Editing Letter

Lara Zielin, who is a young adult author (Make Things Happen: The Key to Networking for Teens, and Donut Days, first published novel) and YouTuber. Think John Green but not as popular. Since I am lazy today, I thought I would just throw up a video she made and uploaded to YouTube.

Of Doe Eyes and Broken Hearts

Last week, I embedded a YouTube video by katethegreat011.

LarryLilly said, "Quirky person; interesting lyrics, a bit of personal angst."

Knot, a musician, added, "Same chord progression as that Goo Goo Dolls song 'Slide'. Refreshingly funny. Good voice. Ya, I'd do her."

But the most interesting comment was by Xmichra: "Love the chick below, she is like an oxymoron for the song she sings. She is cute and looks doe-eyed, while the song is bitter and realistic. Pretty neat."

Anyway, I think she struck a chord with some of us. Sorry for the pun. Well, anyway it is a bit strange listening to a cute young girl write with such angst. I agree with Xmichra; pretty neat.

When I was in high school, one of my best friends was a doe-eyed, brunette with straight hair. She was cute and shy, and well, easily overlooked in a class. She had this dimple on her chin, and that, along with big, dark eyes, brought me to thinking of her while listening to Kate, if that is her real name.

Oh, when I was in high school, I would use that phrase, "If that is your real name" a lot.

Fred, if that is your real name, please pass me the pepper. I was goofy like that, and I loved telling running jokes. Anyway, I had this friend who was sweet as can be, looked innocent and tried to go unnoticed in school.

The thing I remember most about this girl, however, is that she took a baseball bat to someone's car one day at school. I don't have all of the particulars (whether it was a wooden or aluminum bat, for instance), but there were two things that stand out in my mind: (1) unlike the movies, when someone takes a baseball bat to a windshield, the damage is not that impressive. (2) at that moment, I learned that people could act one day in school and a different way out of school.

I was a school friend of Missy's. We would meet before school and chat in the cafeteria before school started. Her mother dropped her off on her way to work, and I liked getting to school early. My parents would wake up insanely early. 4:30 AM. In Georgia, if you are going to wake up that early, it usually meant you would grab a flashlight and shine deer on the county roads.¹.

Missy and I would chat before school about all sorts of things. We gossiped about other girls, who broke up with whom, that sort of thing. But we also talked about teachers, and their relative fairness. We were both good students (As and Bs), so we enjoyed talking about school.

I saw her for 45 minutes nearly every morning when we were juniors and seniors, and I thought I really knew who she was. We never saw each other's homes; we were school friends not friends that saw each other after school. I got the impression from the mornings and some class time who she was. I never dreamed she could explode like that.

So when I hear "Kate" sing about all of this heartache, I wonder what is going on behind what we are seeing. Teen angst has always been popular, in part because teens (and I did at the time) think that everything is so important. Loves seem more rich, disappointments cut more deeply. Things seem like the end of the world, when they just make memories that will mellow with age, taking the sting out of the experience. When people say, "Still waters run deep," I sometimes think of doe-eyed Missy.

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¹ For the non-rednecks among us, shining deer involved shining a flashlight in a deer's eyes, thus making them freeze. Then you would take your time and shoot them. Very unsportsmanlike. Oh, and very illegal as well. The venison tastes the same, however. Well, that's what I have been told.

Minimalist Meme

That's Sassy has a meme I wanted to attempt. I have not done a meme in years, really, so this should be . . . painful.

The rules: (1) You Can Only Use One Word; and (2) Pass this along to 6 of your favorite bloggers.

Sassy did not follow the first rule. Go to her blog and shame her. Just kidding. Read her stuff; it is good.

