rants and ramblings of utter randomness

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Hmm. I'll go to work, and hopefully get home before all the drunk people leave the bars. I'll recover by waking up and being relieved that the stupid holiday is finally over.

Yeah, I know I sound cynical, but I hate New Year's Eve. It's just an exuse for everyone to get drunk. It's not the getting drunk that bothers me, not at all. It's millions of people acting like lemmings that makes me a little sick. It's basically a meaningless holiday as far as I'm concerned. New Year's Day is okay, especially when someone has a party with mimosas and lots of food, but I haven't gone to one of those in a long time.


And anyway, my new year starts in October:




In other news, I'm going to try to peer switch for Monday so I can go here.

In still other news, my (borrowed) car needs a new clutch, to the tune of $675.

In even more other news, I went to a Triple Goddess ritual (during a Blue Moon!) celebrated by Spiral Tree Grove, and it was awesome and all that good stuff, and also very nice to get back to Things Pagan again. I think I'll go to their Imbolc celebration also.

Um, it's the second one.

So Ms. Holmes says this on FOX:



The first lie: She had cancerous tumour. Except, no, she didn't have cancer. Or even a tumour. According to the Mayo Clinic, where she was treated, she had a Rathke's Cleft cyst, which according to Saint John's Health Center are "not true tumors or neoplasms; instead they are benign cysts". I'm not saying her condition wasn't scary or didn't warrant attention, but it wasn't the dire emergency she's implying. Oh, wait, she's not implying. She's actually saying that. Granted, it's FOX who added the "cancer" blurb to its crawler, but Shona Holmes sure isn't jumping up and saying no, they're wrong, it wasn't cancer.

The second lie: Without the treatment, she'd be dead in six months. According to, well, everything I've read, there's no indication that Ms. Holmes' condition was life threatening. She says in an interview with CBC that a doctor told her this, but apparently he did so prior to doing any testing. I haven't found anything, anywhere, that says a Radke's Cleft Cyst is life-threatening.

...aaand, the third lie: This is actually relevant to the average American. Ms. Holmes' surgery cost $97,000. I don't know if that's in Canadian or US funds, but either way it's a whole lot of money. It's also what an uninsured American citizen would have to pay for the same treatment. I seriously doubt that most Americans with health insurance could afford this, let alone people who can't afford insurance in the first place.

Also, uninsured Americans don't have to worry about wait times, because for the most part, they can't get care at all.

Ms. Holmes is currently trying to get the Ontario government to reimburse her for costs. They're refusing on the grounds that she wasn't denied treatment. If I tried to do something like that with the Rhode Island government, they'd not only refuse, they'd laugh me out of New England. And it wouldn't be because they didn't deny me treatment but because they weren't required to treat me in the first place. And if I were one of the 47 million uninsured/underinsured in the US, I'd be SOL.

In an interview with CBC's As It Happens (interview is in the first part of the segment), Ms Holmes talks about her condition and her reasons for seeking healthcare in the US, and manages to plant her foot firmly in her mouth.

There's more in this short segment of NPR's On the Media, and more in-depth discussion in this episode of Talk of the Nation.

When I rant about US healthcare, I rarely, if ever, use Canada as a comparison, mostly because Canada's isn't the only national health system in the world (actually the inverse is true: the US is the only NATO country without a national health service), and Americans need to broaden their investigation a little (not that most of us are doing much investigating at all other than running around saying "OMG SOSHULIZED MEDDIZIN IZ EVIL OMG PLZ HALP MEEEE!).

No health care system is perfect, not Canada's or Norway's or fill-in-the-blank. But there's a difference between critical comparison and outright slander and IMNSHO that's what's obviously happening here. And since Canada seems to be the ONLY system being compared to ours these days, and because what's being said is IMO slanderous/libelous, I'm breaking my rule.


Canadians, please feel free to chime in here, since I'm only going by what I read (which is pretty extensive, but still), and as I've never used the system myself I'm definitely on the outside looking in.

mijan posted a wonderful rant about the separation of church and state in the US. She linked to this article from the LA Times that says a lot of stuff, notably this:

"A purist would insist that prayers in government settings blur the constitutional distinction between church and state"

Um, they do. Prayers, being religious in nature, don't belong anywhere near the workings of government.

Yeah, I'm well aware that the Founding Fathers invoked God in session. The Founding Fathers were products of their era, and also weren't perfect. Some of them (the author of the Declaration of Independence included) even OWNED OTHER PEOPLE, but we don't hear a lot of talk about that, or about how "all men are created equal" originally applied only to white males of property (which if applied today would make a mockery of the recent federal election). I admire the heck out of the Founding Fathers for their intelligence and bravery and passion and unfailing tenacity, but hey, some perspective, here.

and this:

"Pushed to its logical conclusion, such 1st Amendment fundamentalism would forbid presidents of the United States from invoking God in their speeches or participating in the National Prayer Breakfast, a tradition that goes back to President Eisenhower."

Apparently I'm a First Amendment fundamentalist, because ITA with this idea. So WHAT if the "tradition" goes back to Eisenhower? I don't care if it goes back to George Washington. Longstanding tradition ≠ rightness, wtf?

