Category: Musings

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Ok, I’ve got nothing!

Nothing to say.

Still looking for insurance that I can afford.

THuhhe search isn’t going well.

On the one hand I’d like to be covered, on the other hand I have a fundamental problem paying another mortgage payment to have medical coverage.

The primary problem I have is this, with a mortgage I have something that’s tangible. With health insurance I’m pissing money away to provide for coverage that I may or may not use.

At the rate I’m paying right now for COBRA, if I paid that same rate for 10 years it would come to $72,000 not including interest.

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When the  men in my family break at end of life we don’t typically last very long.

I’m actually fortunate in that as long as we stay active we live a long fairly trouble free life. Our sinuses are for shit but nothing is perfect.

When our time comes we tend to go out like Don Corleone in The Godfather. We’re playing with the grandkids or great grandkids in the garden then we drop dead.

If I’m going to pay the equivalent of another mortgage, I might as well take advantage of the lower mortgage rates and buy another piece of property. At least I could rent it out and have an income, with a potentially higher rate of return.

I was thinking about it and realized that were I to go to a bank to apply for a mortgage for another piece of property they’d tell me I can’t afford to make the payment. Yet our government says that not only must I afford the payment but that they will enforce it under the law.

It’s a lose, lose proposition. If I were still in my 20s I’d be applying for citizenship in other countries. Not because I hate America, I love this country, but because I wouldn’t be able to afford the cost of American citizenship as I got older.

Today if I could communicate with my younger self… I’d say go find a decent country with good people and a system that works. Move there, become a citizen and plan for a decent retirement.

I look at my parents and their retirement isn’t at all what they’d planned for because they trusted in a system that didn’t really protect them. Remember Enron? There were a lot of 401K investments that got wiped out due to them. Then just a few years later you have the housing implosion and the devaluation of their retirement savings has really cut into what they can do. I know they’re on Medicare and Social Security I know they’re paying for health care supplementary insurance I just don’t know how long they’re going to be able to afford it.

I’ve spoken to younger insurance agents who don’t have health insurance because they don’t have an extra 600 – 800 dollars a month in their budgets.

NewImageYet in 2014 we’re all supposed to be carrying insurance and we’ll be penalized for not having a policy in force.

I’m still OK,  yeah I’m using my savings to pay the bills but I can go for a while longer with careful spending. I keep wondering how the hell can people less fortunate than myself come close to affording health insurance?

It really messes with your head. You want to do the right thing, but you can’t afford to do the right thing.

Obviously if you didn’t bother to pay for your housing, and didn’t eat you could afford to pay for health insurance. Then you’d only have to worry about paying for health insurance for a few weeks.

This is seriously wrong. And yet the government is in a position to make us all face this choice.

I’ve said it before. Contrary to what President Obama would have us believe. The problem isn’t that American Citizens are irresponsible about medical coverage. The problem is that health insurance companies and to some extent the medical providers are raping the American People.

If our government was truly interested in taking action on health care they’d address the source of the problem not penalize the victims.

Humm, I guess I did have something to say after all.

Posted on

Sick & tired of the News…

I’ve been enjoying the sound of the recent rain on the roof and haven’t paid attention to the news, or turned on much of anything that makes noise.

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I’m suspecting that I may have had a light touch of the flu but I’m not sure. This morning I’m feeling better.

I did however, make the mistake of switching on the news. 

Nothing is different!

I swear it’s like the world paused the bullshit just so that I could be offended by it when I decided to pay attention again.

I wish that was the case… I know in reality that the bullshit keeps coming at a more or less constant pace. The news is like a soap opera… You can miss years and still know exactly what’s going on, because human nature is a constant as hydrogen fusion in stars.

Have you ever noticed that riots pretty much look the same? Really, check it out, tell Google you want to see only images then type riots.

Regardless of time or place, they all look the same, even the drawings of riots look the same.

The news is always the same… In broad strokes I think the news template is something like this;

Somewhere people are rioting and burning buildings because they’re unhappy about something.

Somewhere else someones military is shooting rebels, insurgents, dissidents, students, or another army.

A disaster or two have happened someplace else, hundreds or thousands of people are displaced, famine and disease looms in the not too distant future.

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Politicians from group A are condemning politicians from group B for failing to act or disagreeing with their position.

Somewhere somebody’s children were in danger, are in danger, have been saved from danger.