1. Where is your cell phone? lost
2. Your hair? unmanageable
3. Your mother? kind
4. Your father? storyteller
5. Your favorite food? Asian
6. Your dream last night? Orwellian
7. Your favorite drink? X-rated
8. Your dream/goal? impactfulness
9. What room are you in? office
10. Your hobby? writing
11. Your fear? spiders
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? published
13. Where were you last night? bed
14. Something that you aren't? boisterous
15. Muffins? pistachio
16. Wish list item? contentment
17. Where did you grow up? Georgia
18. Last thing you did? giggle
19. What are you wearing? glasses
20. Your TV? unused
21. Your pets? digital
22. Friends? talented
23. Your life? spastic
24. Your mood? frazzled
25. Missing someone? family
26. Vehicle? non-hybrid
27. Something you're not wearing? bra
28. Your favorite store? bookstores
29. Your favorite color? Autumn
30. When was the last time you laughed? today
31. Last time you cried? yesterday
32. Your best friend? hubbie
33. One place that I go to over and over? restaurants
34. One person who emails me regularly? spammers
35. Favorite place to eat? Mall

This is really a minimalist post. I so want to explain these answers, but that is not in the spirit of this meme. For instance, I want to let you know my favorite place to eat is the mall, not for the food (Cajun Chicken), but because I love to people-watch. And the mall is great for people-watching.

And I pass this along to the first six people who leave comments - not that six will.

Belated Canadian Thanksgiving

Well, I failed to celebrate another holiday: Canadian Thanksgiving, or as the Canadians call it, "Thanksgiving." (It was October 12 this year.)

I found this YouTube clip that describes the celebration – I will not ruin it for you, Ay.



Here is what I find remarkable about this YouTube channel: all of these shorts are directed by Ryan Rickett. Okay, that is not remarkable. What is, though, is who he has in these shorts: Ellen Page & Justin Long in this short (they are B actors; you can tell B actors because they give away their talent on YouTube). And Ginnifer Goodwin is in my favorite of these shorts, Crappy Easter. And Crappy Easter also has Lisa Nova, a YouTube persona. Anyway, it seems like the director has a bunch of semi-famous friends who like him enough to give away their acting talent for free.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Paranoid about Comments

I have been absent from blogging for a while. I have also been absent from my Google mail account, where blog comments find themselves. And while cleaning out that inbox, I found a lot of chatter regarding one of my older posts, entitled Temptation. And when I see someone comment months afterwards, I normally think they Googled something and landed on my page, because even if you have 1,000 pages of crappy posts, Google sometimes sends people your way. Of course, I thought these posts would discuss my incite, but they didn't.

The posts, and there were a bunch of them, were in Japanese. I placed a few of the posts through a Japanese to English translator, and none of the comments had anything to do with the original blog post.

My immediate reaction, of course, is that some branch of the Taliban is using my blog in order to communicate back and forth. You see, they are crafty bastards. And none of them speaks Japanese, probably, so American intelligence would easily dismiss Japanese comments on a second-rate blog. Freakin' brilliant, those bastards.

I imagine that those bastards are using some translation software, then they have code books or whatever, and some comment about seeing a girl walking out of a restaurant is really code for strapping explosives to your body and entering the (insert country here) embassy.

Okay this is totally ridiculous, but it sort of makes me think it is a great idea for a screenplay. Not one I would ever write, but a screenplay nonetheless.

If I fail to post tomorrow, I am in Guantanamo Bay.

Connections

Yesterday I shared a Richard Le Gallienne poem on my blog. And today I wanted to share how I first heard the poem. The story is a bit more convoluted than one would imagine.

When I was in elementary school, I had a record player. Me and my friends would put on records and bounce on the beds to the music. One of the 45s was Island Girl by Elton John. Then in high school, I was at a garage sale and saw a an LP by Elton John. I was not a huge Elton John fan, but since the LP was 25 cents, I figured I would spring for the vinyl.

The album was called Friends, and it was not until I got it home that I found out it was the soundtrack to a movie called Friends. Yes, before there was the television show, there was a movie. The shortest track on the album was an instrumental piece with two young voices, reciting the poem. And a few of the words were slurred, but I remember listening to the song/poem. I can even remember, on getting my first turntable, listening to the song in my dark bedroom, the only light being the red and white light on the turntable. A beautiful poem.

