It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

Same neighborhood, different asshole(s). I keep starting to describe what I'm wearing, but, seriously, that's just playing into the enemy mindset. It. Doesn't. Matter.

Don't even get me started on the group of assholes doing work on the house next door, all five of whom stopped working and moved closer to my property line to stare at my friend and me as we herded two preschoolers into the house last week. Helping two kids put the trashcan away, man, that's hawt.

Purse Your Lips, It's Punny!

"Purse Your Lips" is what I call my line of handmade hand bags. Since Ilyka went and outed my crafty leanings I figured I could go ahead and engage in some shameless self promotion. As I've mentioned, I'm a housebitch, which is a hard job with no paycheck. To compensate, I like making stuff and getting paid for the effort. Go figure.

To make some cabbage, I sew. I sew and sew and sew---everything from art to wear clothing, to curtains, to purses, to, well, whatever comes to mind. I can now be found at the local Farmer's Market on Saturdays, where my sister and I show off our crafty goods. Not that it's really a Farmer's Market, unless, that is, farmers have traditionally harvested crops of tacky little tissue box holders made to look like little New Mexican houses (complete with vigas and ristras!) or Dallas Cowboy tortilla warmers, or hats crocheted from Walmart bags. (Is anyone surprised that when I described the market, thusly, to Aunt Louise, that she said, "Tissue boxes like little houses? With ristras? I'd buy one of THOSE!" Then she suggested I make bookmarks. Everyone loves bookmarks). That guy with the tissue box houses, though, he sells the shit out of those things. People walk right by us, the cool sisters with totally unique and awesome jewelry, aprons, shrines and purses, just to snatch up a little house for their tissues. I'm at least glad that so many humble boxes of tissues have become upwardly mobile.

Meanwhile, I've been photographing my bags and putting them on Flickr as a sort of portfolio and for a few clients who live out of town, but tonight I'll share with you guys, too, and remind you that Mother's Day is coming up, and it's too late to order one in time, so you've already blown it and I can hear your mother crying right now. You are in big trouble.

I'm kidding. I have room for one or two orders. Or, get yourself a bag since you know the kids are making you some stupid ass craft project that you'll have to keep and pretend you love. Like that macaroni necklace you had to wear to work last year. And then the creator of said necklace found the dog eating it and it was another late night of crying and recrimination for you....what? You really did like that necklace? Oh, right, yes, I quite liked mine, too, really. No, really. I LOVED it. I've having it framed in a shadowbox. Yes I am.

I'm hoping that at least some of you will not demand I turn in my feminist card for making that most evil of feminine encumbrances, the cute bag. And, if this shameless hawking of goods offends you, I apologize. But if you like bags, I swear to you that I am a damn fine seamstress and no one is exploited in my workplace except me, and while I am a woman and therefore less than human, I still get to exploit myself if I want to (although I entirely agree with Twisty that my subjective status means I am not really able to make a "choice" as to my exploitation, so I will not argue that it is empowerful or anything).

Yes!

Someone just got here via a search for "Michael Chiarello asshole."

I knew it wasn't just me. I KNEW it.

Perdone, por favor, mi español pobre

--but even I can make out the title, and so far as I can understand the rest of the piece, I'd say CalheR gets it. Contrasting coverage of the Austin clinic bomb attempt by American feminist bloggers with the Houston Chronicle's report, s/he notes:

La noticia completa tiene solo dos párrafos más, que he preferido no traducir porque tampoco dicen nada nuevo. Id allí y buscad la palabra terrorista, veréis como no aparece. Ni atentado. Ni siquiera la bomba era tal cosa: era un dispositivo capaz de causar lesiones o la muerte. ¡Qué cosa tan inofensiva! ¡Seguro que lo han hecho sin querer!

En fin. Imaginaros que, en lugar de ser ese mismo dispositivo puesto por un grupo pro-vida en una clínica abortiva, lo hubiera sido por un grupo pro-Alá en un colegio o en un hospital.

