I Went To MIT

My parents will be so proud…

The wierd thing? In the last section, for professions, I knew 98% of the various professions. I guess it pays to have a big family.

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Watching Waiting Hoping

Watching Waiting Hoping
Originally uploaded by Mycropht.

Sometimes you just can’t wait for your Dad to get home…

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For Micah…

Poor Micah at the Apple Green Hills store had to wait on me today. I gave them cash money for Sims 2 Mac version, and the nice young fellow tried to upsell me on .Mac, which I’ve had and no longer use.

Me: “I think I kind of freaked Micah out back there…”

Tim: ” Eh, maybe sorta a little bit.”

Me: “I probably shouldn’t have said ‘ Aspyr are bastards'”……

Tim: “Yeah, I think right about there is where you lost him.”

So, Micah, wherever you are, I’m sorry for being eccentric in your store.

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Flag Burning

I don’t like this. It makes it all that harder to spot the idiots, when they aren’t just burning the flag right in front of you.

Seriously, I do think that flag-burning should be protected speech. I don’t like it when people burn the flag, but I like that they have the freedom to do so.

I also don’t like the totemic nature of the amendment. When we removed God from all spheres of public office, we seem to have begun the process of transferring our need for the sacred to State objects. Render under Caeser…..

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TennCareless

These folks are trying to save TennCare.

I’m not so sure they should. There’s been a lot of talk about people dying without TennCare, but I have yet to see who or have explained to me why in anything other than hyperbolic terms. “Estimates” and “…will surely die…” are different from empirical evidence of Person A being deprived of goods and services, the absence of which directly leads to the death of Person A.

I am fortunate enough to not need TennCare right now, but I do have a chronic health problem so I realize that I’m living in somewhat of a glass house.

I have three anecdotal experiences with TennCare, through people I know. These anecdotes have formed a large basis of my opinion about the program.

1. Single Mom

I worked with a single mother who had a sickly child and couldn’t afford the insurance our company offered. The mother worked 40-plus hours a week for a low wage, and our family deductable would have taken more than half her take-home pay. She couldn’t afford groceries and insurance for her child.

2. Yuppie In Training

I worked with a woman who got on TennCare when she was a freelancer. As I can attest, freelancers’ incomes vary with season and those who don’t have ethics do a lot of work under the table. This particular woman was clearing $50K a year in unreported income before coming to work on the books for us. She stayed on TennCare because buying insurance was “just too expensive, and {she’d} already made the cut.”

3. Overweight Beautician

This woman cut my hair for years, and owned her own franchise of a nationwide hair salon. Any woman who has had her hair cut and styled knows that beauty operators can talk your ear off. According to her, she purchased the business in part with funds she saved by not declaring her tips and not paying for health insurance. When she had to have her uterus (!) removed, her doctor phonied up some extra paper work so that TennCare would pay for a tummy tuck.

I’m sure that these real people, that I have known and eaten with and shared car rides with are exceptions to the rule, and two out of three people on TennCare aren’t cheats. I’d like to think that Single Mom is the best example of who should qualify for social programs–someone working hard and trying to raise a family but just needing help making ends meet. However, the more I hear, the more it seems as though there are many people who are in love with the idea of “beating the system”.

Reading through the Myths & Realities page seems to be a schizophrenic experience. On the one hand, proponents of the program are claiming that TennCare is meant to be

the safety net that fills the gaps in the commercial insurance system.

They then go on to say that

The relatively small number of people (around 150,000 of the program’s total enrollment of 1.3 million) on whom the majority of TennCare money is spent have 5 or more simultaneous chronic illnesses. Their care costs a lot, but it is not optional or discretionary, and they are too sick and poor to pay for it themselves.

Okay. I understand. But then why are we chafing at eliminating 300,000 enrollees, on whom we have seen that the majority of monies are not spent?

The mythbusters then claim that

The real money in TennCare is being spent to treat the sickest people. Real savings can only be achieved by reducing the cost of their care. There are clinically sound ways to reduce those costs. But arbitrary limits are not among them, and they certainly are not painless.

It sounds like the 300,000 people who will have to opt into their employers’ plans or stop getting free tummy tucks are a drop in the bucket, and once again political operatives are using an entitlement program to jockey for elective office positions.

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House Flipping Is Starting To Take Its Toll….

This Nashville Blogger is trying to move house.

I predict we’ll see much more of this type of frustration in the upcoming years….

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Nobody Got Into Pr0n For The Paperwork

Or…I don’t know. Maybe there is some kind of ultra kinky CPA pr0n that involves ledger books and manila folders. Not being a devotee of that side of the universe, I have no idea.

Any way, the Pr0nmaking community is all up in arms about 2257 regulations (SFW) .

The thrust (heh) of these regulations is that producers and purveyors of explicit material are required to

a) maintain detailed records about the true age, true name and cross-referenced aliases of all employees.

b) make said detailed records readily-available at a street address, said address printed on the packaging materials for all videos and paraphinalia.

I’m a libertarian, so I’m supposed to feel righteous anger about the Federal Government interfering in legitimate business. Too bad that I don’t. Why? Well, I worked for a company that sells photo albums and paper plates. We had strict Federal labeling guidelines on everything, and spent a truckload of money enforcing them. PAPER FRICKIN PLATES.

I’m finding it very difficult to feel bad for Slee Z. Entrepreneur for actually having to keep business records and follow Federal labeling Guidelines that the rest of the business community have been hampered by since the dawn of time. Those of us in mainstream businesses see our bottom lines bullied into nonexistance, watch our friends get laid off and suffer through hiring freezes that last for eighteen months at a time. It would seem that what has been good for our gander should be sauce for the Goose industry.

Side benefit? All of the extra office space that has gone unrented since the dotcom bubble puncture can now serve as Addresses Of Record for the Adult Industry.

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Huh. Who Woulda Thunk It?

One of the things the Writers’ Workshop people stressed was to write to music. They said to pick songs your characters like. (Writers are scary people. We know this.)

It would appear that, unlike me, neither of my characters at this part of the story like Neil Diamond. While that is fine, if anybody in this book likes Pearl Jam there will be deaths. Ugly, messy, bloody deaths. That is all.

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Where did all the posts go?

test….

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Tis A Song, A Sigh Of The Weary

Stephen Foster wrote this song in 1854. He had separated from his wife, his dear friend Charles had recently died and his muse was slipping away. He would die 10 years later, alone and broken by sorrow. It is not his most famous or best-loved tune, probably because his heartache is so audible. I first heard it sung by Mare Winningham (of all people) in the movie Georgia . It remains one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and I’m wearing out Nanci Griffith’s cover. If you have 99 cents to spare, pick it up on iTunes. You may be glad you did.

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