Too Many Ads

Back in the fall, my hard drive failed, and I took the computer to a service center. They replaced the hard drive with an SSD card and installed an ad blocker.

The ad blocker says it has blocked 2.3 MILLION ads in the last 7 months.

That is ridiculous and outrageous. It is no wonder Americans are running around acting like a bunch of insane idiots. We are bombarded constantly by brands, pitches, screams, bells and whistles, and just plain crap that no one needs to see, yet there it is. Constantly.

Seven months is 18.4 million seconds. So that's an ad every 8 seconds on the computer, on my browsers, that this ad blocker has blocked. And it says it has only blocked 37 percent of the ads! Just a little more than a third of the ads are actually blocked. So really, I'm seeing an ad almost every second.

Then toss in TV, ads on Alexa and/or the radio, billboards, newspaper advertising, etc. - and you have the makings of an insane asylum. Literally.

Stop the madness, somebody, and let me out of here!

We have a 5th district congressional house seat that is up for a primary and the ads for that are brutal. And stupid. I would never vote for either of these guys. "Incumbent" doesn't support the former president. Opponent is too liberal for Virginia because he voted to pay for schooling for immigrants when he served at the state level. Of course, this guy is no liberal, his ads saying how great his is point a gun straight at the camera, and he's big friends with the wanna-be dic-tator. They both make me ill.

These two are running advertisements ad nauseum on the local stations, so much so that we have started turning the news off as soon as we see the weather simply so we don't have to see the advertisements.

The big elephant in the middle of these ads is the 45th president, of course. It's all about him. Everything is about him. He's all over the TV, getting constant free airtime, just like he did in 2016. The media learned nothing. The people in control of the media obviously are not patriots, do not understand that demolishing the US Constitution means a vast loss of power not only to us little underlings but also to themselves and their standing not just in this country but also in the rest of the world. Because the US will dwindle without its founding document, and whatever rises from the ashes will be demonic. It certainly will be no beautiful phoenix.

There's also this bozo who sells car who screams at the TV set like we're all deaf. Big deals "fooooor the people." Totally awful ads, usually celebrating the flag. As if wearing red, white, and blue makes one a knowledgeable patriot and an ideal car salesman. (Hint: it doesn't. It makes you an idiot because you don't know how to honor the U.S. flag with appropriate respect.)

What was it that old ad used to say? Calgon, take me away?

No, I think I'd rather go Trekkie. Beam me up, Scottie. I'm ready to go back to the ship.

Be Kind

Bing AI image

One of the trends of today that has upset me is the lack of kindness in the world.

Specifically, I see people at my local county leaders' meetings being jerks. And not just jerks, but mean jerks. They talk to my local supervisors as if they are not people, as if they aren't human, instead of public servants who are doing the best they can in a weird world that doesn't function like it did even 10 years ago.

My supervisors make about $8000 a year - maybe $10,000 if you're nominated chairman. None of these people are in it for the money. Yet, I hear people stand up there and say, "My tax dollars are paying for you to be here!" 

Well, no. My vote is why they are there, or at least, one of them. I can't vote but in one of the five districts in the county, the one I live in. So, you only have one representative, but they vote on everything that goes on in the county. If we had at-large voting, I guarantee you we'd have representatives who all came from the southern end of the county, where most of the growth is. And then people would be really mad.

Anyway, for years now - since about 2017, and I don't need to tell anyone what happened then - I've listened to the "public" turn out at meetings and become more and more rancorous. They demean the supervisors. I wouldn't talk to a dog the way some of these people talk to their supervisor. They have "othered" them to the point where I can see the spittle coming out of their mouths in their anger over some emotional topic.

They seldom get upset about anything important, these people. They go to meetings to complain about removing a Confederate monument. That died down, and they started complaining about books in the library, which is the current issue. In between, there have been other smaller concerns, all of them parroting the lines of the major national pushers of idiocy who send these semi-crazy people out to do their dirty work.

It is beyond appalling for someone to address my elected officials as horribly as I have heard these people do. I despised the former president of the United States, but if I had had the misfortune to be introduced to him, I would have called him, "Sir," and said, "Yes, Sir," and perhaps, "I respectfully disagree." 

This is because I would have been honoring the office of the presidency, not the man. And I expect the same at the local level. I expect people to honor the office of an elected official - or even an appointed one - because it is worthy. And what the office stands for is important. The office stands not for that one person, but for the 6,200 people they represent here locally.

