not to be too dramatic but...

The Healthcare industry in America is like the Mob in a Martin Scorsese flick; you pay them for protection, you try not to ask them for anything knowing they feed off weakness, when you do need them its because of desperation and most importantly, everyone knows what they are doing and no one is doing anything about it.

The difference is that the Healthcare Industry is doing it legally.

Todays examples;
1) I have a condition, its lifelong, and requires daly treatment. I'm like a business owner in the hood- I need the Mob to survive. I also have a nasty thing on my eye that hasn't gone away in months despite four trips to the doctor, two rounds of antibiotics, a lancing and a lot freaked out children. I needed to see my doctor today (for the eye goiter).... well to be honest I didn't need to "see" her at all. Knowing this I canceled my appointment yesterday and just asked for a referral over the phone. This was lost in translation somewhere so I had to come in today and pay for yesterday as well.
She took one look at me and said, "I'm going to give you a referral to a specialist." -(she is understanding of my finances witch makes this particularly puzzling)-a $65 business card, Rad!

2)With my insurance, my monthly prescription runs between $160-$230 depending on what kind of negotiation I have done with my pusher (a.k.a, drug company). The FDA yesterday announced that it is requiring all forms of my prescription to be garnered with the infamous "Black Box" notice. This is the highest alert that the FDA assigns by the way (seen a pack of cigarets lately?). One would assume that with this new level of danger attached to a product the price of it would go down, on the contrary ya'll, my meds were $15 more this month. Adding insult to injury the lovely and helpful young woman at the counter (not being facetious she was way helpful) and all of her fellow pharmacists had no idea about the new FDA standards.

At least the Goodfellas were honest about being dishonest.


(what I paid)


(what I got-notice the absence of a black box)


(a satisfied consumer- take note of the swollen right eye)

Chili lime flavored class warfare ???

In the spirit of the current economy I am going to attempt to make smaller "economy" sized posts on a more regular basis.

Today at the 7-11 on Santa Monica and Virgil, a block away from my house, one now receives a free bag of Frto-Lay's brand chips with the purchase of an international phone card($5 or more). The sign, it should be noted is written in both English and Spanish (interestingly, the only bilingual signing in this particular 7-11), however the terms of the agreement are only written in spanish. Why is this blogg worthy?

1. The average bag of chili-lime cheeto's ( according to my calculations-relax I got an A in college level statistics- and Frto-Lay's wed site) contains; 480 calories( nearly 1/4th of the average dally caloric intake), 90% of the daly allotment for saturated fat, 70% of the daly allotment for sodium and about three words in its list of ingredients that I understand. Where as the advertisement is in spanish, the nutrition facts are not.

2. Obesity is not only life threatening, it is far more prevalent in impoverished households... 50% prevelent in homes making $15,000 or less a year than in homes making $50,000, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

3. My neighborhood is not affluent. Nor does it adhere Calvinistic ideologies about asceticism or a foreword looking perspective in regards to finances. These streets are occupied primarily with hard working, church going, Mexican, Salvadorian and Guatemalan families who buy Lotto tickets and international phone cards at 7-11.

To me, this is a blatant example of a the corporate structure taking advantage the impoverished. Poverty doesn't make people fat, lack of information and healthy alternatives does...don't believe me? Then why would the City of Los Angeles impose a moratorium on fast food restaurants in the inner city. This is Marx at the Marcado, Weber at the vending machene...
perhaps I am overreacting, but this kind of offends me.

