Author Archives: oinsketta

I hate to agree with the haters

OK, admittedly, this country is a little bit messed up when it comes to health care.  Health benefits for most Americans are tied to their employment, ideally, unless your employer is big enough, or small enough, to avoid paying into it.  Employees of Walmart, America’s largest retail employer, qualify for Medicaid.  Is this a great country, or what?

But it’s beyond that, Americans pay by far the highest price for health care with very mediocre health outcomes.  45,000 Americans die every year of treatable conditions undiagnosed until the ER docs tighten their lips, shake their heads.  Millions of Americans with preventable diseases are treated at a cost of billions of dollars a year, 75% of US Health Care costs go to treating complications of obesity, gluttony, poverty, stupidity.   Insurance companies don’t like to pay for preventative care, why would they?

Many believe that the gigantic federal government is the problem. Forget the many problems the federal government has historically solved, like a century of lynching of blacks in the former Confederacy.   Like the terror of a penniless old age, solved by Social Security, medical bankruptcies for old people ended by Medicare.

And yet the wealthiest and greediest continue to beat the drums that tax is evil and the government is the enemy of the people, a libidinous rapist poised to have its way with good, honest, God-fearing, dumber than shit Americans.   Air pollution?  A lie.  Man’s contribution to global warming?  Commie twaddle by disloyal Americans who hate our freedom.  The Affordable Care Act?  The most destructive legislation in U.S. History, we are told over and over, without elaboration.   The facts speak for themselves, after all.  Say them often, and loudly, enough and they start to sink in.

The president was elected after a brilliant advertising campaign financed by tens of millions given to him by people like those who hired the drafters of the Affordable Care Act.  The woman who was the prime author of the ACA left government to return to a multimillion dollar job in the health insurance industry.  Change you can believe in.  The most transparent administration in history was promised, but whistle blowers and journalists were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.   Nobel Peace Prize for our articulate president, even while he authorized collateral damage killing of children and other mourners at funerals.  Obamacare was met with much fretting — but don’t worry, if you like your insurance you can keep it.  Unless your insurance carrier sends you a letter terminating your insurance effective 12.31.13.  In that case you go to the website, which NPR tells you is now, after a disastrous roll-out,  working perfectly.   There you will see this (and don’t bother calling that number, it’s a robot):Image

Suspended Animation

I always got a kick out of Walt Disney, after his death, being frozen in time in a cryonic vat.   Thinking of the animator of Mickey Mouse and Goofy in suspended animation always gave me a small kick.  But, I realize now, suspended animation is nothing to smile about.

That smile frozen on my face, reminiscent of a nauseated Woody Allen displaying existential dread, is like the expression they warned you about in school– if someone slaps you on the back your face is gonna stay like dat!

It’s not as if I’m putting all of my chips on this next roll of the dice, not as though not creating a winning ad to raise a substantial sum of money to hire the people I need to turn my program into a business will end this dream.  OK, it will pretty much end this dream, but that’s life, right?

Ted Williams, that tall, thin, angry perfectionist, is in two cryonic vats in a facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.  His head is in one, waiting for the day they can revive it and grow a new body from his cells.  His trunk is in another, waiting for I know not what.

A Shameful Business

I am, I have to admit, in the manner of my father to the end of his life following the fortunes of the Detroit Tigers, a NY Yankee fan.  Leaving aside the obvious idiocy of drinking the Kool-Aid of organized sports in the first place, rooting for the Yankees goes against the rest of my worldview.  The Yankees are the professional sports franchise that exemplifies empire, privilege, corporate snobbery, true, but it’s a childhood thing not amenable to analysis as anything but childish preference and misplaced loyalty.  

My dad rooted for Hank Greenberg, the Jewish Babe Ruth from the Bronx, a Detroit Tiger during most of his Hall of Fame career in the 1930s and 40s.  “How’d the Tigers do?” my father would ask, half a century after Greenberg retired, if the subject of baseball scores came up, which it sometimes did.  I never had any idea how Detroit did, why would I?  I suppose I’m that way about the Yankees because of Mickey Mantle and being eight years old when baseball came into my world.