I do not expect people to treat my supervisors with disdain and talk down to them. I do not expect to hear them be condescending, arrogant, and profess superiority when I can tell just by listening to them that they haven't a clue what government is about, nor understand what it is they are trying to talk about.

I know what government is about. I am pretty sure I have been to more meetings than any of these people. I have covered government at every level, even federal (though with a local slant). I also paid attention when I was a kid and learned a lot from School House Rock. I know how a Bill is made in Congress. And I know how the law reads in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I know what the supervisors can and can't do here.

When you write about it for 35 years, you figure it out.

The meetings have been so contentious that I wouldn't be surprised if someone doesn't get hurt at one of them. 

It's a bad look. It's a bad look for the county as a whole, and it's an incredibly bad look for the people who are whining, moaning, yelling, screaming, and shaking uncontrollably because they are so emotionally invested in something that, in the long term, does not matter. 

If people want to get upset about something, be upset about poverty, greed, climate change. Fuss because people don't support local businesses. We have a small shop closing in the county seat because it can't stay afloat. We have local farmers who are struggling because half the county has had too much rain and the other half hasn't had any. Be upset about that, if you must be upset.

Maybe you should wonder why there isn't a fire and rescue structure in the most populated area of the county and go fuss about that. That is something to be concerned about. Or say something when the supervisors are looking to okay apartments. Not because you don't like apartments, but because we don't have a ladder truck here that would reach the top floor and people will die if there's a fire because it will take 20 minutes to get a truck here from the neighboring county. That's something to be upset about, I think.

Or maybe you should worry about the amount of pollution that the cement plant and the truck manufacturer in Greenfield are both dumping into the air. You and your kids are breathing that crap. I'm breathing that crap. But I don't see you jumping up and down over that.

No. I see you yelling about relocating a statue. Or worrying about some imaginary kid possibly picking up a book you disagree with that contains things your god doesn't condone. That's not worth it. That's just using emotional crap to take up time and to keep people from doing anything beneficial for their community.

Whatever you want to say to your elected official, try saying it with kindness. Try to remember they are people, too. They are not from some other planet. They are your neighbors. I don't agree with them a lot of the time, either.

But I am not going to shriek at them while the spit flows from my face because I don't have control of myself. I am going to politely state my point and move on.

Get a grip, people. Pick better battles.

Why Landlord and Tenants Can Never Be Friends

I know there are people who own lots of rental property and think it is a good way to make a living. I am not one of them. I have one house - an old farmstead my mother left me - and it is nothing but a curse.

People do not take care of places they rent. We install folks into a cleanly-painted, decent-looking place, and then they leave it looking like a trash pit.

Here is the most recent example.

This is what the place looked like before we turned it over.

Paneling and brown cabinets.

Freshly painted walls.

Fireplace with paneling. Nice floors.

Kitchen again.

Fresh paint. Nice floors.
 

And here is what it looks like a few days after my latest tenant vacated the premises:

Unauthorized painting of the paneling, and what the hell did they do the ceiling? And what's that black stuff on the walls? (See that one white ceiling tile? That's one I gave them to replace one that they said needed to be replaced because of a small leak. No one said a word about the whole ceiling being covered with … something. And the floors? Not so nice now.
They are so sticky you can't walk on them.

Unauthorized painting of cabinets. And again, what is that black stuff?

Did they sit around letting off smoke bombs? What?

Every room has black all over the walls.

My personal home hasn't been painted in years and if you took a picture from the wall you wouldn't be able to tell where it had been. WTF?

I certainly can't explain it.

Oh yes, let's just tear away the drywall in the bathroom while we're at it.

No clue what caused this. None at all.

And this, my children, is why landlords and tenants almost always have issues. Because the landlord expects the tenant to not live like a pig and smoke up the place and use incense or whatever went on here.

I couldn't make this much mess in three years if I tried. WTH is wrong with people?

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

Yesterday and today both should have been filled with solemn discussions about the content of Oprah Winfrey's great speech at the Golden Globe Awards Sunday.

Conversation should have centered around why so many women wore black, in a show of solidarity.

The topics on FB should have been discussions of ways to improve the lot of women in all facets of life, from being the drudge at home, where many husbands think they are guests and that their underwear magically finds its way into the washer and dryer and back into their dressers, to how to protect themselves from harassment and unwanted advancements in the workplace.