Years later, I saw the movie in a Blockbuster and rented it. My husband was out of town for the week on business, and I needed something to pass the time. I am so glad he did not watch this film. I found the movie in IMDB, but I don't remember much of the plot. All I remember is two naked teenagers in a cottage, and eventually the girl/woman has a child. Certainly they were of age to make the movie, but I think they were supposed to be 14-1/2 and 15 years old in the movie. It was weird, bizarre, and it left me feeling a bit violated. Oh, I think it was supposed to be a French film, but it was released in the UK.

Still, it is a beautiful poem.

Dirty Shoes

This is a new performer on YouTube. Her lyrics are disturbing, original and interesting. Oh, and she has a nice voice. Just thought I would give her a plug.

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day. I looked up to see if their was an official site, and here it is. And you know what bothers me about this website – it is a dot uk site. I mean, which country invented poetry? I mean, the most famous poet of all time is William Shakespeare, and he is American, right. Oh, crap, he may be from another country. Well, I heard about him in my American school's English class. Hmmmmmm.

Well, then the limericks that we have all heard. "There was a man from Nantucket." Certainly the origins of this is American. Nantucket is in Massachusetts, right? Oh, Nantucket is actually named for a city in Ireland? And limericks are Irish as well? Holy crap.

I am beginning to think that it may be unpatriotic to celebrate National Poetry Day in this country.

All kidding aside, one of my favorite poems – I enjoy the images this poem instills.

I Meant To Do My Work Today
by Richard Le Gallienne

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand--
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Twitter Novels

When I was in high school, it seems like there was a chasm between subjects. What was Language Arts in elementary and perhaps middle school became Literature. American Literature, English Literature and World Literature. Okay, I was kidding – in the 1980s, Georgia schools did not care about world literature. But you get the idea.

And with changing from language arts, where we would read short stories and write a bit, now we would have to read entire novels and remember certain aspects of the novels. That is when I first was aquainted with small, pamphlets, black and yellow, which probably saved many a lazy student. They were called Cliffs Notes, and instead of reading several hundred pages, you could read forty pages, learn not only what happened in the book, but also what it meant. Alliteration, themes, comparisons to other similar works, it seemed to be a cheating way of getting through the great novels.

I was fairly poor growing up, and I had no money for Cliffs Notes. I actually had to read the novels. I was not even bold enough to rent the movies and just get the gist that way. I figure the English teacher probably formed questions based on what was in the book but not the movie. And that fear helped me experience great literature.

I remember reading The Great Gatsby, and my English teacher would almost blush at some of the passages. The subtle sex was lost on this teenage girl. I knew nothing of sex, and the code words F. Scott Fitzgerald used to describe the trysts in his novel.

The other day, I thought about Twitter, and wouldn't it be great to tweet about novels. Instead of the 40 pages of black and yellow, I would attempt to summarize novels in 140 characters. Quite a challenge.

I mean, we have gotten into this frenzy, where no one has time to do much of anything. The students reading Cliffs Notes in high school have more to do than ever. Might as well condense what they need into 140 characters.

I remember laying back on cars, parked in fields, looking at the sky and just watching the clouds. That was a memory in high school – and in college, drinking beer on parked cars in a drizzle before a thunderstorm. Just chatting, sipping and killing time. No computer, no cell phone. Nothing to interrupt life. And I think that is disappearing, slowly . . . or quickly.

I think I will call this Twitter Novel. It kills a bunch of characters, but that's okay. It will take less time to type out the novels.

My first foray into this new experiment:

Twitter Novel, Ulysses: If you fit the Odyssey into one day, 16 June 1904, add a newspaper office, a brothel, a funeral, and public houses, and stir. Nora Barnacle, you should be so proud.