Very, very, VERY roughly en inglés:

The complete [Houston Chronicle] article has only 2 more paragraphs, which I have declined to reproduce as they don't add anything new either. If you go and you look for the word "terrorist," you will see it doesn't appear. Nor "attack." Not even the bomb is such a thing; it is "a device capable of causing injury or death." What an inoffensive thing! Surely it was made without that intent!

In conclusion: Imagine that, instead of the same device being put by a pro-life group in an abortion clinic, it had been put by a fundamentalist Muslim group in a school or a hospital. Yes, surely the narration of the event would have been very different.

What's the Spanish for "heh indeed?"

Into the Bloglines you go, Mentiras Piadosas, y gracias.

In Which I Confess My Heretofore Secret Adoration

Dearest Hilzoy,

I love you. I love you passionately enough to bear your United States citizens with full legal rights.

Love (and a nice rasher of crispy bacon),

Ilyka

This is What Erasure Looks Like, Or: That's One Way to Title This Photo, I Suppose

Perhaps it's just an artifact or a trick of the light, but I'm seeing someone something else in this photo besides wood floors.

It's just me, right? I need glasses, I bet.

She Did This Just to Show Me Up

Lauren triumphs over ADD; alas, I cannot say the same.

The box in the background of the photo above is, of course, filled with Christmas cards I never sent last year. But you see, I've got them right there, where I can see them, so this year, this is going to be my year. Things are going to change, I can feel it.

What?

Lie to Me, Internet Quiz

Lie shamelessly, lie often!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

It's all so flattering, almost as if they'd designed it that way!

Some of this stuff is true. I do like to be alone and I do like to have my way, making me a barrel of JOY JOY JOY to live with, let me tell you. Or let the boyfriend tell you. In fact I will let him tell you, just as soon as I unchain him from the bedpost and permit him to speak again.

But I do NOT have an eye for fine detail, which is how I wound up with a duvet cover that doesn't match the bedskirt, and did I tell you about the bathroom towels? The bathroom towels that don't match either because I could not tell the difference, in the bright lights of the store, between "terracotta" and "deep terracotta?" I am blind to detail. An imbecile. A walking fashion-don't.

Hey, listen: No one tell Chris Clarke about this quiz, okay? Because one of the choices for "That's Gross" is [whispering] a photo of a dude's hairy back and, well, you know how he gets about that. It is currently the most popular choice in the category of grossness, beating even the cigarette photo. But come on, Steroid Steve up there is much more disgusting than either of those choices. Everyone knows this; I don't know why they're all pretending they don't.

(Via beansbeans.)

Negative for Posting, Commenting, or Answering Email. Positive for Working a Whole Bunch.

I have been working a lot. Consequently I have developed a long shit list. Members of this list include:

All physical therapists: Rival only surgeons for mumbling and dictating reports with mouths full of food. Appear to increase, rather than relieve, pain in at least half their patients. Bore me senseless. Shut up, physical therapists.

All rheumatologists: I get that rheumatology is unbelievably complicated, but MUST every chart note exceed 15 minutes in yakety-yak time? Oh, must it really? You called in a medication refill, Dr. Rheumy. That should be one minute--two minutes, tops, if you also want to note a few lab results while you've got me on the line. Shut up, rheumatologists.

All podiatrists without exception everywhere and always amen, amen: Oh my stars and garters, will you all just shut up about the marvels of custom orthotics already. Custom orthotics bore me. Feet bore me. YOU bore me. Shut up, podiatrists.

Specialties so far remaining in my good graces: Neurology, Oncology, and a handful of internists but by no means most of them, or even half of them. This is just my personal experience, but it seems to me* as though neurology and oncology attract some brusque, no-nonsense personalities and damnit, as a transcriptionist, that is what I want. In fact it is what I generally want as a patient, too, but I don't think I'm the rule there and I imagine most people are all complaining that their neurologists and oncologists are so cold and clinical, no bedside manner at all. GOOD, I say. If I suddenly develop multiple sclerosis I don't want bedside manner. I want a cold clinical fish who won't mistakenly diagnose me with Parkinson's or epilepsy or Lou Gehrig's or what have you.

