We need National Health Care

I just got a notice that my health care is going up again this year. In 2006, it was around $300 a month. Expensive, but it was good insurance and because of pre-existing conditions, it was my only option. I have group insurance through an organization for the Entertainment Industry. Paid quarterly, it was around $900 every 3 months. That's around $3,600 per year.

In 2007, they hit us with a bombshell. It more than doubled to a whopping $700 a month, or $2100 quarterly, or over $8000 a year. One would think that this outrageous increase would be illegal or at least catch someone's attention. Apparently, this only happened in California. No reason to care – it's a blue state.

I just received the notice about next year's rates. Again, it's only California. $1030 per month, around $3100 per quarter, over $12,000 a year. And believe it or not, that's the cheapest one on the list. If I lived in San Diego or San Francisco it would be much higher.

What's shocking to me is that this can go on and no one in government cares. Instead of throwing out the broken insurance and medical industry and taking care of its citizens, the US continues to be the leader in backward, selfish thinking. Why do I need to pay the equivalent of my rent every month just to be free to hope I don't need to use it?

The health industry is out of control and we need someone strong enough to get into office and say, "This system is broken. Let's throw it out and start over." I know that we won't be able to fathom all of the horrors of the Bush Administration until decades have passed. We'll be paying for having allowed a dictator into office for a long time to come.

There are no guarantees any of us will live that long – not with the current state of health care in this country. Angry? Damn right I am.

What's your guilty pleasure?

I'm not a violent person. In fact, I have a peacemaker personality. But I have a true guilty pleasure. When it comes to sports, I'm only a fan of one: boxing. Why? I have no idea.

I'm not a fair-weather fan, either. I watch everything I can find. Granted, the super-fights are the best. There's nothing in the world like two absolute masters, men in their prime, pitting their wills, skills, and talents against an evenly matched opponent.

Athleticism plays a key role (and nothing beats the body of a boxer in peak condition) but it's also a thinking man's game. Teddy Atlas, the color commentator on ESPN's Friday Night Fights and a talented trainer, has often said that boxing is "75% mental". You can almost see them thinking through the puzzle their opponent brings, using the flaws and errors to gain an advantage.

Who is my favorite boxer? That's really difficult to say. I've been a fan of Oscar De Lahoya (right) since his gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics. I loved watching Mike Tyson in his prime. Mickey Ward and Arturo Gatti gave me countless hours of great fights. I grieved when Diego Corrales was killed in a motorcycle accident because he'd always been a favorite. Roy Jones, Jr. was breathtaking when he was at his best. (He once put both hands behind his back and as his opponent began to punch, Roy managed to punch him first and knock him out. Almost superhuman speed. It was incredible.) Currently, I follow Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton, several of the ex-Olympians, and many more. I can't choose just one.

I won't wax poetic about all this because, frankly, I'm not used to discussing boxing with anyone. That's what a guilty pleasure is like. You quietly indulge it and hope no one's watching. So, if you have the guts to step up, tell me your guilty pleasure? I promise not to mock you. I'm far too easy a target.

What's your weirdest job?

Since I asked about strange phobias yesterday, I'll another question that might engender some interesting answers. What is your weirdest job? For me, I think the answer would be: Pea Washer. And yes, that is literally what I did. I washed peas.

One summer between my junior and senior year in college, I needed a job but my finals ran late and all the good ones were taken. So I asked Dad for help. At the time, he was Vice President of a canning company so he got me a job at one of the plants. This was in Wisconsin, so the perfect soil and excellent amount of rainfall lends itself to making some of the best crops in the country. In this case, vegetables.

I started out as a pea washer. I stood on a high, vibrating parapet and watched a large vat of water. Peas came in from outside on a conveyor belt and fell into the vat. Every 20 minutes or so I had to adjust the amount of soap or oil. The peas needed to swim around the vat for a bit and then fall to the bottom so they could continue on their journey. The mix of soap and oil had to be perfect in order to make the empty casings (that green skin around a pea) float off the top and let the peas sink to the bottom. Too much of one or the other and the peas would float or the casings would sink. There. That's more pea knowledge than you ever knew you needed.

As you can tell, there wasn't a lot to do. I stood on my walkway and vibrated. There was one more person in the room, but the machines were too loud to hold a conversation. I tried reading a book, but my boss yelled at me. Full attention must be on the peas. So I took some paper towels from the restroom (that brown paper you roll out with a lever) and started writing short stories. I could hide the pen and pretend to wipe something with the paper if my boss came by.