Another Argument for Healthcare Reform Debunked

Someone (I suspect someone working for a political party) answered my short missive on healthcare yesterday:

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Leesa your point is valid to a degree, however the debate is not simply that health care costs have increased it is that medical insurance premiums have increased some 119% over the last decade while wages have stagnated or fallen during the same time for the vast majority of Americans. According to the The National Coalition on Health Care www.nchc.org, "Employer-based family insurance costs for a family of four will reach nearly $25,000 per year by 2018 absent health care reform." This is only for those who have employer based medical insurance.

Those without any insurance (which are rising) have only Emergency rooms or go without treatment as options. Of course the oldest and the poorest have Medicaid and Medicare so they are covered.

I appreciate your opinions on this issue, but cost increases are not solely due to advances in medicine and without some restructuring it will eventually bankrupt the country.

Thank you for your blog

Mike - NC

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This brings us to another argument: look at Medicare/Medicaid. They provide healthcare far cheaper than traditional employee-based health insurance.

Hospital systems basically have three kinds of payers:

1. Those with health insurance. Most people with health insurance have one of just a few types in a given location. Some people refer to this as "Big Blue", as Blue Cross/Blue Shield is the biggest payer in many locations.

2. Medicare/Medicaid. These are government-paid claims. For certain locations, Medicaid goes by a different name, if the state subsidizes Federal money. Anyway, people have cards and the government is billed for the care.

3. Self-pay. These people don't have insurance and pay out of pocket. Most of them don't pay out of pocket; they just receive the care, and avoid the bills. These include members of certain religious sects – Amish and Mennonites, for instance, who believe that they should care for one another. The thing is, none of them are invasive radiologists or cardiovascular surgeons.

So hospitals get money from these three sources, and I have heard arguments that Medicare and Medicaid are so good because they are cheaper than health insurance. Well, traditional health insurance helps pay for Medicare/Medicaid and self-pay patients. Hospitals don't turn patients away – and even though most Medicare/Medicaid patients cost the hospital money on overall care, they get enough so that they take the patients.

A boring technical area of healthcare finance is dividing the cost of care into fixed and variable costs (they do this in all sorts of businesses and teach this at business schools). Generally, if your last customer covers variable costs, it makes sense to take the customer. And that's what hospitals do.

Traditional healthcare coverage is paying partially for the fixed costs of the Medicare/Medicaid patients as well as all of the costs of its uncollectables.

I am sorry that Mike did not leave a link to his blog, or I would have explained this to him.

In short, I believe that the healthcare issue is very complex, and we have a bunch of simpletons that have not even read the language of the bill. Even their staffs have not read the various bills.

And think of another thing – part of doing this is to bring the 46 million health insurance. Many of these people have made a choice not to purchase health insurance. They would rather purchase a big screen television than to purchase health insurance, perhaps because they have little assets to guard (yes, when I first got health insurance as a healthy 22-year-old, I almost did not get any because I had no assets). I decided for myself to get health insurance, not because I was altruistic, but because the $25/month (catastrophic only health insurance) guarded against me having to file for bankruptcy.

Tomorrow I will write about something more interesting.

Rise in Healthcare: Hollow Argument

I have been listening to the healthcare debate with some interest. I mean, this proposed legislation may be the most expensive entitlement program in the history of the United States.

One of the key arguments is that healthcare expenses continue to rise faster than other goods and services. You know, that argument may or may not be a good argument for the healthcare bills currently undergoing review.