Do not even start me on the OB/GYNs, whose bedside manners stink more than not anyhow, but especially when they're done up Hollywood-fashion.


*Translation: "Don't show up here with a link to an August 2005 survey you searched up to demonstrate that, actually, most neurologists and oncologists are the swellest, swingingest, heppest, most personable people around, because I don't give a fuck and I don't want to hear it and if I could be bothered to check in with this blog more regularly, I would even delete that comment on the grounds that this blog is not the Monty Python Argument Clinc** and I find the tendency of people on the internet to nitpick every declarative statement, however qualified, tempered, and disclaimer-laden it may be, unbearably tedious."

**Why, yes, of course I will delete you for quoting from the Argument Clinic sketch. Depend upon it.

Some Thoughts on What Beauty is Mything

I was not allowed to have Barbie dolls as a child. My parents, although raising two girls with ultra feminine names (I am named for a famous adulteress, for heaven’s sake), somehow got stuck on the idea that Barbie was a sexist concept and a poor role model. Which I give them points for, except that I became utterly Barbie obsessed. Spending the night at someone else’s house, my first question was always, “Where are the Barbies? You have Barbies? I need Barbies! How much for the weemon and cheeldron?" Of course, other aspects of my mindset demanded that when Barbie was done shopping, tooling around in her pink convertible and marrying Ken, it was time for some serious Barbie nudity and X-rated capering. Everybody did that, right? Right?

I’ve come a long way, baby, even though I don’t smoke these (I hasten to add that I don't smoke at all, and neither should you). I have lurked in the background for many, many lipstick and high heels and blow jobs arguments in the feminist blogosphere. Why, Ilyka and I have even declared, quietly, our own stance on one of these issues. Lately, as the feminist lobe in my brain has expanded and expanded like Sponge Bob in a bathtub, leaving room for little else in the upstairs, I have noticed something disquieting about myself, and, now, will dare to suggest that I am not the only one who suffers thusly. Anecdotally; so step off here if you are looking for some scholarly discourse (might I add, as well, that in the same way that the art world has declared that one of the reasons there are no “great” female artists is that they deal with personal rather than encompassing themes, so do many dismiss what a woman is saying by degrading the anecdotal approach. To them, I say, Pffffft!).

The interesting thing, to me, is what happens in my head when I apply certain things, that I believe to be true, to myself. For example, the body hair. I am a great admirer of unshaved armpits---I liked it when Madonna did it, which was pretty defiant back in the 80s. I liked Paula Cole's pits, too. I know a woman who is at least 20 years older than me, who wears her hair in dreads and is so beautiful with her hippie clothing and artistic jewelry and ARMPIT HAIR that I am often caught staring. I think that this woman should never apologize to anyone about her full bush. I am enchanted by a lesbian midwife I met recently who wears Capri pants and hairy legs. So? What do I do everyday? I shave. I shave my legs, my pits and, even, my arms (I don’t like a hairy tattoo) and I do some work on my bikini line with other products. Because in my head, while I am able to appreciate this in others, there’s this filter that says, “But it wouldn’t look right on ME.”

Confused? Let’s look at high heels. I am tall, and I have worn heels for years. Recently, I’ve developed back trouble (if the shock has you feeling faint, please, take a deep breath, I’m sorry for dropping such a bomb on you). I see women in hippie shoes that are supportive and appropriate and I like the way that looks. I see women in flats, or in sneakers with skirts. But, see, it won’t work on me because my ankles are rather thick.

How about make-up? I’ve been moved to question my sexual orientation by women with natural, un-enhanced faces. They look so real, so earthy, so rich without all the paint. I, however, have never left the house without make-up unless I was being carried to a hospital. My gay boyfriend once suggested that, in order to further our friendship, one morning he will get up and come straight to my house looking exactly the way he did when he awoke, providing I do the same. Not On Your Life, Gay Boyfriend. *I* don’t look beautiful without make-up, I look tired and harsh.