cannot be created or destroyed

Interesting facts about physics: matter, energy and momentum are all conserved. This means that they cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. For example, a quarter in the fist of an insubordinate juvenile atop a highway overpass has a certain amount of potential energy (PE=MGH). When the insubordinate decides to ruin your day by dropping the quarter onto your windshield, it will reach your car with a certain amount of kinetic energy (KE=MV^2). The amount of potential energy is directly proportional to the kinetic energy (KE=PE or MGH=MV^2). The kinetic energy then turns into heat energy upon impact with your windshield and then that heat energy disperses (not disappears) into the atmosphere. It never disappears.
Yes, the scientific principles that govern reality are just as frugal and recycle-minded we are.
Interesting fact about humans: experiences are conserved. Everything you experience is the consequence of a long series of experiences that have happened before. The world works like an endless series of dominoes or the neck of a giant hourglass where we are pushed through by the weight of all that is behind us. It is impossible to destroy or create what has already happened or what is yet to happen.
Which brings me back to the topic of insubordinate juveniles.
They are the perfect example of social conservation. At thirteen I decided to devote a substantial chunk of my time to juvenile insubordination. After school most days I ran wild in the streets of the small town I grew up in. I skateboarded where I was told not to, I made out with girls who were supposed to be at cheer practice in public parks while I was supposed to be at the library and a handful of times, before I started listening to straight edge hardcore, I smoked weed under a bridge where homeless people slept and little kids dropped coins practicing for their teenage years.
I smoked with the same three kids every time.
Interesting facts about the three kids I smoked weed with under the bridge: one is now dead due to an overdose of Oxycontin, one went mad after a misjudging the potency of the New Testament and hallucinogens, and one I lost contact with after his second stay at a juvenile detention center in San Diego. Their experience under the bridge was conserved. It was not created or destroyed; it was confined to one form. Like water in a plastic bottle, their contact with reality was limited to one medium. Their existence may have been limited and finite but it did not end with them. It took on the form of urban legend and inspiration for this blog (cheers).
For me, my exposure to the world of weed turned into skateboarding directly into a bored small town cop who wrote me a $200 ticket that my mother forced me contest or pay (inadvertently changing the form). The contesting of the ticket inspired in me a legitimate and intelligent disdain for authority through which I identified with politically charged music and subcultures. That disdain motivated me to loudly articulate my frustrations in hardcore bands and through community activism. … and the list streams out into my life story (quaint, I know). My water bottle was busted open across the sidewalk, was evaporated into the atmosphere and turned into a storm cloud somewhere over the Midwest.
Historically we can trace the dominoes falling on top of us from the dominoes that fell before us. Dependence on a finite recourse for our energy led us into Iraq. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand led us into the Cold War. Dungeons and Dragons led us to World of Warcraft. Scientifically, we can calculate the velocity of dominos falling. A sonic boom is the conversion of kinetic energy into sound energy. Smoke and ash are the results of heat energy converting cannabis back into carbon. If we combine them, perhaps we can calculate how the quarter dropped in youth can shatter the windshield of adulthood.

(images stolen from Denis Darzacq http://denis.darzacq.revue.com/)

Phase: Change

When creating a change we tend to do one of two things. A) We bend our expectations around the framework of reality, i.e., “Wow, I am depressed! I bet this has something to do with the fact that I am dependent on external sources to determine my self worth. I should really change that”, or B) we bend reality around the framework of our expectations, i.e., “Wow, I am depressed! I’ll bet this has something to do with my bust line. I should really change that”. They both have their benefits, but I’m going to bet the first one is more effective while strangely, the second is far more popular.

Don’t think so?
Let’s all hail the masterpiece that is the human form (or twist it around, poke at it and pump a bunch of Botox, plastic and silicone in it until we can look at ourselves in the mirror). In total, Americans spend approximately $8.4 billion annually on cosmetic surgery. The average nose job costs between $3,000 and $7,000. The average breast augmentation runs around $3,500. Oh yeah, bending the reality of the body around internal expectations is popular and (for a short time) effective.
The gratification that comes from losing love handles is fast and easily measurable, thus its success has swollen and plumped in the modern world of microwave media. The more we rely on the physical as a source of happiness, the easier it becomes to bow out of emotional accountability (this is coming from a guy runs 30 miles a week and spends six days a week in the gym). The logic is simple: “Hey, I know why Dad’s depressed, because he looks like a frozen chicken when he’s naked.”