Consider this simple example: When I was a child, I knew someone who injured his foot while mowing the lawn. The foot was badly injured, and because of the extent of the injuries, the foot was amputated. I was chatting with an online friend whose husband was badly injured in a similar fashion, and he is undergoing several reconstructive surgeries. The foot will be saved and functioning. And this summer, I was on a ship, doing the tourist thing. They were talking about the various compartments and what the sailors did in the compartments. One of the things they showed us was a saw, used in shipboard amputations in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It occurs to me that we have made stride in the healthcare we can expect. Two hundred years ago, two strong male nurses held you down while a doctor quickly sawed off the limb. And most of the time, you survived the ampulation. There was no anesthesia, antibiotics and the like, and so the whole procedure was relatively cheap. Twenty years ago, unless you were in some of the best medical centers in the world, you received anesthesia but the foot still was removed. You received antibiotics and your chance of survival was near 100 percent. And the procedure was more expensive. Now with the vascular surgeons and graft specialists, specialized drugs, etc., you are much closer to being made whole, after several surgeries and physical therapy. And the cost rises. But the number and quality of services also has risen.

When people talk about prices rising, one has to consider that over time, the nature of services or goods may change as well, and just looking at cost increases is not the way to go.

Oh, and besides, if you want to talk about escalation of prices – why is that a primary reason to get the government involved in the first place? We live in a free market, and we don't want to trust a free market.

I am not saying we should or should not support healthcare reform. What I am saying is that price escalation should not be listed as a reason in any politician's position paper.

Keeping Routines

These last few months, I have not been happy. I mean, I have been happy on occasions, but overall, the word "happy" is not a word I would chose to describe myself.

My world has been turning up-side-down, and it is not for one thing in particular. A bunch of things. And you know, when I have been jostled, one thing that happened is that I no longer had routines. We would have a couple of nights a week that I would prepare the same dish. I had been doing this for more than ten years. No longer.

I had been waking up and going to bed at the same times. No longer. It is much more regular that I wake up in the middle of the night, remembering a vivid dream, and then I would question what I thought reality was. And I have not been working out. And I have not been doing anything with regularity, including writing this blog.

I wonder if keeping certain routines are important for happiness.

Popular Songs

When I was growing up, I listened to Casey Kasem on the weekend. Depending on the city you were in, depended when they ran the syndicated show. It was called something like American Top 40, and I think he counted down the top 40 hits, according to Billboard. Perhaps it was something else; I don't remember. The voice of Shaggy was the final word as to what song was popular on a given week.

He would tell the world of his mostly teenage audience not only which song occupied which spot, but how many spots certain songs climbed, as well as vignettes about some of the artists. I would pull for my favorite songs, listening to every word. Time just stood still during his program.

Well, I found the Billboard Top 100 today. And, holy crap, you can see who is in the top 100, as well as listen to most or all of the songs. For someone who is no longer cool (and cannot be trusted according to the hippies of the 60s), this is sort of interesting. I can't get into many of the songs of today, but it is an interesting diversion.

One interesting thing about Casey Kasem is that there was a rumor he was Islamic. Well, he is of Lebanese Druze heritage (which is too complicated for me to explain in my blog). It is generally considered an offshoot of Islam, but it has some interesting twists. I can remember some parents who were scared of Kasem, because they thought he was brainwashing American youth at a time where we were trying to repair relations between Israel and Egypt.

Recent History: Football

Think about good football teams. Storied football teams. Look at this list:

California
Florida
LSU
Michigan St
FSU
Georgia
Maryland
Penn State
Texas A&M

What if I were to ask you for a team that has more national championships than any of these teams. What would you say? We know about USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Michagan, Alabama, Ohio State. But there is one team that might surprise you: Georgia Tech. They have won four national championships to three or less for the teams listed above.

But more shocking than that is that there are a couple of schools who have won more national championships than any of the schools I have listed: Princeton and Yale. Oh, and Harvard has won its share as well, most of which predate World War I. Anyway, just a little fact I tripped on the other day. Just goes to show you that we focus on recent history. This, of course, pertains to more than football. Today, I am just illustrating with a football example.

Crazy People

Earlier this week, I heard about Yale grad student Annie Le being murdered by lab technician Raymond Clark III. It was all over the news, and I am sure you have heard something about it.