The last few seasons my main interest in baseball has been checking the box scores to see how Robbie Cano had done.   Another 3 for 5, two doubles and a home run, Robbie on a tear, ten RBIs in the last three games, raising his average another six points after being in the doldrums for a week or two.  It made me feel good, for a few seconds, whenever Robbie was putting up Cano numbers.  To the millions who don’t give a rip about this sort of thing, I understand completely.  It’s how I feel about something called a Hat Trick.  No idea what it is, no interest in finding out.

The point of the shameful business is not that a grown man might distract himself by checking the graphed statistics of a man making fifteen million dollars a year to play a game boys love, or that thousands of people are employed in a vast industry paid to make sure these stats are charted in real-time and available on the internet.  

The point of the shameful business is what goes on with men making fifteen million dollars a year to play this game at an elite level.   Robinson Cano will be playing second base for Seattle under the terms of a ten-year contract he recently signed with them for $240,000,000.   The Yankees were offering basically the same yearly pay, about $24,000,000, but only for seven years– until Cano turns 38, well past the prime of most baseball players.

Well, Cano would be a fool to leave $70,000,000 on the table.   It’s been said often, he’d be foolish to let sentimentality dictate a business decision.  Why would anyone leave $70,000,000, or a penny, for that matter, on the negotiating table?

Except, can anyone tell me the difference between earning $15,000,000 a year and earning $24,000,000 a year, or career earnings of $330,000,000 or $260,000,000, except in a society sick to the death with relentlessly competitive greed?

“Justice is Dead!”

His parents gave him a virtue name, Justice.  When Justice was a baby he was diagnosed with lymphoma.  There are pictures of him as a less than two year-old, bald round head, undergoing chemotherapy, methatrexate.  He’s now ten and a vigorous kid.  When he’s in a good mood he can be very funny.  Once early on he asked me to get him a gun so he could shoot himself, a glimpse of what he and his parents have been through already in his short life.  You can see a short video of his heartwarming story here.

His friends Natalie and Noelle co-produced the brilliant “The Evil Witch on the Second Floor”.  In one scene, in the Evil Witch’s classroom, a flight of hidden stairs in a closet leads to her secret torture chamber.  Another flight takes us to the death chamber below, the chamber of doom where the Evil Witch shackles her victims as they lay dying.  The faces of the Evil Witch’s other victims are crossed off in their framed pictures on the wall.  

Two of the witch’s slaves carry the coffin of a newly dead kid, it says “R.I.P. Justice” on the side.   They toss the casket into a chute marked toxic.  I didn’t notice Justice’s name on the coffin when I passed by when they were shooting it.  I was disturbed by it when I edited the animation that night.

When the group sees the finished footage a week later, Justice’s best friend shouts out “Justice is dead!” as the coffin is trotted across the screen.  “Yeah,” I say “what does Justice think of that?”  and Noelle immediately yells out “he liked it!”

And Justice, who has a raspy voice for a small ten year-old, when I ask “Do you like having your name on a coffin saying R.I.P.?” says “yeah, I like it. The Evil Witch can rot in hell.”  I understood later that maybe these young friends were celebrating a peer’s survival, giving the finger to Death in the most direct way they knew how.

Meanwhile, in an expensive home in the suburbs of Boston my old friend may already have gone over the precipice, falling into the pit of relentless cancer.  Nothing anyone can do for him now, but call him again tomorrow on the land line, in case he feels like picking up.  

Justice is alive, an inspiration to the rest of us, and a reminder– spend your life well.

Advertising Machine

I am, truly.  No reason to be shocked, life is all about the sell.  Why else do people smile?

You see, it is serious business, and wonderful business.  No reason to look at it like it’s some kind of brutal, stinking thing dead of rabies, or worse, still alive, foaming jaws working sharp, glittering teeth.   Advertising is not like that mortally wounded German soldier creeping toward his gun as the heroic American turns his attention to saving the life of his comrade. No need for the audience to clench, ready to scream “watch out, Sarge!” as the Kraut wearily but determinedly raises his Luger.

Think of it this way: ads don’t only sell poison, they can just as easily sell things worth selling.   Democracy?  A beautiful thing, why not an ad to sell it?   Generosity? A wonderful value, sell it with a heartwarming ad.  You see what I’m saying? And if the ad works, and millions see it and are moved by it to take some action, kick in ten bucks, say, you have a flourishing business to advance the original terrific idea.  Many employed working to make the dream a reality, all because of an ingenious ad machine, like me, somewhere in the picture.