There’s been another car chase that ended, with a crash, or with an arrest, or with a shooting, or with a tasering. Or jackpot… all of the above…

And now the weather…

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Being a fan of TrueBlood, the scene where the vampire Russell Edgington rips a newscasters spine out, then tells the public that he’s the real face of vampires and describes in gruesome detail what vampires are going to do to humans is one of my favorite scenes for a number of reasons.

When he turns to another camera and in a lovely Southern accent and with a happy smile, says “Now time for the weather… Tiffany…”

I howl every time I see it. The whole scene is priceless and some damn good writing.

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It’s also a very sad comment on our news cycle.

That scene lasts a minute or so, but it’s exactly what watching the news is like.

Think about it, the news is 30 to 60 minutes of real blood, violence, hatred, and despair, followed by the weather presented by some airhead blond with perfect tits and a million dollar smile telling you it’s going to be sunny and warm tomorrow. And somehow knowing it’s going to be sunny and warm makes the preceding horror just fine.

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We all know that the weather is always at the end of a news segment. Did you ever wonder why? 

I’ve come to the conclusion that weather is all we really care about.  

It’s the most immediate thing that we have to deal with.

If the weather was first in any newscast I’d tune in for that, and turn the TV off once I knew if I was going to need my umbrella.

I can’t do shit about riots in another country. Nor can I control the earthquake, volcano, hurricane, or monsoonal flooding in another country. I’m sorry folks there are having problems but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

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As far as car chases… I’m reminded of the old Keystone cops shorts.

Do I need to see 6 hours of live aerial coverage where 4 police cars are following one piece of shit 30 year old Toyota that can’t get above 50MPH? Or god forbid a white Bronco?

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I swear on more than one occasion I’ve thought about Mad Maxing my truck and just T-Boning the hell out of the dumbass running from the cops.

I imagine that afterward, I’d drive home and get back to watching the football game that was interrupted for the car chase.

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Or watch Tiffany’s perfect tits jiggle across my local weather map.

Maybe I need to go back to bed… I think I’m a little grumpier than I should be.

On the other hand… 

A few episodes of TrueBlood might just make me a happy camper.

Posted on

Enough Already — Updated —

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I hope it’s not just me.

I’m beginning to think we’re over stimulated. 

Watch young people, go to a Starbucks. There’s a constant din of chirps, beeps, buzzes, and squeaks as the people in the room drink their coffee say one or two sentences to their companion then turn all their attention to responding to the never ending text messages.

I’ve lately found myself annoyed at people in my house interrupting a conversation dealing with where we were going to dinner to answer texts.

After a few minutes of being ignored… I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, went to the table and began eating. I was 3/4 of the way through the sandwich before my visitor realized I was eating.

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Then they got upset with me because I’d ruined our dinner plans. I pointed out that they’d been texting for 45 minutes solid and hadn’t said a word to me during that time. I was hungry and now had no need to go to dinner. They left in a huff, I still feel justified in my actions. 

I mean I was physically in their presence but I took a back seat to someone else who was god knows where.

There are just way too many distractions!

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I even do my best to avoid gas stations with those damn video loops playing on top of the gas pump. As an aside I hate playing 50 questions with the pump too.

It’s like I’m being assaulted. The video is playing music and talking at me, the gas pump is beeping and booping asking questions, do you want a car wash? do you want a receipt, check out our drink selection inside, please enter your zip code, you qualify for a discounted car wash are you sure you don’t want a car wash, please select the grade of fuel. 

I just want to get the hell away from the noise and confusion. Maybe it’s because I’m an adult with ADD… it’s like there’s too damn much input!

I just want to put gas in my car and get going.

This summer while I was driving to Denver, I noticed that once I got out of California the gas stations calmed down. So perhaps this craziness at the pump is only a California thing. I really do hope so.

I feel the same way about reading news on the internet.

I hate clicking on a news article and beginning to read then having loud music or a voice blathering at me about some product or service. Lately it seems to be getting worse. 

I’m reading the article precisely because I don’t want to hear commercials screeching at me over my morning coffee. I like silence in the morning… I like to read the news and come to my own conclusion about a subject after reading several articles from different sources.

Aside from an increasing number of articles being so poorly written I can’t imagine how they made it past an editor, now I’m having to listen to commercials followed by a talking head describing the article I’m reading.

