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so much for another trip to the world series.  boston played like crap.  frankly, we deserved to have our asses handed to us.  2 outs in the 9th, up by 2 and at home, with papelbon pitching?  yeah, if we can’t pull that off, we don’t deserve to win.

anyway, here’s hoping the angels beat the piss out of the yankees.

i don’t understand anymore. 

lose a bid for the olympic games to come to chicago = hooray! 

win the nobel peace prize = this is terrible!

what the fuck?  seriously, i don’t understand anymore.  not that certain lunatics hold idiotic opinions like this.  more that such blatherings are picked by the media and treated as valid, rational and representative of public opinion. 

times like this, repeatingly banging my head against a brick wall seems the only sensible thing to do.

likely i’ve mentioned my loathing of politics before.  still, one cannot escape it, since nearly every medium blares the godawful stuff at you constantly.  mind you, that is one of the reasons for my loathing.  another would be the oxymoronic lunacy that shat itself onto my tv last night, in the form of a paid political advertisment (for some silly PAC, as far as i could tell).  i have this annoying habit of paying attention to what people say, even if it is a commerical.  what these people were saying (via a bad actress dressed as a doctor) was stupid.  they are against health care reform and spewed forth the typical talking points about government rationing of care (cause insurance companies don’t) and fabrications about existing systems of socialized medicine (ie: canadians wait up to a year for “vital” surgeries, if, by “vital”, you mean “elective, non-emergency” surgery.  and by “a year” you mean “about 2 months”).  what really got me, though, was the take-away message: don’t let the goverment get between you and your doctor [by reforming health care to include a public option], tell your congressperson to focus on funding medicare.  i’ll let that sink in a bit, before the befuddled “what the fuck?”.

 i’ll admit to be a regionalist.  frankly, i consider the northeast too intelligent for this crap to fly here.  apparently i think too highly of my fellow new englanders. 

back to the message.  i just don’t understand how groups like this think.  what are they trying to say?  no government run health care, except for the elderly?  it makes my brain hurt, to try and unravel the madness.  now, my understanding of a public healthcare option might be off, but it is just that: an option.  the government sets basic criteria for insurance plans (which, um they already regulate), offers a public plan that is the baseline and people have the option to choose the public plan or a private plan.  i know the fear: it will put private companies out of business.  kind of like how public universities have done away with private ones (wait, they haven’t?). 

 well, so fucking what?  hey, i work for an insurance company (not health insurance, but insurance nonetheless).  they exist to make money by investing your premiums.  insurance is a hedged bet, particularly health and property/casualty insurance.  term life insurance too.  you pay to have coverage in case something bad happens.  the more likely it is that something bad (sickness, car accident, etc.) and covered will actually befall you, the more you are going to have to pay.  if a company feels you probably won’t ever make a claim, they are fine with charging you lower premiums.  lower risk, after all.  the ideal form of the business model is that people pay for insurance and never make a claim.   the goal is to avoid paying out.  this is something we should strive to preserve…why, again?  consider, if you will, what happens if insurance companies don’t make money off a particular form of coverage.  flood damage, for instance.  homeowners insurance never covers it.  you have to buy government flood insurance.  why?  because the risk is too high for insurance companies to want to cover it.  no profit in it.  why, again, would we want to make sure these companies thrive?

the whole thing makes me angry.  like education and dependable public transportaion, health is something we should consider part of the nation’s infrastructure.  i’m not a fan of having to pay taxes, but since i have to, the things i want them spent on are making sure everyone can get an education (free, up to a bachelors, if they desire), get to where they need to and receive the care they need to stay healthy.  maybe thinking the government should provide the baseline for these things makes me a socialist.  so be it.  public versions of education and transportation haven’t eliminated private versions.  i see no reason why the same shouldn’t hold true for health care.

wait, we lost a game that, going into the 7th, we were leading 10-1?  with, arguably, the best bullpen in the AL, if not MLB?  to the Orioles?!?!?!?!

watching baseball is supposed to relax me, not piss me off.  damnit.

pure fucking evil.

 i need more kleenex.

folks, this is what happens when you decide “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in regards to keeping your damn software up-to-date.  when it does finally break, nearly a decade and a half later, no one can fix it.  why?  because you have a vendor app that was written with Borland C++ 4.5, and i can’t get my hands on that to create a debug version of the exe, that’s why.  and XP doesn’t want to let a 16-bit windows debugger run (there is probably a workaround for that, but dear fucking god!  you’re still using a 16-bit system!). 

