Thoughts and Ruminations

I'm writing this mostly for myself rather than for anyone else. I'm figuring that I'm going to be closing out my web log soon as my renewal of my domain name is supposed to happen this coming month, and I don't really have the money to pay for it, so I'm figuring the blog is going to end up going into the ether forever soon. So I figured I'd get the last bit of juice out of it before giving it up forever.

Things haven't been working out well for me lately, which is not surprising. It just hasn't been one of those years. Nothing I can do about that.

I went for a one day screening for a job the other day, and it was somewhat of a no-brainer, but apparently that doesn't really mean anything because I didn't get that job. Nor have I been able to get any other job for that matter. It's like I'm living in this fake world where it keeps going on around me, but I'm not part of it. And no matter what I do, I can't become a part of it. I try, but it seems like life has pretty much just given up on me.

It's like one of those great epic stories (not that my story is all that epic) but I've often wondered what happens to the hero after the big story is over and there's no obvious sequel planned. Not everyone gets to be Indiana Jones, reliving new adventures over and over again because those adventures just seem to come to him. No, some of us got our one big grab at the brass ring and we've been holding on for air ever since, never realizing the oxygen supply was severely limited when we went on autopilot.

I've been working on finishing up some of my novels, so I can at least say I got something accomplished. I worked pretty hard on revamping my Rumors of War novel, which is the first part of an epic arch story that I've been planning for a good part of my adult life. It's unfortunate that I'll never get to finish that epic. But I suspected it was going to outlast me anyway. I spent most of the day rewriting major sections that needed work. I'm hoping to have it completed by tomorrow. Then I'll send it out to be rejected before allowing it to disappear in the ether with everything else.

I never succeeded in getting a decent agent to sell my novels, so most of them will disappear into the ether eventually, never to be seen again. I think I'm okay with that. Galileo kept his secret manuscripts to destroy at the end of his life, but I think that secretly he always wanted them to be published after he was gone. I'm not the same. To quote one of my published pseudonyms, Davina Marconis:

I’ve finished the poem I was going to write
For the world
And I’ve kept it hidden here.
But like Galileo’s secret manuscript,
I will keep it to destroy right before I die
Yes, my poem can change the world
But this world doesn’t deserve it.
Crito, Asclepius can have his cock.
But that’s a gift from Socrates
When I go, I’m leaving nothing
Not even the memory of the fields
Of Laramie
And uncertain beginnings.

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Trying to find a reason

I'm sorry I don't have a link to a story to have you read instead. This happened to me. Today. In the morning. On the way to BART to travel to get my medication at Costco.

You see, the medication thing has been a drama that should have a thread of its own. It involves all sorts of things like lack of health care, the incivility of dealing with Kaiser Permanente, the civility that exists in dark corners of Kaiser Permanente, and how come a pharmacy can't communicate with a hospital without adding all sorts of extra drama. Well, that was taken care of, and I was on my way to get my medication when I turned the corner of the main street to walk up the stairs that leads to South Hayward BART.

There were three African American young men sitting on the stairwell railing when I turned the corner (you really don't get a warning...you turn the corner and you're there). Before I could even acknowledge them, the first of them stepped forward and clocked me. I mean really hard. I've taken some pretty hard hits in my time, but this came from nowhere like Mike Tyson finally found an ear he hadn't bitten yet. Next thing I knew, the three of them were on top of me beating the living **** out of me. No kidding. I can hold my own with the best of them, but this was the first beat down I ever had where I got in ZERO hits in response. This continued on for about two minutes as they pretty much robbed me blind. I mean that figuratively because they took my glasses, smashing them as they did so. I didn't have much of value other than my iPod Touch, but they ripped that out of my ear (literally ripping the cord as I kept trying to fight them off). Basically, my fight consisted of making sure I wasn't killed rather than actually trying to get in a lick or two of my own. I'll be honest but most people I know would be in the hospital right now after what I went through.

Then they ran. I stumbled back up, realizing I couldn't see **** because of my lack of glasses. Finally, I realized I needed to get to the BART station and report this. Other people had watched them run by and after the danger was gone, they were nice enough to report that they had seen these guys run by them with my bag and belongings.