Perhaps this is more indicative of our culture; the tendency to treat the symptom instead of the sickness. We are putting air into leaking tires; bailing water on the Titanic.
My stepfather had surgery on his hip a few years ago. It was a common procedure, executed at one of the best facilities in the country. But as he recovered, he noticed certain pain that he had not experienced before. He was patient, and worked with his physical therapist for months to regain his flexibility and strength but still there was an unnatural discomfort that kept him from feeling healed. The doctors offered him cortisone and painkillers, they offered more physical therapy, they offered him condolences and let him know that these things take time.
My stepfather looked at the reality of his situation (real shitty pain) and tried to bend his expectations around that reality (something probably went wrong in the healing process).
A few months ago the doctors discovered that as his hip was healing, groups of nerves had been pinched between the new metal ball and socket of his state-of-the-art hip. Imagine a G.I. Joe’s hip socket after a kid had played with it for hours on the beach. Bits of sand accumulate in the joint scraping and impeding mobility. Now imagine those bits of sand are nerves. His doctor’s solution: eat some pills and we will deal with reality when you get tired of that.
For most of my junior year of high school I rode to lunch with a friend who drove a brilliant white dying American car. It had problems; we called them character and ignored them. When the car made an unusual sound, the problem was clear…the stereo was obviously not loud enough. This lasted a few months and inevitably our “solution” backfired leaving us walking to lunch for the remainder of the year.
If this logic is ridiculous when applied to a car, why is it not when applied to our lives?
Because, for most of us, the prospect of immediate tangible change (“change we can see” ) is far more valuable than change that will last but takes time to achieve. For the cost of a cheap new nose, I could see my therapist every week for three years. Would a new face make me feel better? For a time, but the deeper lying insecurities that led me to despise my face so much that I had it surgically manipulated would still be there.
Real lasting change is hard. It is often conceptual and intangible. For me is like rearranging my living room using levitation and fairy dust. It is scary and hard to turn down the radio and open the hood. It is painful and difficult to reopen the wound and tear the nerves from the bone. It is lonely to look away from a mirror or a scale to measure progress. But it’s lasting and its honest…and it’s real.


(black and whites courtesy of gymjones.com)

Come on baby make it hurt so good

Escaping pain is part of what America is about; rubbing your flesh with the ice cube of dreams before the rusty safety pin of momentary pain is jabbed through it. This leaves us with a nasty little hole called experience from which we hang things like personality and character. We go into debt to go to school, to get a job to pay back the debt. We to go into debt to buy a house that is paid for by working so much that we are never home.

This why we are taught to pray on our knees. Because it’s supposed to hurt.