honestly, we even keep the damn cobol on the back end at the current version, and that language used to use punch cards.  not to mention that it pre-dates, well, me.  but no.  i’m stuck supporting your shitty little system and learning all about obsolete versions of languages, since you never saw fit to upgrade from FoxPro 2.6a and your app apparently uses Clipper to read dBase III tables.  it’s not even comprable to learning latin; i’m learning etruscian instead.

i’d smack whomever is responsible for this system never being upgraded or having the business moved to a different system.  but i don’t know who they are and i suspect they are in iowa.

why does your current advertising campaign hate the english language?  “Let’s Holiday the Season”?!?!?!  does your ad company not actually know the difference between nouns and verbs?  what dim fuckwit signed off on this crap?

unless you are specifically targeting the semi-literate to unliterate demographic, i’m going to assume this will be corrected.  once you realize what a horrible, horrible crime against language you’ve committed.

shit, that’s never going to happen, is it?  fuck you, i’m going to the home depot then.

with apologies to those pennsylvannians that i know, like and respect; you are, as a whole, the worst fucking drivers i have ever encountered.  yeah, yeah, stereotyping is bad, whatever.  the point is that, since i witnessed about 25 of you handle traffic on an exit ramp into philly by putting you cars in reverse and then backing up on to the interstate, nothing anyone with a PA plate has done has restored my faith in your ability, as a group, to be remotely compentent behind the wheel.  in fact, i cringe whenever i see a car with PA plates.

the woman who was behind me on the way into work yesterday did nothing to improve my opinion of you.  in fact, she made it worse.

now, i know there are regional differences between the states.  however, here in connecticut, we do not believe we, or others, have the ability to pass our vehicles through solid matter.  such as the large, wide, slow truck that was in front of me.  i’m going to guess that you cannot drive through trucks in PA either, but that is, of course, an assumption.  regardless, i cannot.  honking, repeatedly, at me will not change the laws of physics, nor the fabric of universe.

also, when you pull up beside me by driving in the shoulder and find yourself still unable to pass the very large, wide and slow truck in front of me, please do not hold up two fingers to indicate there are two lanes.  when there clearly are not.  you see over on the other side of the road, heading into the city?  yes, those dashed white lines in the middle of the road?  that direction has two lanes.  notice the lack of them over here, on the outbound side.  yes, i know there is room enough for two cars to drive next to each other.  see those parked cars, up ahead, that you will hit if you don’t brake and get the fuck back behind me?  yes, that’s why the road is as wide as it is.  to allow parking.  not driving.  fuckwit.

now, i’m sure not everyone from your state drives like a lobotimized lamprey eel.  but you hide them well.  please, for the love of god, learn how to fucking drive.  thanks.Â

my penchant for reading newsweek on the can inspires a political rant.  read it at quiblit.com.

so, back in Oct., i got pulled over.  given that i happened to have expired tags, i suppose it was bound to happen eventually.  unfortunately, i also discovered that, despite having a CT license that was to expire in 2010, my having lived in MD for more than 2 months meant i was, in the eyes of the law, unlicensed.  unlike the expired tags, i couldn’t just pay the fine and be done with it either.  no, it was an “arrestable offense”, so i had to go to traffic court.  which i finally did, last friday.  a mere 5 and 1/2 months after getting pulled over.

the day was spent, well, waiting around.  i wound up in the 1pm slot, so the morning was spent in the library (for lack of better places to wait).  checked in with the prosecuter, ready to plead my case (lawyerless as i was) and was simply asked if i’d gotten my license.  yep.  handed it to the prosecuter; she handed it to a cop to verify it wasn’t a fake.  okay, we’ll dismiss the charges, please sit down till your case is called.  which i did.  went up before the judge, charges were dropped, baliff gave me a print out saying so.  all in all, it took a whole of 5 minutes.

 now, i’m not complaining that i didn’t get fined or have to go to jail.  but, really, it was a waste of time.  not just my time, but the prosecuter’s time and the judge’s time.  and the time of everyone else in court that day.  if all they care about is me getting my damn license, shouldn’t there be a way to just prove it without going to trial?  like, when i actually got it at DMV, couldn’t they automatically send a note to the state attorney’s office, and have the charges dismissed without having to actually go to court?  seems like it would be more efficient.  and i wouldn’t have burned a vacation day.  just a thought.