When the peas stopped rolling in, I became a corn cutter. On this job, I stood in front of a long machine with several other women. We all had short sticks (dowels) and when a cob got stuck in the blades, we'd poke it until it came loose. We just walked up and down the length of the machine all day, poking corncobs. We'd also get covered, head to toe, with bits of corn starch spit out of the machine when it was cutting. My clothes would be so stiff at the end of the day, I could barely bend. Another lovely job.

So what crazy jobs have you held? Can you beat pea washer and corn cutter?

What are your strange fears?

I recently learned that a friend is afraid of toy balloons. I didn't ask her to explain exactly what she's afraid of, but I understand having weird little chinks in our armor. One of my mom's friends gets the heebie-jeebies at the sound of a clothespin on wet fabric. For me, it's filing. Not the manila folder kind of filing – nail filing.

Ever since I was a child I have been downright phobic of it. Not only can't I file my own nails, I couldn't watch or hear someone else filing theirs. Not in person and not even on television! If someone on TV was casually filing her nails I would close my eyes and sing the la la song.

You'd be surprised how many times it happens. Because nail filing is the universal symbol of boredom, TV writers and actors would take that shortcut at every turn. I missed a lot of plot if it happened too often. Whole scenes in film and TV are a blur. I barely saw any of Carol Burnett's "Mrs.-a Whiggins" sketches with Tim Conway because she filed throughout the sketches.

It is far worse, though, when it's in person. Most of my friends are understanding when I tell them of my phobia, and keep me from seeing files and emery boards. They do their dirty deed away from view. Actually, it's the 'view' thing they usually focus on, not realizing the sound of filing is just as toxic to me. Sometimes they think because my back is turned they can sneak in a quick repair. As soon as they do, I start to shake, cover my ears, close my eyes and beg them to stop.

"But you can't even see me!"
"I can hear you! Please, I'm begging, stop!"
"Okay, okay, I put it away."

One friend decided my phobia was silly, stupid, and something I'd made up. As if I'd invent something as silly and stupid as a fear of nail filing just for kicks. She refused to honor my requests to stop, would whip out a file at a moment's notice and deride me as I turned into a quivering mass of jelly. I could never understand why a small warning so that I could go to another room was such an inconvenience. I haven't seen that friend in quite awhile. It isn't because of the filing, although her attitude does show a fundamental problem.

So how do I do fingernail maintenance? I use a clipper. I'm a master at shaping and trimming nails into perfect arcs with a nail clipper. Oh, and just so you know: there's no picture of a nail file on this entry because even the sight of one gives me the heebie-jeebies. I don't want to have to avoid my own blog.

So tell me – what are your strange fears? Trust me, I won't judge you. I've had enough people judging me for mine in my life that it's the last thing I'd ever do. These little chinks in our armor may be funny to others ("How could you be afraid of that?") but they're very serious to us.

Juggling

I'm trying to learn how to juggle. So far I'm inept, but I've only just started. Juggling is one of those skills I've always wanted but never knew how to even begin. A friend (Nancy) gave me a "learn to juggle" kit, which includes a DVD and 3 juggling balls. She learned from a similar kit that I gave her a couple of years ago. It really paid off for her, as she stuck to it and bam – she learned to juggle.

Nancy came out to California to visit last year and we stopped by a "Relax the Back" store because she has some serious back problems. She was on her crutches and we found lots of good things for her.

In the center of the store was a small table with various items. Among them were "exercise balls" which were basically juggling balls. A young man spotted them as we were standing nearby talking. He picked up 3 balls and began juggling in that way young males have of showing off.

In response, Nancy balanced on her crutches, grabbed 3 balls and immediately began juggling. It was an entirely unexpected action from the young man's point of view and to his credit he instantly met her display of skill with a huge smile and a stream of compliments. It was a wonderfully satisfying moment.

Don't underestimate people who are older than you are, more infirm, or female. They might surprise you. Next time Nancy visits I want to be able to give her my own demonstration of juggling. So back to practicing I go.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design (Creationism)

One of my passions is evolution, especially the origins of man. As a young child I was fascinated by dinosaurs. I memorized all sorts of statistics about them (I knew the length, weight, and epoch of nearly all the major species). I had a dinosaur poster in my room throughout my grade school years and I'd stare at it in fascination, dreaming of what it might have been like when they used to dominate the Earth.

