Lately, I’ve noticed Dr. Roger Starner Jones‘ careless letter –of 23 August 2009 to the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger- making the rounds of the anti-healthcare-reform blogosphere. Jones, an ER physician University of Mississippi Medical Center.

During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes a costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our president expects me to pay for this woman’s health care?

Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture — a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

Starner Jones, MD

Jackson

He doesn’t mention that the woman actually told him how much she spent on these extravagances, and when. He says the gold was recent, but did he do better than just assume that? Gold crowns generally cost the same or less than porcelain crowns. Maybe someone else insisted on paying for that. At any rate, I doubt seriously that the woman in question was spending $800/month on smokes, beer, ringtones, phone service, and tattoos. She could easily spend much more than that on individual health insurance.

For argument’s sake:

“shiny new gold tooth…”

$500-$1200

“multiple elaborate tattoos…”

What do you mean by “elaborate”? A whole back full of tats might be $1200. I imagine Jones would be shocked by much less: $200-$500.

“a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone”

$0-$100 with an almost any common monthly plan. My wife carries a phone that doubles as an MP3 player. An iPhone 3gs? No. A Sony-Ericsson that cost us $14.99.

I hope this woman read your letter, Dr. Jones. I hope she knows that the physician she trusted in the ER, the previous night, thinks she could afford adequate health care on her own, if not for her profane, debauched, and costly habits. I know enough people that fit your superficial description. I know, too, that many of them were taught to pray that you don’t reap what you’ve sown. The problem with our culture is not that a few people pay too much for crowns and ringtones. The problem is that too many in our society believe they can make judgements about others’ values and spending habits based on a brief encounter in an emergency room.

Dr. Jones’ rant about this woman’s dental work and cell phone have become yet another red herring in the American debate on healthcare. It leads the willing off onto the tangent of “These losers who waste their money on shoes, tattoos, and ringtones are the only ones who want the rest of us to pay for THEIR healthcare.” It leads us away from the fact that our system doesn’t work, isn’t viable, is too costly, isn’t the best in the world, and many among us –not even just the poorest- are not assured access to adequate care within it.

Check out this video. It takes liberties with the terminology, presumably to counter the falsehoods stated. I don’t really know, though, if the creator(s) don’t understand the difference between socialized med and the current plan, or if they’re being ironic.

Watch, though:

What d’ya think? Try to make intelligent comments. I will probably delete any totally ignorant ones.

Cheers!

As a quasi-vegetarian, I must admit this is a bit disturbing. As I sit in wait for the post-apocalypse, that I think isn’t here yet, though, this might just be genius. It’s a “business card” made from beef jerky, with a laser-inscribed name and message.

We’ve waited forever for a breakthrough like this.

Actually, is there a Li-Ion card with built-in solar charger coming? How about a card that will electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, so I can run my car on it?

What about a business shotgun, axe, or ball bat. That would help fight off the zombies that are sure to come.

What do my ‘net peeps think about this meat madness? Is it just mad?

Could they make a vegan version? Dried Peach Cards?

Raisin Cards?

Maybe I’ll stick with the shotgun card.

If you want your bizniss on a slab-o-dried-beef, check it out at MeatCards.com. Yum!

DIY sites on the internet host thousands of tips on cheap, easy ways to stow those earbuds, but, invariably, the advice is bad. The most commonly touted “clever” solution I’ve seen is the old “wrap the cord around a credit card” trick. Please don’t wrap your cord around a credit card. A credit card is the worst thing to wrap your cords around. Any time you bend a cord, you put stress on those bend points. Doubling a cord back on itself around a credit card, a library card, or a piece of cardstock is a horrible idea. What happens when you repeatedly bend a paper clip back and forth? It wears out and breaks. It may take several times. It may take several hundred times, but that’s a shortened life for an earbud cord. Wrapping around your hand or your iPod itself is better, but it still puts stress on the cord. So, what do you do?

The best way to wrap a cord is in a circle, the bigger the radius the better. You could wrap some duct tape around a toilet paper tube, a short piece of PVC pipe, a 6oz water bottle.

If you don’t feel up to making your own, you can always purchase the ready made type. Some of these are merely cases, but you can neatly roll the cord up into a circle, and place it gently within.

Cable Turtle ($4.00 and up in different colors), iBeatle (how cute and only $6.49 at time of writing), and JLab JBuds Case (around $10 and several different colors). All available at Amazon.com.

Sometimes, though, I just roll up the cord and place it neatly into a freezer “zip” bag (Glad, ZipLock, Target, etc.)

Okay, here’s the real numero uno, the big cheese, the first one I did, a few days ago, and should have posted on Sunday.

Well, yeah. It’s a rough mix of “Mein Hut er hat einen Pickel”, a little “folk” tune that I’ve plagiarized a genuine folk tune to create.

Anywho, this is a little something that’s been bugging the dark places in my brain for a couple of years. It will have an animated video to go along with it.

Mein Hut er hat einen Pickel Play

If you’re still haven’t voted, and you’re sitting around wasting all your time, reading my stupid blog, get the *$%# off your bed, couch, or bean bag chair, and drag your arse to your polling place. Being an American is hard work, whether you were born here, or are naturalized, but somebody has to do it

Video Source.

Thank you.

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you’re reading this in English, thank those selfish emmer-effers that sailed to and overtook your homeland and killed off the younger of the country’s males, degrading your forebears’ language and culture, till there was nothing left.

John Lennon rehearses Give Peace a Chance at the Montreal Bed-In. Photo by Roy Kerwood. Source: Wikimedia.org.

Merlin Mann put our artist lifestyles in perspective, “Put plainer, my sense is that western culture would be a damn sight poorer today if John Lennon had been forced to carry a goddamn BlackBerry.”

‘Tis true, Merlin. ‘Tis true. I’d hope he’d have been better at ignoring the stuff than I am.

Questions? Comments?

I gotta tell ya. After three missed years, there, including the third –I think- in which the store that housed it closed soon thereafter, I’m so gonna campaign to play at this show. Maybe I’ll just make some kit up, and apply for a booth. We’ll see.

That’s how you make a good music video.

Thanks, guys!