I realized I forgot to stick a post like this up at the top. If you are visiting this blog because you want to read either my short stories or my novel, please see the Accessing My Writing button at the top of the site and fill out the form. Otherwise, I will randomly dump opinions and rants and other random things here.
Random Rant Time!
This rant may be completely pointless, but I need to get it off my chest. I’m probably one of the first people to admit that the medical system just isn’t what it used to be. We used to have better care for people with mental illnesses. Insurance premiums and co-payments used to be lower. People used to think twice before going to the ER for piddly little things. There was a time when it was easier (and less time consuming) to seek health care where one was supposed to seek it. That said, there are a few things that bug the hell out of me for seemingly no apparent reason while I’m at work, and those things are people on public aid, people with severe mental illness, detox patients, and people who make up stuff.
First, let me just say this this post is probably offensive to some, but I don’t care. These are my opinions and you can feel free to dislike them all you want. Just remember that I see a lot of negative things where I work, and although I’m generally a happy and caring person, I’m also very jaded and sad about the sorry state that our society is in because I see these particular situations so many times. So, without further ado:
People on Public Aid (Free Aid from the State)
I do not understand these situations. First of all these people have no money, which is why they are on public aid in the first place (not to be confused with people who pay to recieve their care from the state). This is not necessarily a bad thing because hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere. What bugs me to no end is that these people who have no money in the first place are reproducing like rabbits, having five or six kids while people who have money are only having one or two. I know that Public Aid is supposed to ease the financial stress for people who don’t have money, especially in the areas of social services and health care. What I don’t understand is this: Why are the poor people the ones who are having so many children? Why would they subject their offspring to a life of poverty, then make matters worse by having another child? Family planning places have free condoms and often it is easy to come by contraceptives, especially these days, so why? Is this due mainly to religious beliefs? Are people not getting the right sex ed? Is it in their culture?
Secondly, why do these people then turn around and treat the ER like it’s their primary doctor? We see it all the time: Whole families coming in to the ER for a cold or a low-grade fever or a headache, and saying, “well while we’re here I might as well get my other three kids checked out, too.” I’m sorry, but that bugs me! If I were to have four children, being a member of the working middle class, I wouldn’t qualify for aid from the state, so I’d probably have an insurance through my workplace (which also bugs me since half of the mothers on public aid do not work and come in with coach purses and nice manicures). If I took all four of my children into the ER, with co-payments as high as they are now, I’d spend around $600.00 just in co-pays to get my kids checked, and even then that doesn’t include anything they might charge percentages on, like tests. Then, because I took them to the ER for something that can clearly wait for the primary doctor to see, I just made people with more serious problems have to wait, because they put me and my four kids in a room that five minutes later could have been needed by someone with chest pain or shortness of breath. It’s amazing just how much quicker people would get in to see the doctors if we just denied public aid. So I think that people who have public aid should have co-pays just like everyone else for the ER. It would be ridiculous to make them as high as everyone else, but it might make them think twice before coming for something that they can wait to go see their doctor for.
Severe Mental Illness with Children
If someone has a severe and completely debilitating mental illness (not to be confused with mental deficiency or disability) I personally don’t think they should be allowed to reproduce. It’s not fair to them to have to try and deal with raising a child when they have trouble taking care of themselves properly, but most of all it’s unfair to the child to have to go through life with a parent who cannot care for them. In the end the cycle repeats itself, and we are left with a history of abused, mistreated, and otherwise neglected children who may have a genetic predisposition tending toward various mental illnesses. It’s just not fair to put a child through that. Now I’m not talking about parents who take the right steps to get their illness under control. I’m talking about people who cannot make the right choices because they do not have the capacity to. There’s a difference. We all develop mental quirks and some are harder to deal with than others. I get that we’re all humans, but we’ve all turned into these care-bear tree-hugging pacifists, and I’ll tell you, if it were any other species these kinds of deviants would have been weeded out long ago, left to die somewhere or just flat-out killed. It’s called survival of the fittest, and these people just aren’t making the cut. You want to fit into society? Well, shape up or not, but don’t have kids if you can’t take care of them. That’s like kicking society in the nuts after you take our money for behavioral health services.
Detox Patients
Most detox patients aren’t in the ER because they want to be. For those that are, I congratulate you on making a good decision to turn your life around, but the ER generally is not the place to do detox. There are specialized rehab facilities that are designed specifically for your condition. Don’t come to the ER, take up a bed for thirteen hours, then go home and do it all over again. It’s disrespectful to the rest of us who actually need treatment, and your sorry state–however sad your story is–is not “technically” a medical emergency (unless you have alcohol poisoning). Also, you’re probably wasted all the time if you’re a regular, so it’s reasonable to assume that any job you may have had before is now down the drain, because they wouldn’t put up with your intoxication/high/both any longer. I wish sometimes that drugs would just go away completely so that all the addicts in the world would detox against their will and realize how stupid they were. Also, please stop hitting on the staff/being belligerent/trying to get drugs. We don’t appreciate it, and we think you’re a tool.
