Category Archives: “funny”

Seeing the people we know as lab rats

A gigantic rat I was good friends with, about 6’4″ with hands like boulders (inexplicably, he was a skilled guitarist and pianist), once accused me of regarding everyone I knew as lab rats. I remember feeling defensive when he made that observation, though, forty years later, I can acknowledge it was somewhat insightful.

It’s not that I view myself as a superior and dispassionate scientist methodically conducting experiments, collecting data and forming data-based scientific judgments, exactly, but something like this is always in progress when we interact closely with others and learn from our experience.

I give my friends the benefit of the doubt. This is something I have always done and it is how I want to be treated by others. I understand now that not everyone is capable of this. I have that understanding only after years of testing the hypothesis that kindness, patience, seeing things from the other person’s perspective, defusing tension with humor, extending sympathy, etc. will always yield the desired result — peace, love and understanding. My informal lab studies have demonstrated, conclusively, that not all lab rats are capable of the mutuality I am always seeking with people I interact with.

What to do with this data? When you encounter a lab rat who is anxious, becomes defensive and aggressive at the first sign of any conflict, angrily blames the other rats, is always ready to fight to the death — that rat may not be the best subject for a study of the healing power of empathy. You can run the experiment with this kind of rat over and over, and after a while you will be able to predict the outcome with close to 100% accuracy.

Teach this rat to speak, express his point of view, let this rat interact with other rats, design a minor conflict. Take out your clipboard and get ready to record your observations.

This rat will find other rats to ally itself with, involve them in the conflict by enflaming their sense of right and wrong, exploiting their anger at being trapped as lab rat experiment subjects. The rat will then approach the rat it has a beef with, backed by these allies. If the surrounded rat stands his ground in any way, the affronted rat will go for the throat. There is a big vein or artery there that you can rip open and it’s curtains for the vicious, defiant fucker. End of story. Anybody else want to fuck with the expressive talking rat?

All the scientist can do is make notes and add it to the data. You can run this experiment as many times as needed, though in the end the conclusion about how this particular specimen will always act will be hard to empirically disprove.

Concierge medical care

America is rapidly becoming, if you have the money and you want responsive medical care, the land of concierge doctors and nurses.

The number one hospital for orthopedic surgery, HSS, where I had my left knee replaced almost 600 days ago, boasts on huge banners all over its grounds that it has been the top hospital for orthopedics fourteen years in a row. That doesn’t mean they provide aftercare, and they don’t claim to. If you have a problem, pain, stiffness, difficulty walking, sleeping, whatever, when the x-rays show a perfect mechanical result, it’s not their problem, since the operation was 100% successful, even if you can’t walk more than a block 18 months after surgery.

They don’t claim to be the number one hospital for follow-up care, as you learn when they provide zero aftercare, can’t get you in to see their physical therapists for post-surgical evaluation and offer no solution (other than another operation, a 50/50 coinflip) to a not uncommon, foreseeable but difficult to fix chronic disability they did not help you avoid.

Corporate medicine increasingly works this way in the United States. Health care is an enormously profitable sector and vampire entrepreneurs are increasingly getting in on this lucrative growth industry. More and more doctors work for corporations that take care of all the business aspects of medical care. The bottom line is probably better for all of them and it’s easier to be a doctor in our country if you don’t have to compete with giant medical corporations that have the wealth and infrastructure to put you out of business.

The only casualty is the patient, sometimes. In the event of a good result, there’s no problem. In the event of a problem, complication, need for follow-up, corporate medicine has an answer — concierge follow up, done by telephone, billed as a regular doctor visit, sometimes 100% paid by insurance, or in the case of someone over 65, if you have purchased supplemental insurance for your 20% Medicare copay.

I had a call from my new urologist’s office the other day. These folks are hard to reach or get a return call from on a good day and I’m not optimistic about reaching anyone there if something goes wrong with my upcoming procedure. The caller, a likable guy named Tony, called to offer me a direct number to call and talk to a dedicated nurse any time after my upcoming surgical procedure.

We wound up speaking for a while and it emerged he was not affiliated, nor did he know, the medical practice he was calling from. Somehow, through corporate wizardry, his call appeared to be coming from the difficult to reach office with an offer to give me a direct after care line. Tony worked for a third party selling concierge assurance to rightfully nervous patients.