We should have been discussing boundaries, and what it means for each person to have a sacred space that we all respect and do not intrude upon without permission.

And what are we discussing?

Whether or not Oprah Winfrey should run for president.

:::face palm:::

I don't know where that came from. I imagine it went like this:

Powerful man #1: OMG! Oprah just said I can't touch my secretary's boobs! What do we do?
Powerful man #2: Deflect! Deflect!
OPRAH IS GOING TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT
Sheeple:  Oprah is going to run for president!

Are we really so downtrodden in the political sphere that one great speech is enough to bring out vast choruses of "run for the highest office in the land," or was this, as I believe, a media reaction to the content of Winfrey's speech, a reaction swallowed by all who regularly drink the Kool-Aid no matter its content, in order to create the atmosphere we have now, which is one not focused on the issues but instead a discussion of whether or not Winfrey should run for office.

Just another day at the circus that has become this country.

For the record, I heard nothing in Winfrey's speech that said she wanted to run for president. Nothing Winfrey has said or done makes me think she wants to be in politics.

So now instead of talking about something really important, everyone is talking about a supposition that is unlikely.

We have at our disposal social media outlets that could create intelligent, comprehensive dialogue that would create change and influence millions, if we would only use it that way. But what do we do? We put up cat videos and then make giant buttons that react to whatever the media wants us to react to, because again, we drank the Kool-Aid.

Why must people drink the damn Kool-Aid? Can they not think for themselves? Can they not see how they are being led around by the nose by the media, how the oligarchs who are in charge are simply playing with their strings and making them dance like little marionettes?

Have they all lost their minds?

If Oprah announces a run for president, then we can discuss it. Until then, we should ignore all the BS and get back to her speech and the topic she addressed. We should address this issue and other issues without all of this orchestration that surrounds every little thing. I feel like I am a tiny wee mouse in a corner with horns blasting at me from all directions, and behind every loud horn is a great big fool full of Kool-Aid. They are so loud I can't hear myself think. Not only that, they're all spitting on me and I don't like it. I can only take so much stupidity.

Jesus Christ, people. What is wrong with you?

When Girls Go Missing

I am saddened that it seems like every time I turn on the TV, another girl has gone missing.

This is not just in my state, my little corner of the world, where girls go missing.

Lots of girls go missing every day. Why do girls go missing?

The most recent girl to go missing is another UVA student, up in Charlottesville, where it appears something is very wrong. Five women have gone missing in that area in the last five years. I have found references to girls going missing as far back as 1996 on the Internet. The Route 29 Stalker, some articles call it.
 
What frustrates me, though, is the "blame the victim" mentality. Why shouldn't a young woman be able to walk safely from one area of a city to another? Not just Charlottesville or Roanoke, but any city?

What gives anyone the right to touch some other human being, to reach into that personal space and cause physical harm, defilement, or death? What gives them the right?

They have no right. It doesn't matter if the girl has been drinking, what she was wearing, or how she was acting. That doesn't give anyone the right to harm another. It simply doesn't.

And yet the first thing I heard was "she'd been drinking" or "look at what she was wearing" or "why was she walking alone at 1 a.m." As if it is her fault. As if she is "asking for it" - why?

Why are the standards so different?

I am old enough now that I am always careful. But young people are not careful. When I was an older student at Hollins, the young girls had no qualms about running around a dimly lit campus without a care. Those of us who were a little older always made sure we had somebody with us when we walked to our cars. The young girls worried us then and that was 25 years ago.

So I am angry. I am angry that a young girl can't do what she wants and live her life as she wishes without doing it in fear. Because fear is what it is to be a woman in today's society. Fear of being alone with a stranger in a parking lot. Fear of going to the mall after dark. Fear of hurt, fear of pain, fear of drawing attention to yourself so that someone takes notice, and hurts you.

I am disappointed in the double standard. Why do we not have the righteous indignation that we should against these men who hurt women? Aren't they raised better? Are men really that primitive, that they can't control those urges, can't master their feelings, can't be human beings long enough to leave someone else alone? If that is the case, shouldn't they all be locked up somewhere, in zoos like animals? Doesn't the problem rest with them?

Why don't we ask those questions? Can someone tell me that? What is it always that poor missing girl's fault?