We escape through our vices: through media, sex, prime time, Bowflex and red velvet cupcakes; through US Weekly, nightcaps, flirty text messages and submitting irrelevant socially analytical essays in the blogosphere. We become our vices; we begin to fantasize about sleeping with the cute new hostess instead of fantasizing about selling the script that is supposed to get us out of doing the job we are miserable in. Sitting through the pain works to keep us focused, while being numb only works to get us through the pain.
Through the process of evolution, those who were able to sit through the pain were those who lived long enough to spawn. Reproduction favors the numb. This could explain why we play such cold, indifferent love games or why the good girl always seems to chase the distant cold boy. Perhaps—instinctively--she understands his lack of vulnerability will make him the strongest provider because he is free from pull of momentary desires. The downside is this will also make him a boring asshole.
The body is designed to deal with momentary pain in a way that is so mechanically merciful; it is almost proof for god. When the feeling of pain is triggered, the brain instantly releases hormones through the blood stream. These hormones are called endorphins (the name actually means the morphine within). The body then is absolutely unaware of the physical trauma it is experiencing so that it may get through whatever has caused the pain.
The problem, of course, would be that if we are not aware of this pain (and are actually enjoying the dragon chasing sensation caused by it) what kind of damage are we capable of doing while blitzed out on pain juice? The question that comes to mind is, at what point does numbness become a vice of its own?
We deal with emotional discomfort in a similar way, we push it down until we do some kind of lasting damage like giving our soles a hernia. 51% of Americans feel that they are underpaid; only 27% are satisfied with the stress level of their jobs, yet nearly half (48%) say that they are satisfied with their jobs. What this means is that we are for the most part content with being uncomfortable (underpaid, over worked and over stressed) as long as we’re making dolla dolla bills, y’all.
My grandparents live differently; I do not. They have worked as farmers for the past 50 years. This is an industry that is the base for every overused metaphor about patience (don’t count your chickens before they hatch, you reap what you sow, the fruit is too ripe on the vine, the good farmer is patient while the city boy just wants to go to the damn 711, buy a cup of coffee and think about how hard his life is).
They are not a numb people. Every moment of their labor is filled with joy and passion regardless of the results. They don’t need to shield themselves from momentary pain, they hardly need to watch TV.
In contrast, I feel numb because I hurt; I hurt because something displeasing is happening; I am unaware of how displeasing something is because I am numb; I am numb because I hurt.
If America were a philosophy class this behavior would result in a C-. While the logic works, it is recursive and endlessly destructive. Unfortunately, America is far more like a history class where we must learn information only to unquestioningly regurgitate it. We die from hypertension and loneliness; from debt and regret. We die from our vices and often are not aware that we have been dying for years.

(all images on this post were stolen from Robert Frank's, The Americans...fucking brilliant)

The Sum Of Some Parts

When life hands me brain pudding, I make dehydrated coconut oil, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, gray matter, cocoa powder and tri-calcium phosphate out of it. It offers me a sense of control; if I can take something apart I can understand it and reconstruct it in a way that is more conducive to my interpretation of reality.
When I was a child I would pull apart my toys. I had boxes full of bike and skateboard parts never to roll again. The Dalai Lama takes watches apart to help him meditate on the vastness of the universe. American football fans systematically separate their favorite teams and gel them into “fantasy” leagues. Deconstruction is a good first step to reconstruction. High school anatomy classes use dissection because it is the most accurate way to explain muscular and skeletal structure.
There are of course many things that would be better left misunderstood and intact. The first few years of most presidencies, for example, are mostly devoted to picking apart the hard work of the previous administration. When Clinton left office with a $230 million surplus in 2000, the Bush administrations first response was to pick apart this progress to better understand what their financial strategy should be. Unfortunately had they “stayed the course” the national debt could have been paid off by 2012.
Many of the relationships I have had would probably have stood a better chance with out me picking at them. Most of my wounds would probably heal nicely had I not been so enamored with what happens when I unravel my sutures.
Questioning leaves nasty scars. I have been picking at a fresh scab for the last few weeks.
One of my oldest and dearest friends, a girl with whom I spent a substantial portion of my youth romantically involved with, was murdered while traveling the country conducting research for a project she called “collective autonomy” (living free and independently together) and I can’t help but ponder the what ifs.

If someone in New Orleans had been paid to counsel parents on the importance of physical interactions and reading out loud to their infants, if those parents took that advice to heart, if those parents made enough money to give their child every ounce of education, every sports uniform and every toy for every birthday if that kid never felt alone, awkward or deprived, if that kid didn’t turn into a desperate teenager who felt alienated and forgotten by a country hell-bent on neglecting its desperately impoverished, if that teenager was taught how to deal with anger and depression in a constructive way by someone sincere and reliable.
If there were better streetlights in the 9th ward.
If in 1965 when the Mississippi gulf outlet was completed, someone would have noticed that it intensified the power of hurricanes by more than 20%. If the levees didn’t break; if FEMA and the president hadn’t avoided and mismanaged every element of recovery.
If they had seen my friend’s smile when she used to hold my little sister, or when she talked about social equality.
If someone, anyone, along the way had seen this person and shown them a fraction of the love I felt for the woman they murdered, maybe there would have been a different outcome, and she would still be alive.
Deconstruction like this only works to reconstruct whatever trauma inspired it. Taking apart reality in this way leaves me with an unfortunate result; the world is laid out in front of me in nice pieces, each one detached and disassembled, and I can’t for the life of me remember how to put them back together in a way that works.
Controlling things has little to do with understanding them and even less to do with taking them apart. Football teams still lose regardless of a fantasy league. The Dalai Lama is still left with piles of springs and no answers, and I am left with one less friend and a thousand more questions.