After a few days, the police mentioned workplace violence as being the motivation for murder. A letter penned by university President Richard Levin stated: "Mr. Clark has been a lab technician at Yale since December 2004. His supervisor reports that nothing in the history of his employment at the University gave an indication that his involvement in such a crime might be possible…."

A big case of CYA.

Can you imagine an employer say publicly "We have employed this person for five years, and we knew he was a crazy guy. Please sue the university for its lack of judgment."

Now I am not saying Yale did anything wrong – just making a bit of a joke.

Years and years ago, I worked for a university system. And I remember some scary guy working in the same building. I got a bad vibe from him, and I avoided him. I did not get on an elevator when he was already on the elevator; that sort of thing.

Women need to trust their instincts. Instincts, I believe, are part of human evolution. Primates are scared of snakes – that instinct, while it does not matter for most snakes, keeps one alive when running away from the poisonous ones.

I am not blaming Annie Le for getting herself murdered. Not at all. I imagine, though, she felt threatened in some way and did not act on those feelings. Perhaps not trusting everyone is the wrong way to go as well. It is difficult to know who to trust and who to avoid in elevators.

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By the way, I lost two images recently:

Failing at Social Networking

I have been neglecting my blog. I know I have. Web logs, or Blogs, were one of the granddaddies of social web communities. The Video Blog, or VLOG, followed. Then Twitter, and so forth.

Well, I got an email from Biz Stone in my inbox the other day – not that Biz and I are close, but there was a change to Twitter. Anyway, I googled him, and found his Blog (last updated in April 2008) and LinkedIn profile. He has less than 200 connections on LinkedIn (not a lot for LinkedIn whores).

Anyway, one of the leaders in social networking, and his networks suck. So I guess there may be hope for me.

Chillin' to "Sweet About Me"

I don't normally listen to "popular" music. Well, that is not really true, I suppose, but the music I most likely am to listen to was first performed in the 80s. It has more to do with when I started listening to music and less about the quality of the music. I am a tragic compilation of my circumstances. And I find myself apologizing for it, only when I think about it. Luckily music is about much more than thought; it is about feelings and even hearing songs during significant events. Sure, we remember where we were when JFK was shot, but we also remember what was on the turntable when we first had sex.¹

I heard a song by Gabriella Cilmi recently, and the sound is haunting. It reminded me of Cat Stevens. Not that she sounds like him, but the sound is unique, and so was his sound. More than that is that she reminded me how much fun it is to just listen to music. And in the hectic world of ours, just kicking back and listening to music can recharge the soul.

I also think it is interesting that the song that reminded me of this is called, "Sweet about Me," and the lyrics say that there is nothing sweet about her. Well, reminding me of the magic of music is oh, so sweet.

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¹Okay, I was not alive for the JFK assassination, but that seems to be the event people most remember. For me, it was perhaps the shuttle explosion. That event cracked the illusion that the world was safe and fair.

Almost School Time

We are less than two weeks away from school starting. I was reminded of this from a VLOG I saw this morning. Two things come to mind: (1) not having children, I don't really know when school normally starts; I just observe changing traffic patterns and figure it out, and (2) because I have not been posting blog entries, I have not really been reading blogs or watching an occasional YouTube video.

In the video Hayley says that for most, high school is not as advertized; that it won't be the best years of your life. Well, I will admit it is not like the movie Grease. Okay, again, two random observations: (1) why did all of the students in the movie look like they were in their mid-twenties; oh, because they were old, and (2) I did not realize until years later that in the lyrics of one of the songs had a dirty word in it; I would not recognize p---- wagon until years later, when I saw a high school production of the play. You can't have a Christmas tree on school property, but you can sing about . . . oh, nevermind.

I thought about high school, and remembered it was really great. Sorry, Haley, but going to your locker to see if your boyfriend placed a note in the locker like you directed him is a good memory. So is selling ribbons before football games, wearing bizarre outfits on certain days, and avoiding physical education for extracurricular activities. It seemed mostly good to me. Memories of heartache, backstabbing bitches, zits and homework fade over time.

