Is that Goliath in your Pocket?

During the whole healthcare debate, I never once stepped into a doctor's office. I do have this vague feeling of unease knowing my future access to medicine is through a for profit corporation but really mostly, I don't think about that set of issues. Until today.

Oh, I hear ominous music. It's not. But in the course of an hour I came face to face with some of the health insurance stupidity and I'm amazed this much can exist at the simple fringe. If it's like this for the simple stuff, what happens if I have a baby. Or a car accident. Or cancer.

Face Punch

Two interactions that meant one thing but came off as totally different:

1. After the show on Sunday, I walked up to two theater friends. One is directing an upcoming show at the community theater. Months ago he emailed me and asked if I'd help out his step daughter with the poster for the show. I emailed him back and said yes. Told him to send her my email address and have her get in contact with me. I've heard nothing back. At all. So when I see him on Sunday the first thing he says to me, with a big grin on his face, "So you're working hard on that poster, I see. I see you got back to me right away." Or something similar that directly implied that I had ignored his email and it was somehow my fault for not pursuing HIS project after I put the ball back in HIS court.

This isn't 2005, right?

It's always strange for me to hear government officials saying things and doing things I only assumed they said and did under Bush. On "On The Media" a few weeks ago (I'm listening to podcasts at work right now) they were talking about how the military has hired a firm, the Rendon Group, to grade individual reporters in war zones. They give them a positive, neutral or negative rating based on how favorably they've reported the war. This is happening now. In 2008. One reporter wasn't allowed to embed back in and his report said, "“Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news.” Maybe he also killed kittens. They didn't mention that.

And then to have the spokesperson for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker say,"We've never graded reporters, and the information we get from Rendon doesn't do so. The information we were contracted with them to provide is basic biographical details and the past stories reporters have done. Now, sometimes those do include a positive, negative or neutral rating, which we do get. Frankly, we don't use that information."

Well, yeah.

(Sources: On the Media Aug 28, 2009)

What a clusterf**k

The last 2 hours of work has literally been following a single strand through an evil nest of knots.Trying to get it untangled from everything it and all the other strands have created. Meanwhile, part of the knot ball is on fire and a bird is circling above threatening to poop on you.

No that doesn't make sense, but the subject line does. A giant family business clusterf**k.

That's all I got. The other part will be sorted out on the various genre blogs.

Also, from now on we are taking notes at our meetings and Z and I will try not to be jerks when my parents start in on an idea as if it'd never been thought of, and yet, we have years (YEARS) of the exact pending conversation. The memory is one big cruel trick.

ENGLISH!

I spent tonight working on the newsletter. You can tell when these things are rushed. (OK so everything is rushed at our company.) But this was really rushed. The kind of rushed where usually bad grammar rots into seems-like-a-spam-robot-wrote-it. And you look at it and think, "What the hell am I suppose to do with this?" I haven't seen the video. It's not one of ours. And this is not something I can make English. At least not English with any sort of content.

And there in lies a major problem with our copy. Words in and of themselves hold no meaning. It's how you combine them that matter. It doesn't matter how many words are placed to a page if the words don't actually say anything then there is no reason for them to be there. We could put an artist's name followed by:
XOXOXOBunniesandslipperswho'sacatIlikepeachpie
Retail Price: $32.95 Sale Price $22.95 Sale ends July 14, 2009

I may try and take the newsletter over before my Mother retires. There may be a lot I'm taking over. But that is for another entry.

Just Saying

It's a shame more child molesters don't make great music.