So, I spent the next half hour with BART police debating with Hayward Police as to who had jurisdiction over the crime. Never mind the bleeding veteran. Jurisdiction was a conversation that required no less than ten police officers. No one was actually looking for the suspects. They wanted to know who had to write up the report. But as I say this, I will admit that even with that complaint, they were friendly and cordial to me, so this isn't a miff against the police in any way. Just one of those legospaceman rants.

The sad thing is: I used to feel pretty safe on this path to BART. I only live about five blocks from BART. Now, I don't feel safe at all. My main concern is that I'm going to do what comes naturally and start carrying a knife with me, or something like that, and I'm going to take out one or more of these guys next time it happens, which knowing my luck will land me in prison for a good part of what's left of the rest of my life. But I don't know what else to do. I don't perceive getting any protection from the police. I can try fending them off hand to hand, but these guys were smart and knew EXACTLY when to ambush me (or anyone else for that matter). I doubt there's ever going to be a fair fight, which brings me back to the obvious again.

So, now that the incident is over, let's go back to the original question. Three young black men ambushed a white guy. Is this a racial thing? Is this a societal thing? How do we stop this sort of thing from happening to more people? More police? More education? What drives me nuts is that I don't think anyone, and I mean ANYONE is trying to solve this type of situation. Oh, don't get me wrong. Politicians are building careers on talking about it, and sheriffs are cementing their careers by talking about how they'll eradicate something that they never seem to eradicate. But what is there we can do aside from take the law into your own hands?

Oh, by the way, I wasn't kidding about what I said on most people probably being in the hospital after this. I didn't get out of it unscathed. Lots of blood and let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised if I have a concussion as my head feels like a jackhammer just went through it.

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Health Care Is Only A Dream Away

Health care is all the rage in the news these days. President Obama's health care plan is going to revitalize the entire country. Complacent doctors say it will destroy the very foundation of medicine in the country, causing all of us to become troglodytes who will have to turn to witch doctors to be cured if "socialized medicine" gets passed in this country. Love it. Hate it. Whatever. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and in reality, no one really cares.

What am I talking about? Well, it's one of those issues that people have a stake in because it's political. It defines your party identity, so people take sides based on what they believe in. Most people arguing, and most people who are being listened to, are people who already have health care, and they don't need it. It won't affect them; it will affect those who really have no voice, and to be honest, no one really wants to listen to them in the first place.

Last time we tried to have universal health care, or something like it, we ran into the personal story defense, which is one of those fake defenses that makes people think the sky is falling based on one or two examples. In other words, if ONE person is affected negatively, then they can throw all sorts of fear tactics around and the people will blindly turn out against it. That's what happened with the Harry and Louise defense. Basically, what happened was this fictitious husband and wife were played by two actors, and the Republican Party made them pretend that they were going to be completely destroyed by President Clinton's health care initiative. The plan failed and has been forever linked with the failure that is Hillary Clinton, even though she tried to put that behind her as she ran for president unsuccessfully.

Well, that same sort of thing is happening again, but it's turning into more noise than anything else. And what people don't realize is the true fear of universal health care this time around is that the new program may not actually do anything different than what we're already doing. In other words, we may spend billions of dollars, but in the end we'll have a little bit of the same of what we already have. Those in the middle, people like me, will still have no health care, and the only ones that qualify will be those with steady jobs or those who have figured out how to game the system, something most of us in the lower middle class have never been able to do.

So what about me? Why am I talking about this as if I'm in this strange category of people who have no health care? And why should someone like me really matter?

Well, if you watch the way events will unfold, people like me are unimportant, and no one really does care. I don't say that to seek sympathy, but to pass on that people do not care for those who shouldn't be in a bad situation; like a lot of our class arguments, people blame those who don't end up coming out on top, almost as if it is a failing in their own abilities that they are starving to death and dying from lack of proper medical care in the country that has been the shining beacon for so many others before in the past.

