CHRISTmas

Mom snuck in a fake $5 note with a religious message on Nate's gift.
I'm just confused on if I should be offended by the subversive attempt on my 10 year old without any heads up to me or his mom, or the fact that she didn't make the same effort to save my eternal soul as well.

Hmn. grandparents. They are precious.

hide and seek

Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's all for the best? Ah of course it is.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's just what we need? And you decided this.
Mmm what you say?

What did she say?

- imogen heap

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

I have become used to my new morning routines that have come with the new job. I walk to Wall Street every morning, grab a coffee, jump on a crowded subway that zips me under Manhattan past Fulton, past Union Square, past Grand Central, exiting finally at 59th street. Three stories up the stairs and I finally get to see the daylight on a short five block walk that takes me to my building. After the fourty-five minutes of standing on the subway I have noticed a pattern in the passengers including myself in behaviour, Many people stare at the floor or look at the ads above the seats, most look like they are not happy with where they are going. iPods have saved all of us from acknowledging the crazies or one another for that matter. I like the crazies. They make the ride interesting and they make me feel oh so very normal. I keep making myself smile, to not become one of them. I probably look like one of the crazies.

After exiting at my stop and climbing up to the surface, I make a turn from 59th to Park Avenue and start walking south. It's a beautiful street. Mostly, I like how the Metlife Building looks with the beautiful Grand Central building in front of it. The double lane streets with the expensive stores everywhere. I walk down it listening to my ipod, coffee in hand and ipod playing the playlist I change out every month. I like sappy music but I try to put some more upbeat stuff in the rotation to help me get motivated for the day.

Something last week made me stop for a minute and have a look around in more detail than I had any other morning. I stopped and looked around at the buildings, at the people, at my reflection in the glass of the window with my long coat and scarf on.

How did I get here?

Sicko

Lady in news conference: "I work three jobs." George W. Bush: "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it, I mean that is fantastic."

On a documentary I saw a few years ago, the obscure film maker of this other film compared the advancement in medical care to Napoleon and a homeless man, by that statement he meant that a homeless man in 2007 receives better health care than the leader of France did in 1807 due to the medical advances over the last 200 years. While the film maker was making the point over advancement in science and technology, he did miss a large grasp in politics and greed.

It's been a movie kind of weekend, tonight's viewing was a DVD from Michael Moore called Sicko. a documentary that focused on health care in the United States. It covered in some detail of how bad many of us Americans go everyday without any health coverage whatsoever. However, the main focus was on the majority of us who pay an extraordinary amount of our income to health care benefits only to have claims denied that could have made their quality of life much better or in many cases, saved their lives altogether.

He compared our health care system to those of Canada, The United Kingdom, and France and we came out not looking very well at all, it was eye opening and deeply embarrassing actually as an American. In fact, with all of Michael Moore's over inflated methods of making a point, he does a good job at making the the absurd look very real and very sad.

One of the most moving scenes in the film was after making the point that the prisoners at Guantanamo receive better health care than most Americans do, he took some rescue volunteers from 9/11 to Guantanamo to see if he could get them the same care. Unsuccessful of course, he took them into Havana to a Pharmacy where one of the American women who had been paying $120 a month for breathing inhaler medicine, could get the very same here for the equivalent of .5 cents. The woman was moved to tears when she saw this. The Hospital was modern and well run in Havana where various medical tests were performed on them even though they were not citizens of the country. The doctor said several times this was the same care any Cuban citizen was given.

Moore's film is more thorough than most of his others in the past. He gives many facts in very real reported statistical numbers. America is failing in the health care system unless you are incredibly rich or can never get sick.

About a year after I moved to New York City, I started having bad allergy reactions. My asthma was worse than it had ever been and the allergy attacks were causing conjunctivitis (pink eye) inflammations and swelling in the brow and bridge. After seeing several doctors, I was given a variety of medications. My out of pocket expenses come to about $120 a month, if not for insurance, the bill would come to $780 a month. You should see the list of side effects that come with these medications too. Luckily my allergies have lessened somewhat and I have been able to dial back on the amount of them I take.

The insurance company I had at the time however, seemed to have a standard policy to deny every single claim that came across it's review the first time, only to have to be called, bullied and brow beat many times into finally agreeing to pay a very simply policy for a very simple office visit. Imagine having something critical to deal with and then go through the stress of having to get your insurance company to play fair?

When my son was born we had very limited income. I was just out of university, I worked a night shift job at a prepress lab and my company provided insurance didn't cover pregnancy. Nathan's birth was uninsured and even with some state assistance, we had a take home bill of about $4,000 when it was all done.

The part that kills me the most is, we let them do this to us and make us think we are getting a good deal. Sure we have some the most advanced medical facilities in the world but it doen't matter when a great deal of us wont get access to it.

"Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic - see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern."

No Country for Old Men

" You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity "

The movie ends and you are just left there trying to figure out what the path you had just been taken on, was supposed to have meant. It's interpretive, many people left the cinema a bit confused and mocking the final scene if not the entire film. I was trying to let it soak in, I like Coen Brothers movies and I was really trying to get this one, but it was rough. It was an intense chase scene drawn out over most of the movie.

When I got home, I did some research of the film online. I kept thinking there was something brilliant about the movie I simply wasn't getting yet and by the scores and reviews, I assumed I was right. Terrific reviews all over the place and on metacritic it scored a 91 out of 100, more perfect reviews for a movie than I recall ever seeing before. I just couldn't get anything out of the other scores that justified it's brilliant review besides the traditional clichéd buzzwords. Then I came across the Washington Post's review by Stephen Hunter and I couldn't have agreed more;

I appreciate No Country for Old Men for the skill in the film craft. I understand No Country for Old Men for its penetrating disquisition on narrative conventions and its heroic will in subverting them. I admire No Country for Old Men for the way it tightens its grip as it progresses, taking us deeper and deeper into a hellish world. I just don't like it very much.

High marks for the typical off beat humor as well as the climatic gripping story line, but that was just it, all that suspense takes you somewhere disappointing in the end. In my opinion, there was a lot of metaphorical use in the characters, all shared by only one unifying factor; death.

If you like Coen Brother movies, you should see it, if for any reason because you will appreciate the Coen style merged with intense action and familiar dramatic undertones. If you didn't care much for Fargo or Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, you probably wont have great feelings for this movie either.

On a side note; If you grew up in Oklahoma or West Texas in the 1980's, you're going to go on a magical time warp in this movie. As much detail in the sets as Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, this movie felt like my midwest past down to the single wide trailers, the draw in the old men chit-chat and the chairs with coin op television sets in the bus station terminal. Looking out the window for miles and besides farm land, only seeing a tree and fence in your front yard. It was eerily familiar.