracks, right now, while its down, its going to be ten times worse for the next generation. When your parents or grandparents decided to invest in the economy, they got something for it. Capitalists figure that you’ll continue to go through the motions, just like your folks did, even though you aren’t getting anything for it, because they think of you as a Pavlovian dog with a lifetime of conditioning that they paid for, and a weak brain.

 

Clearly this economy is a bad deal, and its only getting worse. When they talk about austerity plans, entitlement reform and belt tightening, the smart banana says”fuck the belt” and gets rid of the pants. Corporate capitalism is a loud pair of plaid bell-bottoms, that never fit well and couldn’t look more stupid. They have to go.

 

Every day we go to work we drive another nail in our own coffin. Every dollar we spend gives them one more bullet to use against us. So, don’t fret about the double dip, just make like the smart bananas, and split. A better world is just around the corner, you just have to walk away from this one to find it.

Poem, The Second Dip

Poem, The Second Dip

For the “Occupy Wall Street” Movement

No more income, no more taxes

No more bills, phone calls or faxes

No more mortgage, no more rent

No more media stifling dissent

No more money, no more cash

No more floods of toxic ash

No more nukes, no more coal

Seems to me a worthy goal

So, ditch this system right away

Drop it now and step away

Don’t be afraid to be the first

The alternative is so much worse

Its your world now, after all

You held it up, you can make it fall

As we head into that second dip

The time has come to abandon ship

Join you neighbors in the park

Stay overnight or leave at dark

Because these folks are on your side

Now its your turn to decide

I’m an Eichmann, You’re an Eichmann, Wouldn’t You Like to Be An Eichmann Too

I’m an Eichmann, You’re an Eichmann,

Wouldn’t You Like To Be an Eichmann Too

 

With all of the hoopla in the press surrounding the 10^th anniversary of 9/11/01, I’m reminded of the controversy surrounding the comments of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. He called the people who died in those attacks “little Eichmanns” referring to the Nazi architect of Hitler’s plan to exterminate all Jews, Adolf Eichmann. This pissed off a bunch of other “Little Eichmanns” who did their best to ruin Dr. Churchill’s career, just like Eichmann himself would have. Sure, we have freedom of speech in this country, but just try to use it .

 

Face it, as U.S. citizens, we must all look like “little Eichmanns” to native Americans. How else would we look? We perpetrated the holocaust. We killed 100 million Indians with utmost cruelty and brutality, and then brushed it under the rug. We haven’t changed one bit from those massacring days. We just do it to Arabs mostly, now. We’re not like the “good Germans” who could pretend they didn’t know what was happening. We all know what happened to the Indians. We all know we live on stolen land, and we all know that we have no intention of ever giving any of it back. What does that make us?

 

If being called a “little Eichmann” offends you, then try not to be such a “little Eichmann”. Start by walking away from your job in the American Fascist Empire. That won’t necessarily stop you from thinking like an Eichmann, but it might stop you from acting like one. If you think poverty is too high of a price to pay, then get used to being a “little Eichmann”, and don’t act so hurt when people refer to you as such. Really, who wouldn’t rather live comfortably as a Nazi, than die in a concentration camp?

 

If you are not too offended to live on stolen Indian land, too offended to enjoy a totally unsustainable middle-class lifestyle, or too offended to pay taxes to the perpetrators of Genocide, but calling you a “little Eichmann” offends you, how do you feel about “hypocrite” or “moron”? Do those monikers suit you better? Ultimately, how you feel about the facts doesn’t change them one bit.

 

Speaking of facts, I don’t believe, for a second, that both WTC towers, and building seven, pancaked in their own footprints because they were hit by airliners. Something else happened there, something like a coup.

 

Sadly, people already in denial about the country they live in, will believe anything, so long as it reinforces their denial. So we remain, one fascist nation, undeserving, in denial, with bigotry, and injustice for all. Happy “Little Eichmann” Day.

Introducing, The Professor

Introducing, The Professor

Dr. Robert K. Lewis has very generously conceded to lend his gravitas, or at least his gravitor, to this endeavor. Dr. Lewis very much encouraged me to start this blog, and without his prodding, it would not exist. He set up my WordPress account, and provided a lot of technical help and advice to get this blog up and running, and he continues to guide its progress. While I don’t entirely understand his motives, I appreciate his help… I think.