He agreed it was crazy that he couldn’t tell me the price I’d have to pay for one of these follow up calls billed as a doctor visit. He was with me when I pointed out the madness of healthcare being the only store in America where they can’t tell you the price of anything before you buy it. The standard line is that the doctor has to wait for insurance to bill them before they can tell you the price. My standard reply is to ask if I’m the first patient who ever came to them with this insurance that they take every day. Their standard reply is some kind of smile reflecting an attempt to be civil. None of these folks have any control of anything, and it’s pointless to antagonize them with questions there are no reasonable answers to. Tony and I parted as friends, our call recorded, and by midway through he was no longer trying to sell me a service he could not tell me the price of, but one I’d definitely be on the hook to pay 20% of.

America the beautiful. Exceptional. About to become even more exceptional. I’m keeping my fingers crossed it won’t become too much more exceptional. It’s already much more exceptional than is healthy for almost every American.

Let’s face it, MAGA just had better ideas

Don’t listen to freaks from our shameful hippie past like Robert Reich, there is nothing wrong with the best people in our country having 10,000,000 times more than the lowest low lifes in our country and being able to profit handsomely from their greatness. MAGA won because it has better ideas. Here are just a few:

Eliminating pre-existing conditions from health insurance was pure communism designed to cripple the health insurance industry. So, pre-existing conditions are back. If you’re already sick, don’t come whining about “fairness”, pay what you are required or shut up and die. Health care is not a “right” it’s a privilege you get from your boss, if you work hard enough.

The states should decide, according to local beliefs and customs, if raped eleven year-olds are allowed to have abortions. The Supreme Court, and all elected Republicans, stressed this state sovereignty principle at the time Roe was abolished. To that end, a national ban on abortions. That’s why you gave us a proven fighter for president and a robust majority in the Senate.

Sometimes the so-called racists are right. Who is more deserving to run the country, the richest, smartest, most successful man in the world, and the colorful, controversial son of a famous political leader who was assassinated by a colored person, and Donald Trump, or … you get my point.

Joe Biden was the most corrupt, criminal and dumbest president in history. That’s why he lost, he did nothing but stutter and comically try to hide his dementia. Now we have the least corrupt, most honest and smartest president in history.

So-called climate change is a hoax designed to destroy our greatest corporations by crippling them with expensive regulations. Once those regulations are removed super-storms will stop and this nation will take a giant step toward being great again. There is no reason to believe so-called climate scientists more than the Bible, Exxon and faith.

Homosexuality is banned by the Bible. The punishment for it is death by stoning. The same punishment for women who commit adultery, ye scribes and hypocrites. So saith the Lord.

Women are born to be subservient to men. That is simply God’s will and the natural order for mankind. It’s called mankind for a reason, dummy.

Most liberals are pedophiles.

That so-called Black, so-called female presidential candidate was busy, even while campaigning for an office she was unqualified for, cutting the dicks off young boys in schools, putting dresses on them and sending the poor kids home as girls. This was proved to millions of us real men during the World Series! [1]

She was PERSONALLY cutting the dicks off boys in schools all over the country!

They WERE eating the dogs and eating the cats, hamsters, iguanas, rabbits, snakes, fish, etc.

Giving further tax breaks to the most successful Americans means we’ll all have a better chance of becoming wealthy.

It is essential to have the party with the most committed billionaire donors win every election. This ensures that our most important citizens have proportionately loud voices in our democracy.

In order for a president to faithfully carry out his duties, obviously it’s sometimes necessary to do things that are plainly criminal. In these cases, it is important that the president not be locked in the straitjacket of “law”. Nothing he does while officially trying to make American Great Again can be considered by any criminal grand jury ever. No pardon he sells can ever be challenged as “corrupt”. As Jesus Christ Himself intended.

White men are better than everybody else.

God bless these United Shaysssssh.

[1]

Liberal pedophiles will claim that this is an outrageous lie promulgated to the tune of tens of millions in ad buys ($215,000,000 spent on these ads, according to Brian Tyler Cohen) by billionaire-funded super PACs working to elect Trump, but who are you going to believe, a great, highly memorable ad you’ve seen fifty times, including during the World Series (second only to the Superbowl for market impact and credibility), or somebody who dreams of diddling children in a disgustingly unChristian way?

Nothing to see here!

Trump’s mental state continues to deteriorate, taking with it the former president’s inhibitions. After going on a rant about the people he blamed for troubles with his microphone at a sparsely attended rally in Warren, Michigan, the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America simulated oral sex on stage.

Source

Dangerously insane moron

“Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars,” Mr. Musk wrote this month in a post that has gained nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.”

Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “trashing Kamala nonstop” and being all in for Mr. Trump.

If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

Source

Cartoon villain
One is smart, the other nyet