Yes, I'm one of those without health care. How did I get there? Well, I had health care when I was working full time for a hospital system. Then I went back to school to do graduate school, to be able to better myself and get a step up in the academic community. So I had health care while going to school. After school, I took a job in South Korea where I still had access to health care (universal health care in South Korea). Then things turned bad. The job I had stopped paying me, and my only recourse was to return to the United States without employment. Since then, I've been unable to find a job, so the little bit of money I had accumulated is slowly dwindling, and my lack of health care has started to make itself known by the fact that I take a number of medications for an ailment that is part of my medical history.

Not having health care is a very interesting dilemma to be in. It is like being one of those turtles that has overturned itself and cannot get back up on its feet again. You keep thrashing over and over again, hoping somehow that someone will notice you're there thrashing, but people just point and stare, sometimes commenting on how bad it is that the turtle has fallen on its shell and can't get up again. This continues until the turtle eventually dies of starvation because it can never make itself upright again.

That's how being without a job and health care is for someone that isn't comfortable being without a job and health care. I walked to BART today to catch a bus that leaves from there, and while I was there, I was accosted by no less than five beggars, asking me for money. That is something I told myself long ago that I would never do, and the activity disgusts me, but at the same time I'm starting to see these people as possibly smarter than I am. I mean, they're not pretending that they're going to turn things around; they realize they're screwed, and they just stand there at the BART station asking people for money. They gave up. And they're probably making more money per day than I stand a chance to anytime in the very near future. So who is really the foolish one here?

I went to Kaiser today because they used to be my old health care provider. It's amazing how unhelpful the system is when you're no longer one of the "members". All I really needed was a copy of my prescriptions so I could at least find out what medications I've been taking (unfortunately, the prescription information of mine was lost in transit, along with my military DD214 (proof I served) and tons of personal paperwork that might make this whole situation a bit easier). Member services at Kaiser is annoyingly rude to most of its members and people like me. They seem to see everyone that shows up as an antagonist, so the attitude is immediately one of hostility (you could sense it when the one woman at her desk kept lecturing people for not waiting until she said she was ready to see the next person...imagine being spoken to like a prisoner at a detention facility, and you get the impression of how it feels to be in need of information from that type of a gatekeeper).

This ended up putting me into the emergency room of Kaiser because that's the only place that will see you if you're not a member. And they're not like other emergency rooms. They want money, and lots of it. I'm not talking about small amounts of money. They wanted astronomical figures. An example is drugs. The drugs that I take cost about $600 for a month's supply from Kaiser Permanente. The same drugs for the same period of time, bought from Costco, would cost me $37.50. But that's where the fun begins, because just getting the prescription from Kaiser to Costco was one of the quests that would have made the computer game Myst proud (for those who do not know...as one of the first real puzzle games, that game confused the crap out of tons of computer players when it was first released, causing more than one computer screen to end up with a broken beer bottle sticking out of it by the end of the night).

Anyway, why am I talking about all of this? Well, the argument for universal health care is waging in Congress right now, and in the end the chances are pretty good that nothing is going to come of it. Oh, they'll probably pass something, but it will be what's called feel good legislation, where they can claim victory without actually doing anything. The taxpayers will spend many billions of dollars, a few people will get outrageously more wealthier than they already are, and nothing will change. Why is this? Well, because people in Congress already have the greatest health care you can possibly get. And they get it for life. They don't need it. So why should they care? Sure, it sounds good to seem like you care, but at the end of the day when they're arguing numbers, what they care about is getting re-elected and becoming more powerful. Those of us slipping through the cracks don't matter. We're irrelevant. We can't die fast enough.

So, here's where I say something that hopefully will get you to think (I am addressing this to the two stuffed animals of mine who make up the readership of my blog). There is massive dissatisfaction with the government today by more and more people are finding themselves out of work and losing some of the basics of everyday life, like health coverage. There is a tipping point to where the amount of people falling out of the system start to become opponents of the system. We're not there yet, but we're moving there. And the problem with that is, and the problem that has ALWAYS caused, is that when this antipathy starts to turn to anger, there's no warning. Nor is there any smart seer on a hill somewhere with his or her pulse on the attitude of these people. When they rise up, they sweep pretty much everything out of their way as a movement that takes a life of its own. We've seen it happen so many times in the proto-modern times, and we've started to see it happen a lot more since the post-communist world where groups of people have become important variables that cannot be tracked until they've already done their damage.