Nothing whatsoever dirty about being an advertising machine, and I mean that sincerely.  In fact, I’d be willing to wage an unlimited war against everybody in the world, and kill all of them, to prove how sincerely I believe in the human’s God given right to influence fellow humans through advertising.  In fact, I’m going to create a life-affirming ad right now, as soon as I get this other important business squared away, and shower, shave, eat, wash the dishes.

God bless.

It’s Always Been There

Took a walk yesterday, from Sekhnet’s to the house where I grew up and back.   Less than two miles.  It was a crisp early evening, nice for a stroll.  On Union Turnpike, half a block from where I’d turn to walk up the small hill past what used to be the family home, two young guys stopped to ask me where they could find a deli.  As I thought, I pointed at the corner store, now a Dunkin’ Donuts, and unhelpfully informed them that it used to be a deli.   I asked what they were actually looking for, turned out they were trying to break a fifty.  I gave them a few ideas and turned to walk toward the corner where I’d hang my left and BANG!!!

A metal knife blade, rooted in the cement and poised at shin height, tried its best to cut my leg off.  I fell backwards away from the impact, on to my back, my feet actually shot up into the air as I hit the sidewalk.   Two other young men saw this and asked if I was all right.  I stood up immediately, nothing broken, and glared at the sleek aluminum bench that tapered to edges like butter knives.   If it had been in my power I would have destroyed the ugly futuristic menace on the spot.  I grimaced and asked the two men where the hell the bench had come from.

Seeing that I was fine, they seemed to relax.  “It’s always been there,” one said with a little smile, thinking, perhaps, what kind of clueless idiot walks into a bench so hard it slams him on to his back with his feet up in the air?

“I grew up on this block, and I’ve never seen it,” I told them, pointing around the corner toward what once was my block.

“Oh it’s been there a long time,” said the other.

“It’s been there about three months,” said the first.

I don’t remember saying anything, I may have said “first time I’ve seen it…”, but I was surprised at the absence of pain as I walked past my old house.  It was about a mile back to Sekhnet’s, and I had no problem at all, until I reached down to the spot where the metal had kicked my shin and felt, through the pant leg, a knot the size of a fist and what seemed to be liquid.  I imagined blood running down into my sock and decided not to investigate then and there.  I didn’t understand why there was no pain, but I didn’t mind.  

It was only when I got back, elevated the leg and iced the bump that the aching started in my back, my arms, every joint that had been pounded when I fell on the concrete.   Every place, ironically, but the barking shin that had been assaulted by the treacherous metal bench.   The upper back is chiming in now, loudly, reminding me where I landed hard on it yesterday, reminding us all how slender the string we are all hanging by in this life actually is, and also, how resilient, most of the time.

Time to call my dying friend, whose once resilient string is poised to snap forever.

Missing Kitten

We’ve named him Underfoot, this affectionate feral kitten who appears a few times a day in the backyard for a feed.  Poignantly, more than a feed, the young cat wants contact and affection.   He rubs against Sekhnet’s pant legs as she shoos him off, lest Skaynes get a whiff of the young male cat marking Skaynes’ woman.  As she works in the garden he tangles himself under her feet.  He lets people pick him up, he’s happy to be hugged and carried around.

“He’s dying to be somebody’s pet,” Sekhnet commented.  And it’s true.  He’d be a great pet.

Haven’t seen him the last few days.  Could mean a little boy or girl picked him up and said “daddy, can we keep him?  Can we?  Daddy, can we keep him?  I want to keep him.  Look, daddy….” and daddy seeing the adorable, cuddly pair smiles and nods, reaching for his camera phone, and the kid screams in delight and waves the kitten in the air.

Could mean what has happened to several generations of feral cats we’ve known, fed, played with and watched grow up — a tiny body lying somewhere. These cats in the wild don’t seem to live more than a year or two, many of them don’t make it that long.  Hard life out there on the street.

(two hours later)

I saw the little scamp hop over the fence, from the top of the compost bin.  I went out and called him and he came bounding over, leaped another fence.   Did his dance around my feet until I picked him up.  He purred as I rubbed his face.  Then I opened a can of food and put it out in the chilly late afternoon, he ate a few bites and then was rubbing against my pant legs again.  Picked him up for another few pets, then left him to eat.  

