Category: General

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Funny, no matter how many times I re-read I always find a typo

Apologies, 

I do re-read these posts.

In fact I usually re-read them several times. 

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I’m simply not that good at re-reading stuff that I’ve written. This is especially true if I’m cranky.

So I offer my apologies to you, for poor punctuation, horrific sentence construction, spelling errors and all manner of linguistic gaffes that you have endured.

I promise I’ll do my best to hold the line against “text speak”

This apology was inspired by reading a comment on a New York Times article about “Preppers” in New York.

On the one side… the human mind is an amazing machine capable of gleaning meaning from all but the most unintelligible writing. On the other side in another 20 years we’ll all be speaking “City Speak” from Bladerunner.

Have a great day…

I’m going to get some stuff done and then go enjoy the sun on the snow.

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Yet again I ask WHERES MY OBAMA CARE?

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Oh yeah, I’m the wrong color for that…

I’m a little pissed off.

I’m at the end of COBRA coverage which I maintained because I was once again trying to do the right thing.

That belief cost me $10, 872 and forced me to keep using a pharmacy provider called Express Scripts which is without doubt one of the worst organizations I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with.

I’m an average person,  I pay my bills, don’t expect to be taken care of, pay my own way, try to stay off the government radar, and try like hell to live my life my way without having someone else’s hand in my fucking pocket or up my ass.

I’m still laboring under the illusion that doing the right thing is important… at least to me.

Because of that philosophy, I’d applied for a personal healthcare policy to the same fucking insurance company that currently has kept me insured under a group policy for the past 6 years. Not only couldn’t they simply look at the information they already have about me…

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After due consideration… they declined to cover me on a personal policy.

Let me get this straight… You’ve been covering me, You’ve made almost 11K off me over the past 2 years, and now I’m too big a risk? Jesus, Mary, & Joseph!

It makes me believe even more strongly that all health insurance companies should be ruled illegal and their executives and most of their staff should be taken and whipped naked through the streets.

This places me in a situation that I’d anticipated anyway.

I can apparently qualify for HIPAA coverage which is obscenely expensive. I’ve been told it costs something like almost double what I’ve been paying under COBRA.

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Sorry, I can’t afford that kind of money, seeing as I’m unemployed and all. 

This is one of the reasons that I was not a supporter of Obamacare and the obscene price tag that will cost.

If you look at the price of the HIPAA program you can’t come to any conclusion other than a national healthcare program will be horrifically expensive.

I suspect this is what the politicians concluded as well, hence the provision to make  anyone not paying for health insurance a criminal…

The Tea Party and Republicans are wrong about the Death panels… It’s much simpler than that.

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All Obamacare has to do is price people on fixed income or who have no income out of the market. No boards or panels needed…

I was hoping for something better in healthcare reform. But Obamacare was shoved down our throats.

I thought a plan that forced the insurance companies to provide coverage for the people who had previously been covered by their employers, would be more efficient. A plan like that wouldn’t require implementation of yet another bureaucracy.

If you had a group policy with your employer and you got laid off you were still automatically covered… And that coverage would continue no matter what. The payments could have been based on a sliding scale.

If you couldn’t pay because your unemployment ran out or you took a part time job at substantially lower pay… It wouldn’t have mattered you were still covered.

There are people who’ll say yes but what about the poor? What about the young just coming into the workforce?

Simple… the poor pay like they always have (or not… depending on the culture they come from). The young, are automatically and without question covered on their parents policies until they get a job that provides insurance.

Using a plan like this, everyone is covered, the insurance companies aren’t able to weasel out of providing coverage that all of us have paid for many times over.

As an added benefit,  the Medical insurance / establishment has a real incentive to keep costs low and increase the efficiency of the system.

Why does it cost $25 for a fucking aspirin in a hospital? Because of all the bullshit it takes to get you that aspirin. Even though you could go to the hospital gift shop and buy a whole bottle yourself for $8.

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Then when you think about the people who retire because they were in their 50s or 60s and got laid off.

Through no fault of their own, they get fucked again and again by a system that they’d been told all their lives was supposed to reward them for their years of contribution.

Instead they’re on unemployment, paying obscene amounts for COBRA, hitting their 401Ks and having to pay endless penalties. But then, to add insult to injury their COBRA runs out and they’re uninsured when they need coverage the most.

Poof, in just a matter of months their dreams of retirement are destroyed.

This kind of stuff is exactly why there are so very many angry disenfranchised people in this country. 

Honestly, it’s a wonder that there aren’t more people losing it. 

This is how people end up eating cat food. Or homeless pushing shopping carts down the sidewalks. 

It’s not just the medical establishment… it’s the entire system that’s broken in an unbelievable number of ways. Throwing trillions of dollars at it isn’t going to make it any better.

The solution is to fix the problem.

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Then the rain turned to snow…

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Last night as the sun was setting my driveway and decks were free of snow and ice.

I’d been running around in a t-shirt and sweats. 

I let the dogs out for the 90th time yesterday, and when I brought them back in they tracked snow all over the living room.

Snow????

It was a spectacular blue sky sunny day yesterday. The operative word is “Was“.

I flipped on the lights at the rear of the house and it was snowing heavily. The deck was already covered over with an inch of snow.

By 9 last night, there was at least 2.5 inches piled on the driveway and street. 

I pulled on a pair of jeans, hat, boots and a jacket to go clear the drive. It was still snowing…

Gotta admit that my Northface component jacket was a very good purchase. Expensive as hell, but it’s still going strong after 5 years.