Liars, Drama Queens and Attention Seekers
Often times these three things are all rolled into one. Someone will bring a person in because, “Oh my God he threatened to kill himself and he needs treatment right away so that I can rest easy knowing that he’s going to live to do something else that’s overly dramatic and completely unnecessary.” This is how it goes. I have a terrible urge when someone says that they want to kill themselves to just say, “prove it. Here, I’ll show you a few tricks,” and watch their eyes go wide because that was not the kind of attention they were seeking. If someone were really going to do it, they would just do it. They wouldn’t sit there telling everyone how much they want to do it, because that would just make people suspicious of them and they’d want the freedom to actually do it. And while we’re on the subject, people who are actually successful in self-termination are in my opinion probably doing society a favor. I’m not saying that they’re not useful or insightful or that they shouldn’t have lived or even that the people they left behind aren’t heartbroken, but in all reality and looking at things objectively, it’s nature playing out its grand design. Animals do it, and humans do too. It just means that they weren’t meant to handle the pressures that we rally against every day, and they realized that and decided to remove the weakest link.
People also tend to blow things way out of proportion. They will lie about the severity of their issues just to get seen quicker, perhaps not realizing that it’s completely and totally selfish of them to do so. Then these particular people raise a big stink when they’re not immediately cared for. Well, I have news for you. 95% of the time we can tell when you’re lying. What’s that? Your fever was 105 before you came? Well that wind must have been nice and cool, because you’re at 99.5 now. And your blood pressure was so high you thought you might explode? Don’t worry, it’s normal now. You think you might have H1N1 even though you have no symptoms? Sorry, but you can wait in line behind this baby that’s actually turning blue.
The bottom line is that these people should not reproduce. It’s not good for the child, the parent, or the human race. The world is overpopulated anyway. Don’t be a douche.
It’s not called “procrastination” if I forgot!
I totally forgot about this thing here. No, that’s a lie. What actually happened was that I procrastinated and then forgot about the blog. The end result? I haven’t touched this thing for over a year, and it’s time to get back to it. Generally I fail at blogging, partly because I’m not consistent enough to make a good bloggy atmosphere, and partly because I lack good opinions and don’t care to re-blog from other blog posts or news sites. I’m just not that kind of person. Instead I use this place for random musings and updates on my life, and to hell with anyone who thinks that’s a bad idea.
Without further ado, random updates:
I am deleting The Aphis Log blog, as it is pretty much a giant waste of time when I could just put the gateway to The Aphis Project on this blog. I also re-named my short stories/poetry blog The Frisky Pen, and that is also off-limits unless you ask me to be put on the list. Long story short, if you want to be able to see either site, now you must click the little menu button at the top that says “Accessing my Writing.” Both of these blogs can be found on the sidebar of this site.
Other than that, there is nothing to report…for now. Stay tuned, though, because I fully intend on using this as both my writing journal as well as my everything else rant dump.
Who says poetry can’t be bittersweet?
I wrote this just now, after having an intense urge to visit my father’s grave.
Eulogy
Prickling the edge of thought,
you gracefully appear within
eyelids, closed against the night,
closed, but seeing you again
tripping through my memories
like some old faded photograph,
and wandering my wasted frame
to find my shriveled heart, and pluck
its strings like a rusty, mistuned harp.
You fade, and then appear again
as though you never left at all,
and all this time has been a dream
wherein you kept concealed until
you found the moment to be ripe,
then stumbled drunkenly about,
turning on the lights in me
and singing soft a lullaby
more beautiful than life itself.
Yet, when I close my eyes again,
there you are, your smile askew,
giving indication that
your touch will shelter, shepherd me;
lure me to your resting place
to lay a tribute at your feet
and give unto your eulogy
a smile, as I kneel down to kiss
your brow, expressing love through earth.
Christmas? NOWAI!
I heard my first Christmas song of the season on the radio today, and I can’t say that I was excited about it. Do we really need to play Christmas music right now? I mean, I know that December’s here now, but give it a week…or something. Maybe I’ll just bust out the iPod for a while and listen to a little Josh Groban–who, by the way, is a frigging genius–while I wait for an appropriate time to listen to holiday tunes.
The cats are crazy. Absolutely nuts. Although one thing is for sure: Thunder enjoys hockey. Mark came home today and set his hockey bag on the floor, and when he came back to retrieve it Thunder had claimed it and was sprawled lazily on top of it. I wish I had taken a picture. We did, however, get a picture of Lightning sleeping in my hoodie. Someone remind me to upload that.
For Christmas we got ourselves an early present. And by early I mean two days ago. And by present I mean a new 42″ 1080p LCD HDTV. And then we proceeded to giggle like school children as we set it up. It’s hilariously sitting on top of the entertainment center right now, and the size comparison to our old 19″ TV is laughable.
But the biggest news isn’t what presents we’re buying for people or how crazy the cats get when food is involved or just how sick of Christmas music Ill be by the end of the month, but the fact that I have resumed work on Shadowblade. Oh yes, I’m still editing Ravensblood and it’s getting more and more fantastic as the days go by, but now I’m actually making some progress actually writing the second book, and that is probably the most exciting thing to happen to me this year. Sure, you can scoff at it, but I’m happy. I’m also happy that I only have two Spanish classes left until the end of the semester.
Ciao for now!