Looking out the window just now I saw his food bowl almost untouched, then I saw him, by the garage next door, chowing down studiously on something the neighbor had put out for him.  Had the thought– only in America, where millions of children go to bed hungry every night,  do neighbors compete to feed doomed stray cats their favorite flavor of cat food.

Impossible versus Improbable

Impossible stops you in your tracks.  It is impossible, the end.   Cannot be done for a very good reason: it is impossible. Then someone perseveres, perseveres and does the impossible and we say: “OK, for them, it wasn’t impossible, then.”  And when other people do the same thing we are forced to agree– “it wasn’t really impossible, it was just very improbable.”   Until, of course, the first person proved that improbable is a huge improvement, in terms of facing a difficult challenge, over impossible.  

I raised the ire of several zombies not long ago by holding up two signs.  The first one read: there are a thousand reasons the thing won’t work.   The second:  All we need is the one reason it will.  From their reactions, I could just as well have held up first the severed ear of one of their children, then the other ear, still attached to the screaming head.

These images, of course, are disturbing, disgusting, gratuitous.  They do nothing to advance the point I’m trying to make except to underscore how easily disgusting, sick images pop into my mind.  Don’t worry, I’ve already had to apologize to these offended critics for the insult of telling them to try to keep their comments creative and helpful rather than reflexively critical of efforts already underway, moreover, efforts, in not even the tiniest part, their own.

Is it impossible that I will create a compelling ad for the program I need to pitch, with the smoothness of Ron Popeil selling a thousand Veg-O-Matics?  Not at all.   I can write copy with the most depraved of them, look:

In little over a year the innovative child-run animation workshop has taken root with children in five different settings. It has succeeded in turning room after room into a beehive of creativity resulting in dozens of short student-produced animations on youTube.  Kids as young as five, entering the room where seven and eight year-olds were creating animation, hopped right into the pond like excited ducklings.  The secret is a hands-on workshop where simplified technology is employed, by the children themselves, to quickly make their hand-made ideas come to life.  And the beautiful thing– when roasted on the Showtime rotisserie for a very short time at the proper heat, these ducklings are incredibly delicious.

Not only delicious, but amazingly nutritious.  And for a limited time you can take advantage of this internet special to receive a succulent portion of this health-restoring meat shipped directly to your dining room or Lazy-Boy.

And, if you marketize this program now, we will throw in the human head of your choice, severed, on the neck or including the bound and gagged person.   You won’t want to miss this special offer.   Did we say one head?  Ha, you know, since Christmas is coming, and Hanukkah is already here, we’ll throw in as many heads as you can carry (sorry, severed heads only).  

Is this a great country, or what?!!!

Cancer getting the upper hand

My friend seems to have come to that cliff at the end of cancer, when things accelerate and it becomes more and more an exercise in keeping the agony of approaching cancer death at bay.  It’s hard to know what I will say when I call him the day after tomorrow, the day after he gets back from radiation to hopefully shrink the tumors now growing in his lungs.

His wife has been heroic, loving, hiding her terror expertly as she changes the dressing on his grievous wounds sometimes twice a day.  The doctors have been cutting away at him for some time now.  The futility of their efforts reminds us of the relentlessness of what humans are up against when it comes to the killing powers of the universe.

My friend’s wife doesn’t talk about selling the house where he is dying, after he’s gone.  He knows it’s the only equity they have.  Their daughters are coming by for a last belated Thanksgiving-type meal tomorrow, the day after that it’s off to the hospital to have his lungs irradiated.  The day after that I’ll call him in the afternoon, which seems to be the best time for him to talk.   It would seem easy enough to call him and check in from time to time, but it isn’t, even as I know how little it is for me to do, that it is all I can do (he lives 200 miles north and doesn’t want visitors), and that it may make him feel marginally better for a moment or two to get the calls.

Does my friend’s situation give perspective on my own challenges?  Surprisingly little.  All of my grandparents and both of my parents died of cancer, as well as two close cousins younger than me.  The odds are high that I will die of cancer too.  Does it remind me that we are all candles in the wind and urge me to get on with the important business of living well? Not so much.

It sets me to rattling the keys in the middle of the dark night, and wondering about things really too terrible to think of.  It should make me grateful for my strength, Sekhnet, the things I love to do, the people I enjoy.  It really should.