But then I thought that elementary school was wonderful, where the biggest decision of the day was white vs. chocolate milk (and rarely we would have the choice of strawberry milk, a truly vile liquid). Walking in straight lines in complete silence seemed more like a game than an imitation of Hitler's youth organization. And science had no real debate. There were nine planets, for oceans, and we did not even talk about global warming. A place where boys were not smart enough to be deceptive, where teachers seemed like teachers and not discipliners.

Middle school seemed cruel. I had some wonderful memories from middle school as well, but I also remember hearing about fights after school, rumors about the first girl who lost he virginity and became very popular with the boys, where people were expelled from school instead of a note going home to a parent. Middle school was all about puberty, about forming cliques, about figuring out how everyone is different.

I look at elementary school through college, and I can't help but grin. Sure, every event seemed more important than it really was, but now, as an adult, do we make things less important than they really are? Well, in a few weeks, traffic patterns will change. For bright eyed children, they will be making memories they will remember for all of their days. Lucky ducks.

Healthcare Debate

I have been listening to the healthcare debate for some time, and it seems a bit ridiculous on all sides. Some not-so random thoughts on the subject . . . .

New Legislation will Cover All. The media has said there are 46 million uninsured Americans. One thing that the media fails to ask is, "Yeah, but do these 45 Million want to have insurance?" After college, there was a time where I did not have health insurance. I could have had it, but I chose not to have it. I was young, healthy and I had no assets to protect. Why exactly would I need health insurance? And I am sure many Americans are thinking the same thing. Sure, there are some people who don't have health insurance because they can't afford it, but most have looked about how they spend their money and have decided to do other things with their money. Health insurance was not that important to them.

Sure, society as a whole pays for this. And sure, if healthcare was truly free, this would be great. But we are just shifting costs.

New Legislation will Reduce Healthcare Costs. I don't think it is the government's job to reduce healthcare costs (and the Dems are talking about efficiencies and cost reductions). I mean, as long as the government is concerned with the costs of products for me, why not work on reducing costs of my iPod, computer, car, and so forth. And someone may say that the government already manipulates food prices (we pay farmers not to grow certain crops), gas and oil prices (the government's strategic oil reserve impacts prices; so do our foreign relations), and now prices for automobiles (cash for clunkers will pull automobiles out of the market, and also increase demand which should make prices go up).

New Legislation will Make Healthcare More Efficient. See above. I am not sure it is the government's business to make any industry more efficient. The government did not enact child labor laws because the twelve-year-old factory workers were inefficient; they did so to protect children. And I am not sure I want some government bureaucrat tell hospitals how to be efficient. Think about it: the government is telling us that they can make something more efficient. When you think of government, is the word "efficiently" the first thing you think? Probably not.

New Legislation contains Death Panels. This is one of the coolest aspect of the new legislature. The phrase "Death Camps" sounds efficient, spooky and something that would lend itself to reality television. I can see this now: in order to underwrite the new healthcare legislation, the government will allow one station to televise these death panel reviews. The only problem is that these words aren't even in the legislation. I mean, we don't think these words are in the legislation – most legislators have not read it, and neither has anyone else. Someone can read Harry Potter in two days, no problem, but cannot real legislation that will have a trillion dollar difference to our government budget.

Even if I think we should reform healthcare now and have the government involved, I am not at all confident that our elected officials are smart enough to do this rationally.

Being Offline and Personal Economics

I have been "offline" for a long time. It has really been months, with one little post that filled the gap for those months. And when I posted the blog entry, I intended on started to write again. Guess what, I didn't start writing again.

I wanted to write that I was involved in some international incident, that I was denied internet access until former President of the United States Bill Clinton rescued me and my lesbian lover after months of captivity. But that is not what happened.

I wanted to say that my house was attacked by aliens that placed transceivers in humans to control them, but that is not what happened.