Freedom Of Speech...what?

When did the definition of diplomacy change from being tactful to being vague and meaningless in order to dance around the truth? Why is it that elections have more to do with being polite than being poignant?
Politics would be so much better with a real vocabulary. Can you imagine how interested the populous would be if every time a member of the GOP said “maverick” they used the term “fucking bad ass” instead? Essentially “bad ass” is what they are implying and if they were truly “mavericks” they would have the balls to use the appropriate vernacular.
I respect Barack Obama’s positive attitude. His willingness to use terms like “change” and “hope” (when what he is implying that we need “change” from the past eight years of horrifyingly unprecedented “hope”-lessness) is a testament to his sincerity. Using uplifting language and double positives (“more good”) in place of heavy double negatives (“less bad”) is a thoughtful tactic employed by many high school guidance counselors and authors of books about quitting smoking. Unfortunately the results of this kind hearted illusory tend to be a lot of passive-aggressive pundits and a confused populous.
I would prefer my politics a bit more honest (wow, that is a ridiculous sentence). I sincerely feel that the way our country is run would be dramatically different if we allowed our politicians the freedom of speech.
I can remember vividly the day my world changed from one trapped behind a thick veil of miscommunication to one liberated by an open vocabulary. I am speaking of the day I was given the gift of swear words.
I was at my father’s house in Northridge; he had picked me up from daycare and had driven me back to the Valley. I was in the fourth grade. I had no friends. I was abnormal, and no one could determine if I had ADHD, or if I was so gifted that my classes bored me. I would be placed in a gifted program one week then a remedial program the next. My parents tried therapy and special education programs based in different learning styles. They tried private tutors and personally explaining every homework assignment. None of it worked. In all honesty, I was just really good at abhorring school.
My teacher, Mr. Johnson, did not feel that my troubles were anything but sheer stupidity. My parents had many a proper sit-down with Mr. Johnson, the principal, and my elementary school guidance counselor. Meetings where, I am told, tears were shed, threats of physical violence were exchanged and my divorced, young, embittered parents were absolutely civil with each for the first and last time in years.
Mr. Johnson smelled of English Leather and coffee; a stench that lingered through 20 years of bourbon and depression. He also did not have the patience and compassion that my parents and other teachers had.
Mr. Johnson’s solution, derived from more than two decades as a fourth grade teacher, was to place me and my desk in a big cardboard refrigerator box in the back of the room. He would hand me assignments at the beginning of the day and I would pick my nose and weight for the bells to signal recess, lunch and finally my release to afterschool care. The other kids called me “Box Boy”. I was not at all happy or more educated at the end of the year.
So when my father saw my frustration that night in Northridge he could empathize. He knew what was bothering me and he had been working hard to make it better. He asked me what was wrong; I told him that in order to truly express myself I would need to use words that were inappropriate for a child to be using with his father. He said there were no such words,
“Mr. Johnson is a fucking asshole,” I said. My father welled up, smiled and hugged me.
“Yes he is son, yes he is,” He replied.
In that moment I was freed. I still barely passed the fourth grade, Mr. Johnson was still an evil man, but no longer was I afraid to express myself appropriately or diplomatically. I could express myself accurately. Since that day I have been working hard to use every word I know to express exactly what I feel.
Can you imagine where politics would be if we suddenly liberated them from the mindless bureaucratic doublespeak and allowed them to tell us just how fucked up everything is and what specifically they’re going to do in order to get this country’s shit straight?