The addition of "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance goes back to the Eisenhower era, too. It was adopted as an adjunct to McCarthyism, but hey, it's still perfectly okay, and people who want it removed on the basis of the First Amendment are accused of being God haters, anti-American, or even (*gasp!*) Communists (O HAI, GHOST OF JOE MCCARTHY!). Nobody would ever call them patriots, a term universally applied to the Founding Fathers, who did all those brave, passionate, tenacious things on the basis of religious freedom and liberty for white men of property.

In the comments to her post mijan links to this video, which might be the most disturbing thing of all:



I don't think ANY prayer belongs in government sessions, but if they are, then they ALL are. Yeah, this was heckling from the gallery, but nobody can convince me it wasn't covertly sanctioned by at least a few of the senators.

Having said all that, I'm with mijan--if someone decides to run for office on the Pastafarian platform, I'm SO there. As long as they don't do any ritual capellini-eating during congressional sessions, of course. *g*


I really want to read American Savior. Jesus runs for President. On the BEATITUDES PLATFORM. How awesome is that? I wonder if my library has it.

Way cool quote meme, by way of aukestrel:

Go here and find ten quotes, or just think of ten quotes from memory or somewhere else. Then post them, easy as pie.

I sort of collect quotes, so narrowing them down to ten isn't easy. This list by no means represents all of my favourites.

• The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
  
  --Thomas Paine
  
  So much for If You're Not With Me You're With the Terrorists. Oh, Thomas Paine, how I do love you.
  
  
• Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
  
  --Roland Deschain, from The Gunslinger by Stephen King
  
  Roland, you keep speaking truth whether I want to hear it or not. Thankee-sai.
  
  
• When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical may be madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasures where there is only trash...Too much sanity may be madness, and maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.
  
  --Miguel De Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha
  
  This book keeps showing up in my life, so I think the universe wants me to read it.
  
  
  
• We look like a geography, but just scratch us and we bleed history.
  
  --Miriam Waddington, on Canada
  
  Definitely one of my top five or so quotes, so ( I will carry on about it. )
  
  
  Canadians on my flist, you may now mock me.
  
  
  
  
• We have a secret in our culture...
  and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.
  
  --Laura Stavoe Harm
  
  ( small rant thisaway )
  
  
  
• ( The Paradoxical Commandments )
  
  
  Reportedly this quote hung on the wall of Mother Theresa's orphanage, and is often attributed to her. In my own version of Fraser!canon, it's on his wall, too. :D
  
  
• After the last tree has been cut down,
  After the last river has been poisoned,
  After the last fish has been caught
  Only then will you find
  That money cannot be eaten.
  --Cree Prophecy
  
  The prophecy is coming true with abandon, all over the world. We should have listened to the Cree.
  
  
• When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them."
  --Helen Keller
  
  Helen is my hero. I've loved her from a very young age; two of the first books I remember reading were The Story of Helen Keller and Helen Keller's Teacher. I completely obsessed on her when I was little. And that's before I realized that a whole hunk of her life story had been kept from me by the media. Helen was a suffragist and an ardent socialist who actively protested US involvement in World War I, fought for women's rights, and basically spent her whole life in service to other people. She was also very much a woman, and her sexuality and romantic life is also handwaved. It pisses me off that TPTB chose (and still do to a point) to censor such a rich part of her story from the world.
  
  
  
• Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
  --Oscar Wilde.
  
  Despite my Oscar Wilde love, I didn't know about this quote until I heard Tom McLaughlin say it. Oscar had a flair for hiding truth in a humorous epigram, getting people to listen by stealth means.
  
  
  
• And I believe in the future we shall suffer no more
  Maybe not in my lifetime but in yours I feel sure
  --Paul Simon, "The Cool, Cool River"
  
  I could have done an all-Paul Simon quote list and not even touch the hundreds of favourite lyric quotes. I especially love this one because it's so optimisitic. I should sing it to Amelia. :)

patchfire and I are each enrolled in ALACE's Childbirth Educator course. One of the requirements is to tour hospitals and/or freestanding birth centers in our communities. I haven't done mine yet (songdog, hopefully will come along, and mr_t00by, I hope, with proper scheduling). It's hospitals for me, since there are no actual freestanding birth centers in RI.

patchfire toured the notorious Northside Hospital in Atlanta, and wrote about it in birth_is_normal.

Here's her post (note: she told me that the tour guide actually used the term "lovely gown". I should be amused).

Her description sounds a lot like Women and Infants' Hospital in Providence, which I'll be touring.

( oddly unexpected rant about the American way of Birth. Do not click unless you want a virtual earful, with a side of sarcasm. )

Bleh. This wasn't going to be MY rant about U.S. birth culture; I was just linking and giving a "what she said" to patchfire's post. Brought back some bad memories, I guess. Ick.

On a positive note about this hospital, they've got one heck of a women's oncology unit.

But yeah. What she said. *sigh*

I guess my Big Update and Sox-beat-Yankees celebration and my unexpected but not unwelcome opinion of Johnny Damon will have to wait. Eep.