 

Don’t get the idea that Dr. Lewis is some wussy-ass English professor! He got his BA in Chemical Engineering at Bucknell University, graduated from Law School at Pace University, and got his PhD. In Education at Boricua College.  Dr. Lewis teaches Math for Green Building Professionals at Boricua College (I never heard of it either) in New York City. Imagine him wearing a white lab coat and a mortarboard, with a beaker of bubbling chemicals in his hand..

 

Is Dr Lewis a good teacher, or a bad teacher? I have no idea. I have never taken any of his classes. We became close friends back in the early ’90s in Boston, MA, where we collaborated on a string of convenience store robberies.

 

I’m very glad to have him on board with this project and welcome his input, so long as he doesn’t step on any of my jokes.

How to Survive the Heat Dome

How to Survive the “Heat Dome”

 

104 degrees Fahrenheit in NY City yesterday sounds hellish. Not that I wouldn’t find New York City hellish at any time of year, but at 104F, surrounded by hot concrete, the powerful stench of concentrated humanity and ozone rich smog, and with 200,000,000 gallons of raw sewage pouring into the Hudson River, fouling all of the local beaches, the Big Apple must rival Mumbai or Calcutta for epic urban misery right now.

I’ve dealt with a few heat waves in my day, I once worked in an auto service garage in Houston, TX, spent a summer on the Black Rock City Dept. of Public Works preparing for Burning Man, and spent a couple weeks evading authorities in Death Valley. I know how to cope with heat. So, I offer these tips.

1. Go to the produce aisle at your grocery store, pick out a fresh organic romaine lettuce, and pat yourself down with it, head to toe. If anyone asks you what you are doing, tell them that’s how your mom taught you to pick out lettuce. If anyone asks what’s wrong with it as you put it back on the shelf, tell them its all sweaty and smells like BO.
2. Identify corpses at the morgue. Show up at your local morgue, tell them your mother was just too broken up to give much information, but she asked you to go identify the body. Hopefully you won’t really see anyone you recognize, but they always keep it nice and cool in there, so take your time about it.
3. Put 5lb of dry ice in a canvas shopping bag and hang it around your neck. Now put on a parka and some mittens over it and go for a walk around town just to freak people out.
4. Read the account of Scott’s fatal antarctic expedition (The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard). As you read the grisly account of this ill-fated mission, it will transport you to the most inhospitably cold place on earth. As members of the party freeze to death one by one, until, ultimately, they all succumb to the frigid temperatures, the relentless bitter wind and the vast featureless landscape, you’ll believe you are freezing to death yourself, as you die of heatstroke.

5. Go Bowling, They always keep bowling alleys air-conditioned. They have plenty of seating and they serve beer. What more do you want from life?

6. Have yourself cryogenically preserved until October. Since most people have realized that things are getting worse rather than better, the whole cryogenic suspended-animation industry has fallen on hard times. Who wants to go into deep freeze just to wake up in some cannibalistic, dystopian war zone of the future? So, lately they offer some short-term options, say 60 to 90 days. Let them put you on a shelf in a freezer, next to Timothy Leary’s head until Fall.

Hot Sex. That got your attention didn’t it, but what I mean is “hot weather sex”. During heat waves, no one wants to wear any more clothing that they absolutely have to. So, all of these naked people are bound to get you horny. Unfortunately, its too hot and sticky to have another hot sweaty body right next to yours. So try these suggestions.

1. Oral sex with an ice cube in your mouth. Those round, gumdrop shaped ice cubes are best for this. Be careful not to choke. Make sure you have enough ice for both of you. Start by kissing the back of your partners neck. If you’re one of the millions of people without a sexual partner, try..
2. A popsicle as a dildo. I’m sure this is quite messy, however you women have a safe, cheap solution to your high-temperature horniness. Just flag down the Good Humor man. Men on the other hand have no choice but to…
3. Fuck a Salad Bar. Just climb in under the sneeze guard, and stick it in something cold, wet and squishy. Be prepared to get arrested.

Try out all of these heat-beating tips, and before you know it, it’ll start snowing again.