I wanted to say that I was finishing up a book about mitochondrial DNA synthesis, and its applications on sheep duplication, thus ending the worth's wool shortage. But that is not what happened.

I guess not one thing happened. A culmination of things, but the biggest one is that I am doing a bit more work at work. What the heck were they thinking? I wrote about work and pay and how promotions are not necessarily a good thing. A ton more work for $2K a year is not my idea of a good deal.

Anyway, I have thought about writing, and then I thought about the relative value of my time. We do this all of the time, you know? For instance . . . .

When one decides to take a long bath instead of a ten minute shower, you are deciding to spend time out of your day for a bath. And there is probably a reason behind spending that additional time.

Sex can be the same way. For married people, if we wanted, we could have sex until we could not walk anymore. And there probably is a reason we don't have sex all of the time. Remember when you were first married? Or first sexual in a committed relationship? How often was the sex? Well, maybe it was very often. There are lots of things to do, but the satisfaction from sex outweighed doing the dishes, even if you hated dirty dishes. Or later in a relationship, it does not have to be about sexual gratification. If you and your husband are trying to get pregnant, perhaps you had sex all of the time (during the right times) to try and get pregnant. Even if you did not enjoy the sex - and sex for babies gets old really fast.

"Honey, don't worry about foreplay. Just get it over so I can vacuum the carpet."

Yes, vacuuming the carpet is more enjoyable than baby-making sex if it is six months without no pregnancy.

I guess I am getting a bit far afield, but I enjoy the whole "economics" view of the world. There was a book that was popular a few years ago called Freakonomics, and I enjoyed it because it talked about this sort of thing - well, not these examples or even this logic, but it gave me ideas that I now use in my thinking. There have been several other economics books that have been popular as well. I know it sounds like driving an ice pick into your eye would be as pleasant, but they are interesting ideas.

Anyway, from time to time, I have ideas and I have wanted to express them on this blog. Because I have not really been around much, I have just thought "Eh."You know, giving a non-committal utterance.

Two things have happened recently that have been pushing me in a different direction: (1) I got a note from a very popular YouTube person (I know, gag me; but she also has a blog and she can really write) and was touched by her words, and (2) someone with sexual addiction is communicating with me and I am revealing my experiences on the road to recovery. I wrote about it here and here and probably other places. My blog was a starting point, but we are chatting about tools to use to get away from the bad behavior.

Above I mentioned an interest in economics. My job has nothing to do with economics, but I enjoy the thought process - do I spend my money on X or wait and save for Y. And more close to home, do I spend limited time writing a blog or writing a book. Well, all of this time away from the blog was not spent knocking out the first two riveting chapters of a book. It was spent doing work (which I derive only modest benefit from, aside from my paycheck) and spending more time at lunch.

Anyway, I miss writing and may start to write again (and you don't have to believe I am starting; I won't until I see if I write some more). I hear items on the news, and I just want to write about them. I experience something weird in an elevator, and my mind starts writing the post. So I have missed this forum, and I have missed writing others. Perhaps, perhaps, instead of walking to the coffee shop two streets over, I will write an ill-conceived blog entry for a few to read.

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This has nothing to do with this post, but I have been dabbling in an online strategy game based on the seedy side of life. But the game is really more about economics than sex and violence. I don't get into the role-playing, really, but I enjoy figuring out how to spend limited time and energy in the game to maximize the gains (money, experience, and other gains). I am not recommending the game, per se, but if you want to check it out, it is located here. And if you think the game is just a way of having some sexual gratification, you will be disappointed. There are a few steamy photos, but they are not that erotic (e.g., they don't do anything for me). They would embarrass you at work more than anything. Oh, and they are not Asian women, so Grant, you would not like it. You know, there are probably a bunch of erotic photos, now that I think about it, because users can create a customized signature page, and they can be quite crude. I play with the images turned off in my web browser (sex addicts do that, you know), so I sometimes forget about how most see the game.