(For those that don’t know. Component jackets are outer shells, usually waterproof, that have zip in linings. I’ve got a zip in vest, a fleece, and a down insert. All of these can be worn by themselves but the addition of the waterproof shell greatly improves their insulation ability. )

Shoveling in a storm is not my idea of fun… on the other hand I couldn’t tell how long the storm was going to last and it really is easier to clear 2 – 3 inches of snow at a time than to wait until there’s a foot or more.

Trust me on this… I’ve done it both ways.

On the up side I was warm and dry so while it’s not fun, it could have been worse.

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After a while I noticed the storm was breaking. Within a few more minutes the clouds parted and moonlight lit up the mountains. 

I see really well at night anyway, but throw moonlight on snow and it’s like I’m working in daylight. 

I was thankful for the additional light to work by. 

Moonlight on fresh snow also happens to be one of my favorite things. 

It was quiet, peaceful and beautiful.

The snow on the ground was sparkling as slight breezes blew wisps of flakes along.

A coyote padded by at the end of the street, it’s eyes glowing gold-green as it looked at me. It passed unhurriedly by, no doubt heading for the open fields and the rabbits that are usually there.

Then I was alone again, silence and beauty around me.

If I have to shovel snow… Nights like this aren’t bad at all.

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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.

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An interesting thing

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Honestly I’d never thought about this until recently.

I firmly, completely and totally believe that the 2nd amendment insures my personal right to have a gun.

I realize that there are those who would disagree. Fine, that demonstrates yet another freedom we have in this country. The freedom to think for ourselves, do what we believe to be right and hopefully pursue our own personal happiness.

Your choice not to have a gun is as personal to you as my belief in upholding the 2nd amendment is to me. I’m totally good with that because we’re both pursuing our respective forms of happiness.

When you’re looking for a job and thinking about relocation, you start considering all the factors that moving your stuff from one place to another entails. You start making a packing list. That list has the stuff that you’d need immediately and the stuff that you could leave in storage, or have shipped.

If one of those items happened to be a gun, now you have to consider your destination.

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A responsible gun owner would be far more inclined to keep the gun or guns in a safe and would be hesitant to let that safe and it’s contents get too far out of their control. 

The gun owners I know don’t want to ever have the possibility of one of their weapons being stolen.

Problem is a gun safe is pretty damn obvious going onto a moving truck or coming off of one. It’s not like you’d be able to be subtle about a 900lb safe that’s labeled “American Guns Safe” .

This is especially true if you’re wheeling it into your new digs with the help of 20 day workers.

My luck would have me moving into a house between a cop and a liberal do gooder who felt it necessary to report to authorities that they’d seen GUNS!!! and ammunition being wheeled into the house… 

I’d never really thought about it too much…

Mainly because I’ve always assumed my business was well… my business. Since we didn’t live in Nazi Germany or the USSR I never worried about my neighbors tattling on me.

Well that is until now, thanks in part to the newspaper in New York publishing gun permit owners names & addresses. I was surprised that anyone sided with the paper thinking it was OK for the public at large to know what you had in your home.

Of course the excuse of “the Children” was trotted out  as a justification for invasion of privacy.

Personally I think,  “The Children” are at far more risk from sexual deviants than guns.

In the interest of protecting The Children, perhaps we should make everyone purchasing vibrators, leather restraints, or pornography register these materials then publish their names and addresses weekly. 

That is after all the conflation the Journal News was trying to make with their gun ownership map. They were drawing a parallel between gun ownership and sexual molesters.

Which brings me to the question.

If you were to be offered a position in New York for instance or Massachusetts or Illinois… what do you do with your guns?

Both New York and Massachusetts are insane about their regulation, permitting, registration, and god only knows what all else.

I’ve been told that these states also make a lot of additional money from anyone choosing to exercise their 2nd amendment right. Something on the order of hundreds if not thousands of dollars just to get the permit that allows you to exercise your constitutionally guaranteed right

This mountain of bureaucratic nonsense probably isn’t about protecting the public as much as it is about discouraging all but the hardiest or masochistic of individuals from obtaining or keeping weapons legally.

I could probably head to Harlem or some of the less savory neighborhoods in Boston and obtain a weapon in 30 minutes or less with the right amount of money. No papers, no background check, no reporting or waiting periods either.

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And were you to land a job in Chicago (A safest place on Earth Gun Free Zone…) well I suppose you’d have to sell your guns…

A job transfer to Chicago would , I guess mean you’d have to go to one of those unsavory areas and sell your guns, associated ammo, and any accessories, the day you got there.

Again without background checks or any reports on to whom you sold the weapons.

Then you could go to your new apartment and lay your head down to sleep in peace knowing that you’d done the right thing and complied with the law.

Sarcasm aside, I realized that there are in fact places in this country where I absolutely will not even consider moving. 

I don’t want an arsenal, I don’t want mil spec weapons. But I damn sure do want the right to own guns, and I want the ability to go to the store put my money on the counter and buy a rifle, or ammunition 

So I’ve altered my job search / willingness to relocate parameters.

I’ve also responded “No” to an invitation to apply for a 6 month position in NY with the following:

Thank you for thinking of me.
 
However, I do not wish to move to a state like NY where I must for the most part forego my 2nd Amendment right to keep & bear arms, and where I also would be subject to the loss of personal privacy about the contents of my home.
 
All the best.

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Perhaps fighting gun control isn’t all about fighting with law in the courts.

Perhaps it’s about fighting oppressive laws in the economic arena too.

After all if companies can’t get employees or lose business because their corporate offices are in gun control states they’ll move somewhere else.

All that has to happen is for their employees to be honest when they leave, and for their prospective employees to be honest about why they’re not interviewing for positions. 

It’s the long way around but it does make a statement.