Let’s take it another step to nudity. I remember the first time my mother took me with her to the swimming pool where she swam laps (for her BACK, imagine--the bad back, she is in the family). We walked into the women’s locker room and I nearly died of shock. REAL women! No airbrushing, no models, no conceits. Just real, naked, women. And they were amazing. Old women, young women, curvy women, skinny women, they were all interesting and visually appealing. Put me in that scene, naked as well, and I would immediately say that only I didn’t look good. See, I would look good if I was more proportional, but I have tiny breasts and a rather smackalicious ass, which means that outside of ancient Greece, I'm all wacky looking. If I had a smaller ass or larger breasts (and I am more in favor of the former), THEN I would look lovely naked.

As a fiber artist, I make clothes for large women. I love to design things for a dear friend, who is built like a square. She is solid, short, wide and beautiful. Powerful in a Venus of Willendorf sort of way. For my own self, I worry that I am no longer a size 4, but instead I’ve moved into the, -gasp- 6-8 range. Are you seeing the pattern here?

It’s not an issue of my failure to advance myself being due to my husband. Bless him, the man has never once suggested that I should look any way other than the way I look at any given point. You would not believe the number of people who, upon seeing my tattoo, ask me what my husband thinks and if he’s okay with it. Likewise my hair, my wardrobe, etc. He likes me to like what I’m doing with myself. At one point, when I had returned home to help care for my father, who was dying of cancer, I stopped shaving. There was no time, I had no interest in it, it didn’t matter. My husband had not come with me, as someone needed to hold a job, and when he visited I was amazed that he didn’t mind my hairy bod one bit.

So, what holds me back is myself, my deep connection to a culture that says that a good woman doesn’t believe herself to be attractive, no matter what. So while I’ve come to really appreciate other women (and on that matter, don’t take up with any of Ilyka’s “fat lady” bullshit, she’s not, she’s real and attractive and sofa king smart, too) I’ve yet to reach the point of no longer hating myself, or feeling that I need the larger patriarchal stamp of approval on my level of attractiveness.

I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Incommunicado

Hey, what's this? Oh, yeah: I have a blog! I should post in it or something, huh?

I had a really good conversation with my mother this evening. One of the reasons you couldn't pay me to go back to being a teenager (along with the acne, the hormones, the unrequited love, the ridiculous curfew, and the backstabbing faux friends) is that when I was younger I could not relate to my mother at all. As far as I was concerned, my mother was just one big walking list of What Not To Do When You Grow Up. And my job was to point out every single one of those items on that list to her every second of every day. Item One: Jiminy Christmas, the house is clean enough. Put the vacuum away.

Of course, now that I'm older and posting pictures of my yellowed bathroom grout on the internet it occurs to me that, hey! If you clean halfway decently once a week, you never get to yellowed grout in the first place. Maybe mom had a point all those years.

We were not talking about housecleaning tonight, though. We were talking about people who don't communicate. That is, we were talking about my boyfriend's family and my mother's family.

"Every time I think the (mother's maiden name)'s are bad about not communicating," I told her, "I just take a look at the boyfriend's family. They're worse."

"Oh, I know," my mother said. "I don't know how I dealt with it all those years. I don't want to think what I might have been like if I'd stayed there. You can't say anything! No one ever expresses any emotion--"

"Emotion, hell," I said, "The boyfriend's family won't even deal in facts if the facts are in any way unpleasant."

"Yes! What causes that?" my mother asked. I think she was mostly asking herself, but I'm a bigmouth, so I jumped right in with my pet theory.

"I honestly think it's some Midwestern farming family thing handed down through generations of Scandinavians and Germans," I replied, because I love blaming everything on ethnicity, provided it's some ethnicity I share in myself. It's so convenient, and at least half the time you're right. My mother's family is Scandinavian (and English, another ethnic group famous for forthrightness and high comfort levels with messy emotional matters). My boyfriend's family is German and Irish, but it's the German that predominates. I know this because I have never succeeding in enjoying a drink with any of them, save of course my boyfriend, who seems to have got all the Irish and nearly none of the German.

"But I mean, you can't even say stuff that's harmless, or I mean harmless to normal people, for fear it might hurt cousin so-and-so's feelings," I continued.