Part of the problem with Obama is that he was seen as some kind of messiah, a response to what was considered a horrific period for the liberal ideas of mainstream America. Well, he's starting to show himself to be as regular as any other person, and that momentum that brought him to power is starting to show lots of kinks in the armor. People said they wanted change, but that's not what they really wanted. They wanted prosperity as part of a desire for accountability. They're receiving neither, and nothing indicates that anything being done today is going to lead to just that. I wish I was wrong, but I'm not.

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My problem with internships

I understand that a lot of people need experience, and sometimes people in school can get a leg up by taking an internship, but I'm starting to see something that I don't think was originally intended in the whole internship market. Businesses have been using internships as free labor, and they're getting pretty blatant about it as well.

While going to the University of the Pacific, one of the requirements they implemented in the second year I was there in graduate school (which means it did not affect me) was that political communication people were required to fulfill an internship. That's easier said than done as quite often people just don't have that kind of time while working an assistantship during grad school. But some people had to do it, and they did. In that context, I can understand the value of an internship. For those studying political communication, some type of job that involves political communication is a great internship to give someone experience in their field.

It's AFTER this process that I start to wonder about the whole internship thing. I look at a lot of jobs on Craigslist, and one thing I've started to notice is that really crappy jobs are often advertised as internships. I'm talking about the kind of jobs where you won't learn anything other than how to file papers and answer a telephone. Yet, they're wanting people with strong qualifications before they'll "hire" them as an intern who doesn't get paid. Think about this for a second. An internship is supposed to help you gain experience in your field, so you can go on to get a good job in that field. However, these internships want you to already have extensive experience ALREADY in the field, which means you probably had to have had an internship to get the internship.

This reminds me of the episode of The Office where Michael Scott attends a career fair where he is looking for an intern for their business. He doesn't like the one kid who seems interested, and then realizes after a short amount of time that NO ONE wants to work for his paper company, especially when his internship is a free internship. So towards the end of the day, he finds himself desperate and tries to win back the one kid who he shunned (which doesn't succeed).

This is what the whole internship thing reminds me of because I keep seeing companies that want people with tons of experience before they'll allow you to do an internship for them. And they're crappy companies! I'm not talking about Lucas Film deciding to let you intern as a film director's assistant. I'm talking about some social program reject firm that really wants nothing but free labor from young people, and they have no huge name recognition either. What exactly do they offer someone other than MORE experience than they already have, which they achieved by doing the internship before them?

This has been one of my observations of a crappy behavior since looking for a job. Businesses see the economy as bad so they decide to fill their actual jobs with interns rather than employees, and they wonder why their companies don't seem to be bouncing back. If this sort of thing continues, the recession is going to be very depressive.

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Um, teddy bears concealing drugs? That's the plot of one of my novels.

I should have figured it would happen. One of my later novels, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, is essentially about this:

$30 Million Worth of Heroin Seized in the Bronx.
Traffickers Concealed Heroin Bags in "Build-A-Bear" Toys: 12 Arrested

Okay, it's not exactly that, but it's pretty close. That means that a good portion of my novel already happened in real life. Well, it's sort of different, but it's pretty hard to feel good about marketing a book when there's an article on the DEA site, here, that could be a synopsis of my novel.

Well, for the record: My novel doesn't have heroin in it. Nor did the teddy bears either. They had the formula for a new drug in it. And these guys were arrested for $30 Million. My criminals were pulling off a job that was worth $1 Billion. So it's a bit different. Plus, the bad guys were a splinter group of the CIA, and there was no DEA involvement at all (the novel was written before the DEA was doing anything more than going to Colombia and getting killed by drug lords).

And also, no teddy bears were harmed in the writing of my novel. Well, one of them. But he deserved it. Stupid teddy bear and hiding my diet Dr Pepper on me!

Anyhoo.

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