I went on vacation in late September this year. I flew to Mom's and she put me to work going through old boxes of my stuff that had been stored in the basement. This included papers from 1st and 2nd grade and I found drawings of dinosaurs, stories about dinosaurs, papers about dinosaurs – you name it. Yup, obsessed.

As I grew older I switched my focus from dinosaurs to early hominids. Again, utter fascination as I read all the books I could find, watched any documentary that was on TV, etc. So it was with eager anticipation that I watched an episode of NOVA that aired Tuesday. It was about the trial in Dover, Pennsylvania caused by the school board wanting to include Intelligent Design in their curriculum. ID is basically an invented title to attempt to make Creationism appear to have it's big toe dipping in the waters of science. If they could convince the court that ID was in any way scientific, they could make a case for teaching it in the classroom without that pesky separation of church and state the Constitution insists upon.

I'm sure you can see I have my own biases in place. Although I am a Christian, I see no merit whatsoever in ID. I am not at war when it comes to religion and science. To me, they can both exist peacefully. I see no reason to pretend that only one of the two can exist in this wonderful, complex world of ours.

Evolution has 150 years of scientific examples to back it up. It's in the fossil record, in biology, observable in nature, and hard-wired into the DNA of every creature on earth. From the smallest atom to the largest creature, evolution makes sense of the variety and complexity of life on Earth. Intelligent Design sees that complexity and basically says, "That's too difficult to figure out. There must be a supernatural element at work." But for the examples they give of unknowable complexity, evolution already has an explanation of how it evolved.

The trial illuminated a myriad of examples of transitional creatures and fossils, many of which the general public has never heard of. Why? Because since the Scopes trial 80 years ago, Creationists have fought tooth and nail to keep the scientific proofs out of the textbooks our children read. I was lucky as a child, because my parents put no limits on my learning. I devoured every book the library had on the subject, read every article in science magazines, and was therefore able to see for myself the strides science was making in the field. To this day I am still utterly fascinated and devour any news that breaks in the scientific arena.

Does evolution take God out of the equation? Of course not. God is the miracle behind that equation. God is in every aspect of science. Personally, I don't care if others believe as I do. Everyone should be allowed to come to his or her own conclusions. But if you want to interfere with the Constitution and try to take God out of the churches, synagogues and mosques and into our classrooms wearing the disguise of science, then I get upset. That makes God a liar, a charlatan – wearing an ill-fitting mask. Leave science to the scientists. We need them. We need the brilliance of the human mind to help us cure diseases, fight famine, climate change, and all the other problems modern humans face. We can pray to God for help, but we still need the next generation to understand the difference between science and a theory full of smoke and mirrors.

I'm required to think? Uh oh.

Ever have those days when your creativity is at such a low ebb you can't even write a grocery list? That's me today. When your life revolves around the ability to access your creativity every day there is usually a point when you have a minor burn out and have to take a step back. When it happens to me, I usually take a day off, play games, watch TV, do chores, that sort of thing. It's probably because it took a lot of work getting a Jimmy Olsen comic book write-up finished for my other blog.

Today, my thoughts aren't very interesting, so I decided to look in old files on the computer and see if I can find something to spark my creativity. First thing I find is this:

I like to look for faces in things. My bathroom rug is made of terrycloth, and I noticed that the pattern of the terry made a very clear face. Unfortunately, it was not the Virgin Mary or Jesus. I probably could've charged admission if one of those had shown up. No, it looked more like Bette Davis. Win some; lose some.

No sparks but dang, why didn't I take a picture? It isn't every day you see Bette Davis in a rug. I did find the Virgin Mary in a Tostitos Corn Chip once (and sold it on eBay for about $16). I love seeing all the bizarre things that get sold on eBay and it was fun to give it a shot. Granted, the Holy Chip did not make me millions, but since the whole auction was a joke I was surprised it made as much as I did. Maybe I'll post my auction here one day. Have to find the text and the photos, but it'd be worth it.

And now, off to find other gems of undiscovered weirdness like the Bette Davis rug. There are probably plenty of them, along with bits and pieces of stories. Those are always fun to read, too. Until tomorrow then!