"Every time I go back there I get in trouble," my mother said, referring to her mother's house. "I mean every time, because of course your father, you know he just says whatever's on his mind, and then since I've been living with him, I've adapted to his ways, and so I'm--I'm not used to covering up anymore, either, and I forget myself and say what I think, and then everyone else is horrified."

"And it's always over something trivial. At least, with Mark's family. Stuff that wouldn't bother anyone else, but if you say it, it's 'Oh dear oh dear I just don't know--'"

"Just saying what you'd like to eat is a crime," my mother agreed.

We agreed that my father's family does communication better. The funny thing is I think this is one of the few times I have heard my mother come right out and say, "Your father's family has it right." My father's family is working-class Irish and Spanish. Between my grandfather the Spic and my grandmother the Mick, who had time to fuss over niceties? Who had time to obsess over what is and is not "nice to say?" They both worked like dogs. My father has no conception of "stay-at-home mom." He didn't grow up with one.

But because of this cut-to-the-chase communication style, when my grandmother says, "Can I fix you something? How 'bout an English (muffin)? It'd take me just a minute to fix you a nice English," you know she means it. She isn't going to fix you an English muffin and then sneak off to the deck to carp to your aunt that you're so tiring, the way you keep her running in the kitchen all the time, and why couldn't you have just been polite and declined the English muffin, the way the Nice People are brought up to do?

My dad's mom isn't going to do that to you. She's going to fix you a nice English muffin, and beam when you tell her it's good. Which you will do, because it will be awesome.

But that is exactly what my mother's mother would do--plus, bonus, the English muffin would be horrible, all not toasted enough and scarcely dabbled with ye-gods-margarine--and that is why every question my maternal grandmother asks catches you off-guard, turns you to jelly while you ponder every potential (negative) ramification of your answer.

Too many people I tell this to say "Oh not me, not me. I'd show her." Yeah? Bet me, motherfucker. I've seen strong people reduced to infants around my grandmother, even now, even these days, when she's on so many prescription narcotics it's a wonder she wakes up most mornings. Me? I "uh" and "um" around my mother's family a lot, stalling for time, trying to choose the least offensive answer--the nicest answer. They probably think I can't speak so good English.

"Well, of course, it's very sad, but I suppose it isn't Ilyka's fault, bless her poor heart. Her mother did marry a Spanish man."

Enough of them; it's your turn. What's your comfort zone of honesty in communication? Did you grow up with my mother's family, or my father's, or something in-between? I know my background and my preference; what's yours?

Musings on Safety and Slow Movies

Have you ever seen the movie "Safe" with Julianne Moore? Spoiler alert if you haven't, but it's not really the sort of movie that has you hanging on the edge of your seat. I watched it during a long winter in upstate New York while my husband was deployed somewhere warmer. To say that it's a quiet film is a bit of an understatement, and I'm still shocked that I found it available for rent on post, given that it's also a very cerebral film and military posts tend to cater to a more escapist crowd. It's slow. There's no body count, and while the link above mentions a sex scene, it wasn't particularly memorable--more like real sex than Hollywood porntastic fare.

The premise of the movie is that a comfortable, suburban housewife (played by Moore) finds herself becoming allergic to her environment. The film is supposed to be "an allegorical approach to the AIDS crisis," which I'll admit I didn't pick up on. What I have found myself returning to, lately, is the question as to just what it was that she was really allergic to; what it was that she needed to be safe from. I'm not at all knocking those who have environmental allergies; I'm questioning the allegorical use of environmental allergies to construct the story. The director meant the allegory to be related to the AIDS crisis. Being unaware of that, I found the central question to be whether or not she was allergic to her environment or, was she seeking escape from the limiting, consumer driven life of a suburban housewife?

Did the movie's character perhaps wake up in her king-sized bed with the 9,000 thread count sheets and hand picked goose down pillows and Ralph Lauren bedding coordinates and find herself staring down the barrel of another meaningless day of lunch, shopping, and PTA meetings? Did she have a spiritual crisis when she realized that she wasn't producing anything of meaning, that her relationships were sterile and she was aging? I find it intriguing, as I look at my own life and ask myself what am I producing that is of meaning? Are my relationships simply caricatures of a socially prescribed model that lack depth?

