Archives August 2007

Last night while we ate dinner I fired up Sicko, the latest Michael Moore documentary.  Sicko is about the American medical system and how it compares to the government run health programs around the world.  Wow, now I have yet another thing to be disgusted with.  I guess I haven’t given much though to health care over my life since I always have been fortunate enough to have health insurance.  There have been several episodes when I did receive medical care and was floored by the bills that were generated.

I remember when I was 30 and had the vein pulled out of my left leg, the bills were so outrageous that I refused to pay them for a very long time, only relenting just before they were turned over to a collector so I could keep my credit record spiffy.  However my run ins with “the system” were minor compared to the examples shown in the movie.

Once again, the root of this evil is big business, insurance companies whom profit by denying people health care.  Lobbyists are the minions of these companies, buying off any politician they can so they are allowed to continue their legalized rape of the American people.  Just like big oil, the insurance companies throw their money around to squash any attempts to get a national health care system in place.   Insurance companies are obscenely profitable.  The one CEO they showed had compensation worth 1.5 BILLION dollars.

They showed the health care systems in Canada, England, France and Cuba, yes, Cuba.  All of these countries have government run health care.  All of these countries see health care as a basic need/right of their citizens, just like a police force, fire departments and libraries.  For some reason in the US, our people have been brainwashed to think it makes perfect sense that only certain people should qualify for competent medical care.  Insurance and drug companies pay a lot of money to keep us thinking that way.

If you need another reason to get really angry with big business and politicians, watch Sicko.  It made me sick. Oh yea, it gets an A.

I finally got an update on the van.  Evidently the reason the rear brakes were hot was because the emergency brake cable was rusted solid, keeping the brakes applied at all times.  Hmmm that will hurt your gas mileage a bit huh?  We haven’t even gotten to the point of money/fault yet.  I will strongly offer up that this problem was present when they replaced the brakes the first time and they just didn’t catch it, since I have never used the emergency brake on the van since I have owned it. 

They also found several bushings in the front end that were gone which could be contributing to the mystery vibrations.  I talked to the owner awhile and he again said how they have been so busy and they are working the van work in between more urgent jobs.  I will call back today to see if anything more concrete comes up.  I just want the work done.

My scheduled Friday 300 workout may be in jeopardy.   I tried to do chest today and got nowhere with it.  My warm up set of dumbbell chest presses was a no go.  I couldn’t even press them up once before the pain in my shoulder deadened the arm, making it impossible to push.  Knocking out 50 push ups, holding a 135 pound barbell overhead for 2 or 3 minutes and doing 50 presses overhead just will not be possible without a rapid recovery in the next 48 hours. 

The results from the Fort Myers event are up.  The team that took first off our net won the whole thing and we beat them one game so it is a small consolation. 

They seem to have assembled a good cast of characters for Big Brother 8.  There are a few of them that stand out to me.  Evil Dick is quite the character.  He is an in your face, brutally honest, brutally paranoid type of guy.  He is a late 40’s rock band type of dude.  His daughter whom he hadn’t talked to in two years is also in the house.  Evidently their relationship has been rather explosive and they have been attempting to mend things in front of a national audience.  His daughter is very pretty but she is so thin that she looks like a poster model for anorexia.

There is a gay guy in there named Dustin that has an uncanny resemblance to our next door neighbor both in appearance and speaking style.  Then there is this incredibly annoying, incredibly vain girl named Jen.  She walks around constantly wearing shirts with her name incorporated into them with sayings like “Jensa Member”  She thinks that she is extremely beautiful, she isn’t. The black girl Jamica is extremely religious.  She walks around telling people how the result of the show is preordained by God.  When she starts on her sermons the show’s producers drop in a church music bed. Funny.  For me, Amber is the biggest emotional wreck on the show.  The girl cries constantly.  She cries for no reason.  She cries if the sky is blue.  She cries if the wind blows.  I have never seen a person cry as much as she does, it is insanity.

Yea when I lead with reality tv talk you know I don’t have much to say.