I’ve actually started keeping the sound muted on my computer. I can’t even imagine trying to take a break and read a news article at work. 

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I’m also driving with my navigation system off.

If the car needs to tell me something it can turn on the display, but normally I’m just choosing to be un-assaulted by yet another information display. I really prefer to notice the scenery i’m passing at 90 MPH while trying to not be run over by an asshole in a Mexican 18 wheeler.

Lets turn down the noise.

Really, try turning off the TV, and the tablet, and the computer and the text message notifications.

You’d be surprised how wonderful silence is. 

I play a game sometimes, I’ll simply leave my cell phone in quiet mode on the nightstand. I’ve done this for days at a time.

Folks get a little weird after just a few hours of no responses from me.  I suppose it’s because  they’ve gotten so used to the digital interactions they’re demanding an instant response to whatever they’ve sent me.

They’re content if that response is nothing more than an emoticon. I’ve often thought I should create an autoresponder that picked a random smiley or LOL. I wonder if that would work? I wonder if there’s a app for that?

When I decide to pay attention to my phone again I’ll get messages from people telling me my phone sucks, or that I really shouldn’t ignore texts.

I ask why not? 25 years ago cell phones weren’t all that common. People got along just fine leaving a message on my answering machine and I got back to them when I felt like it.

If you want to register your opinion about the assault at the pump you can send an email to the contacts here

http://www.outcast.net/fuel/

Cynopsis

Also brought to you by these people is this…

I’m not sure if it’s a marketing ploy or simply a demonstration of poor editing.

The word is synopsis.

I suppose I could see it if the misspelling saved a number of characters but in this case, it just looks like someone couldn’t spell.

It’s like that annoying spelling of fat. Phat doesn’t get you anything except to identify your ethnicity, musical choices and education level. On top of that you’ve turned a 3 letter word into a 4 letter word, what’s the point?

The only way I’ve found to register my displeasure about instant play videos on webpages is go to the source of the video and send a complaint.

I guess I’m old school. I think what happens on my computer should always be under my control. That includes videos or music playing. If I didn’t press play… then keep that crap to yourself.

I’ve actually gone to blogs, then closed the browser window when music started playing. I went to the blog to read what the person had to say, not to listen to their John Denver albums.

That goes double for going to a massage schools website and being blown out of my chair by Ravi Shankar at a volume that could be heard in a neighboring star system.

I like most of Ravis work but I don’t like anything at that volume, especially when I can’t make it shut the hell up!

We seem to have forgotten that we own the technology, the technology shouldn’t and doesn’t own us. 

I love technology. But I’m finding that I’m less and less interested in it running my life, or destroying the silence of my day.

UPDATE

Within hours of my posting this, I was confronted with another element of the over-stimulation and the demands for instant responses. I was on the phone taking care of some business. Another call came in, without interrupting the phone conversation I was having, I sent the new phone call to voice mail.

Within a second there was another call from the same phone number. Once again I sent the incoming call to voicemail. Two seconds later the persistent caller was calling again!

I excused myself from the conversation I was having, explaining that I had someone who was desperately trying to reach me and asked to interrupt my conversation for a few moments. Fortunately, they understood and said they’d hold. 

 I answered the persistent caller and honestly I wasn’t exactly polite. I hate people who won’t be patient, wait their turn and leave a fucking message!

It was an unknown headhunter.

They start the conversation with “Hi, are you busy?”

I responded, “Yes… which is why your were sent to voicemail Twice! I’m on another phone call.”

“Oh… well I calling to find out if you’d be interested in a temporary contract position.”

“Yes, however as I’ve said I’m on another call right at the moment. Did you leave a voice mail?”

“Uhhh I think so” <— LIE!!!

“Could you please send me an email regarding the position, I’ll review it and call you back.”

“Sure” <—LIE!

“Fine then I’ll review the information and call you back, Good bye…”

Then I returned to my previous phone call. I have yet to receive an email, this headhunter didn’t leave a voicemail and I’ve pretty much decided to blacklist them in my email and phone.

This guy didn’t even apologize for his annoying behavior. 

WTF?

I don’t want to be represented by a company who doesn’t even understand basic courtesy. If they make a prospective employer angry because they’re discourteous, my chances of employment are nill.

Politeness and professionalism still count a lot with me.

I guess I’m showing my age.