From a feminist perspective, then, the film could be viewed as a woman realizing that she has been a prisoner of patriarchy, that she is not an actor, but acted upon, and that the foundation upon which her life is built is of no real meaning. Is that what causes that first nosebleed? I think of her as a story book princess for whom the magic potion wore off, the rose colored glasses crumbled, and she realized that she had no real autonomy. I am not religious, but I believe that the drive to consume; to have more stuff, new stuff, newer stuff, too much stuff, is deadly to the spirit. Particularly when, as a woman, one realizes that she is also socially defined as a commodity to be consumed.

Ultimately, Julianne Moore's character checks out of her life entirely; moving away to a commune in the desert, then, finally, climbing into a small white pod, from which she will not emerge. At that point, with all the earthly trappings and relationships shut out, she is safe. She leaves behind a family that is bewildered and essentially thinks she has simply gone crazy. It's certainly uncomfortable, for the viewer, to see the process unfold as she withdraws further and further. I experienced feelings of resistance to it; I wanted her to "get a grip" or get over herself and check back in. Most of us are uncomfortable with extremes, and she certainly goes for the extreme solution.

Also, then, as an allegory for feminist awakening, it illustrates what I think many women fear will happen if they accept the notion of patriarchy as utterly pervasive, infecting every aspect of our existence. Because, then, how do we continue to live? I struggle with this daily; that's why on my myspace page, I ask, "Can radical feminists be married and have kids?" Is the only solution to the disconnects of patriarchal life to crawl into a small white pod and shut the door? A related aspect of the film that is notable is the burden that her allergies became in and of themselves. She exchanged one prison for another; she was no freer when she was anxiously analyzing every morsel of food, the fiber content of clothes, the ingredients to all medications, shampoos, etc. There are times when the feminist lens feels a bit like that, as well; can I have meaningful relationships if I am constantly analyzing them for patriarchal content?* At what point can I keep my feminist credentials and still live fully? I live in this world, right here, right now. If I'm not willing to go so far as the little white pod, where do I strike the balance? Where have you struck your balance, and how do you maintain it?

*This is entirely different than the criticism leveled at feminists that they are "no fun." I'm quite comfortable being "no fun" if "fun" means letting strange men pat me on the ass at parties, for example.

Since I’m Not Getting a Damned Thing Done Anyway…

I live in a locality with unusually poor medical care. I cling to the “unusual” qualification, having lived in only two other places; Ft. Drum, N.Y., where the military provided what was equally bad healthcare (but it was the military, expectations were low to begin with), and a brief stint in suburban Chicago, where the healthcare was my first experience being treated like an actual human being in an emergency room. Since then, however, I’ve had enough horrifying experiences with medical care in my community to start a separate blog and post daily for at least two years, never repeating myself. I suspect that our community is not, actually, all that unique, which is pretty terrifying.

My mother became very ill the night before last with a high fever, extreme body aches, and weakness. She’s 62, swims three times a week and uses her Nordic Track everyday. She’s a partner in an accounting firm, takes no prescription medicine, and is a health nut. She couldn’t get out of bed, so my sister and I went to her house and called her doctor; he’s a skilled physician, but like most of the system, he’s a doc for profit. His office told us to take her to the ER. There, we had a really bad experience and they managed to nearly kill her, which I’ll share in a moment.

First, though, let me say that in spending the entire day in an ER, with momentary breaks to go get things from my mom’s house and take a kid from one caretaker to another, I noticed what I think is the absolute cornerstone of What’s Wrong With Healthcare In America. I’m sure you’re curious as to my discovery, so I’ll let you experience it as I did.

In the ER waiting room, my mother’s hands began to constrict and she couldn’t move them. She was barely coherent, and my sister and I had to repeatedly demand service from the admissions rep before, a full fifteen minutes after we arrived in the waiting room and after a supervisor had been called and we had started threatening to call 911 from the waiting room, a triage nurse deigned to stagger out and take my mom back. Once in there, she lectured me on the concept of hyperventilating (which caused the hand constriction) while not treating my mother. Then she made great show of announcing that the only other hospital in town had just closed its ER and was diverting everything to HER emergency room.

