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.

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.

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.

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!

November rolled around, and Mark and I were visiting family, so I didn’t get too incredibly much writing done, but I was pleased with myself.  But then, November 2, I began my new full-time job.  And I don’t know who else this happens to, but full-time jobs for me tend to suck up most of my time.  So now I have a job and an up-to-an-hour commute to get there and back.  But it gets better!  This past Monday was our second big exam in Spanish.  Why, WHY, WHY then did my teacher have the extreme urge to give us five worksheets, book exercises, an essay that was due the day of the exam, and then he informs us that the two chapters of the workbook that were originally extra credit were now required and due on test day.  So now I have this new full-time job, a mountain of homework, and no time for NaNo.  And since I still didn’t get all the homework done before the exam, now I’m feeling the repercussions this week as I try to play catch-up.

…Gah, I hate irony.

…Yeah, November is a lot of things.  I keep thinking I’ll have time to edit or write a bunch but I’m frankly buried in the stuff I have to do, homework, studying and job stuff first and foremost.  So until further notice, assume I’m swamped and don’t be offended if I don’t get back to you.  Now, if you’ll excuse me I have some Spanish homework to take care of and a daily word quota to meet…and dinner to eat.  Ciao!

In other news, I now manage a small blog called Observations of a Modern Bard. On it I’ve been putting the various short stories, poetry and observational writing.  There are a couple other people on the site too, like Stacie and Mike (though he hasn’t given me anything yet, hint hint).  To access my part of the site, you can click the link on the sidebar of this blog, the button at the top of Observations named No Rhyme, No Reason, or click on the link I just gave you.  How easy is that?  Mwahaha!

Now for the awesome part!  National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) is just around the corner and boy am I excited for this years endeavors!  The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in thirty days—specifically, November 1st to November 30th.  They are extremely lenient on the content of your story, however they strictly state that you must begin from scratch. This means that Shadowblade does not make a viable candidate for NaNoWriMo this year.  I could cheat and say I just started it on November 1st, but that’s a lie.  So, in my desire to participate legitimately in this writing extravaganza, I decided to write down the second idea I’ve ever had for a novel.  It’s a story entitled Angels in the Water, and I’m sure you’re going to hear about it a lot  over the month of November as I try and track my progress.  This is also accessible via the sidebar of this blog, by clicking the link entitled “The Guardians.”  It’s bound to have a bajillion errors and horrible mistakes, but I’m sure it will make for good reading; I’m planning on making it fairly entertaining!

And that’s all for the updates!

As a general update on my life, Mark and I now have two kitties.  They’re sisters named Thunder and Lightning.  Now they’re about four months old, and still the craziest kittens ever!  I’m still not done editing Ravensblood, but I’m about halfway done.

This year for NaNoWriMo I will be writing the first in what I hope to be a series.  Don’t worry, though; I’m still going to be working on the continuation to the Twin Worlds Trilogy, I just didn’t want to cheat for NaNo this year by doing a story I already had moving along.

Mark and I, along with a bunch of our other friends, picked up AION and started playing it.  We’re really having a lot of fun with it, and I suspect it’s partly because of its differences from World of Warcraft and partly because we are really enjoying playing with each other and not being spread across multiple servers.  I’m officially letting my WoW subscription die.

I finally got a job!  YAY!  I’ll be registering patients in the Emergency Department of a HUGE 625-bed hospital.  It’s the flagship hospital for the largest health care employer in the Midwest.  Talk about intimidating!  I’ve gone in for my physical and drug screen, and now I just need to follow up on my TB skin test and get the rest of my paperwork filled out.  I’m excited to start!

Well, that’s my life!  I’m hoping I’ll be a little more regular with this blog since now I know exactly how I’ll be using it.  =)