Once in a treatment room, my mother’s temperature was 103F, and she had chills and severe aches. We waited just under two hours to see the doctor, who was the only doctor on staff. He decided that she had the flu through this sophisticated technique:

Doctor: Have you had a flu shot, Ma’am?
Mother: No, I never get them.
Doctor: You have the flu.

He then prescribed antibiotics (nonsense in the case of a flu virus, but ERs are places where patients go trick or treating, and you can’t leave with an empty sack) and pain medication. They gave her Oxycodone. Now, I’ve never heard of treating fever related body aches with narcotics, but I’m not a doctor. The narcotic caused my mother to pass out when she got up to go to the bathroom, and her BP dropped to 80/30. This is bad. Two hours later, they sat her up, and her pressure dropped to 40/20, her respirations stopped and her heart rate plunged down to nothing. Kind of like, oh, being dead.

It was after 5:00 pm when her personal physician arrived at the ER and started ordering tests, you know, to DIAGNOSE her beyond the anecdotal flu. She was admitted and given a room around 9:00 pm, just under twelve hours after we entered the ER.

Every single person that we talked to about our frustrations; nurses, student nurses, friends and acquaintances, blamed all the failures of our system on one thing. Who or what is it, you ask, Grasshopper?

THE POOR PEOPLE AND THEIR MEDICAID.

Now, one of my core beliefs is that medical care cannot be effectively delivered using a for-profit model. It works well for doctors, who make salaries that place them in the top 2-5% earning brackets. No for-profit system works well when it has to give services away, hence the belief that the problem with health care is the damned, whiny, lazy-ass poor folks.

What it apparently is not the fault of, is:

--Physicians who continue to accept new patients until their practices are too crowded to deal with existing patients’ sudden illnesses.

--Physicians dumping patients on the ER for non-emergencies that they, themselves, don’t have time or inclination to treat.

--A for-profit model for healthcare that requires that drugs be handed out regardless of their necessity in order to support the great pharmaceutical machine.

--A for-profit model for healthcare. Did I mention that?

--A propensity on society’s part to believe that making less than $250,000-$300,000.00 a year is totally inadequate for a doctor. (I know the average is $150K, and I’m just not moved to tears by that, either).

--The status of physicians as demi-gods who are smarter than normal human beings, rather than specialized service providers like numerous others who are well educated in their area, but not dieties.

--Understaffed emergency rooms that operate on the philosophy that everyone wants narcotics and/or antibiotics and if you hand it out, they’ll shut up and go home.

--A complete failure on the part of the healthcare system to incorporate compassion and humanity into the larger model upon which it is based.

--Entrenched racism and class bias.


No, no, no, you might be saying, “It’s the poor people’s fault. The have the Medicaid, they want us to treat them, they’re dirty and smell bad, and, and, the whole family comes to the ER, they don’t have any decency, the poor people. They drink and smoke and fuck and what do they expect? It’s the poor people’s fault that those of us with money, with insurance, with education, get sub-standard care! They’re draining our resources!"

What’s so marvelous about this realization is that it means that the rest of us are completely off the hook. As long as we can blame the poor people, we don’t have to fix the system, or have difficult conversations about entitlement and medical business. It’s so, so, American of us to think that way. Makes me want to put on some Lee Greenwood and have another beer, while pretending that I’m economically safe because I deserve to be, and anyone who wants to work hard enough can have what I have. If they’d put those Medicaid cards down, hell, they’d be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, the lazy bastards.

Instances in Which I Am Just Barely Able to Overlook Sexism

Okay: In my perfect world, Snoop would not describe his female lawyer as "riding for her pimp." She went to law school and passed the bar, Snoop; furthermore, she fought your battle on Bill O'Reilly's show while you did whatever it is you do on your off hours. Show some respect.

We do not live in my perfect world, however, so I'll take what I can get.



And rock on, Lauren Lake.

(Via.)