I consider myself a feminist, and as a feminist, this reaction angers me. If a young man was out running around shirtless at 1 a.m. and he went missing, would we ask the same questions? What was he doing out in the street without a shirt? Why was he drunk at 1 a.m.? No, we wouldn't ask these questions. They wouldn't even come up in the conversation.

There are facts, sure. The latest missing girl was wearing a crop top at a party. She'd been drinking. She was walking alone. But do those facts mean that she is to blame if she was assaulted, kidnapped, or killed?

Why do we blame the victim? In any assault, absolutely any assault, whether it's a mugging or a rape, a kidnapping or murder, it is not the victim's fault. The person at fault is the one who committed the crime. Always. Every time. Regardless of circumstance. Nobody "asks for it" or deserves it.

Just because I am female doesn't make it my responsibility to ensure I live. That is a societal responsibility. But I have a young niece to worry about, and she needs to be taught to be careful, to be alert, to be, I'm afraid, fearful of the world around her.

Because the truth of the matter is everyone make a mistake, and there is always some jerk out there waiting to take advantage of someone he considers "less than." And in today's world, in today's political climate, a lot of men think of women as "less than."

The media and the political arena have ensured that women are nothing more than political toys and they persist in dehumanizing females, from the abstract way they discuss our "lady parts" in the political sphere to the way they sell automobiles on television.

In an ideal world, no woman would have to worry about rape or murder. But we don’t live in that world. The best we can do is try to create that world. But does anyone really want that world?

Wouldn't there be more outspokenness, more objections, more efforts, if this type of activity were really unacceptable?

I am disgusted. I'm fed up with the media, with politics, with the whole damn patriarchal system that insists that I am less than human because I don't have a penis. What I want to know is, are you disgusted, too?

Why Isn't This Fraud?

Having a medical condition that has forced me to delve into the recesses of the health care system has left me perplexed.

I have to wonder why the insurance companies, hospitals, medical device providers, and pharmaceutical companies, aren't all being charged with massive fraud.

"Free market" I guess is the answer, but if so, it is a sucky one and one that I do not accept. Because what is going on in the system in this country is, to be perfectly frank, wrong.

I am going to give you two examples from my own recent history.

In September, I received a CT Scan at one of the local hospitals. My insurance was billed $10,582.80 by the hospital for the procedure (this did not include ER or other tests, this was the CT scan only). The insurance company "allowed" $3,472.13, and that is what they paid as I had already met my out-of-pocket deductibles. (For my readers outside of the US, that is a cap the insurance companies place on policies. Once you pay X amount out of your pocket, then the insurance pays 100 percent of its allowable costs. It's very confusing.)

In April I had another CT scan at an affiliated satellite location with the same hospital. The charge for that scan was $7,949.00. The insurance company "allowed" $2,276.48, and I had to pay 20 percent of that "allowable" cost because I had not yet met my out-of-pocket deductible for this year.

When I go to my insurance company's website and look at their "estimate the costs" link for procedures, the cost for a CT scan of the abdomen with and without contrast (which is what I had), is less than $1,000. Good thing I wasn't depending on that to be right, huh?

How is this possible, you ask? Here's my understanding of it. The hospital "contracts" with the insurance companies and they make agreements about what is acceptable. You and I have no say in this matter. Neither does the government, except with government-paid policies (Medicare/Medicaid).

Obviously the hospital can afford to do a CT Scan for $2,276, the lowest price my insurance company "allowed," and not $10,582, the highest price the health care facility billed.

Read the comments on this website about the costs of CT Scans. One commenter claims to have been charged $252,000 for a CT Scan! Public bilking, anyone?

Here's the second example:

My doctor prescribed a TENS unit to help me with pain and so that I am not taking so many pain killers. A TENS unit sends electrical shocks into your muscles to trick your brain into thinking the spasms and pain aren't there. It helps.

The bill for the TENS was $795.00. The insurance company "allowed" $185, and I will have to pay 20 percent of that amount. The rest of the cost vanishes into thin air.

Last week I received a notice from the TENS unit company that it was time to get new electrodes (little pads that attach to your skin so that the electric current can go into your body). My insurance supposedly will pay 80 percent of the "allowable cost" for these supplies. This is my first time ordering them.

However, because of the "contract" with the company, and what may or may not be allowed, no one can tell me what my cost will be. I will be paying 20 percent of whatever the insurance company allows, as I understand it.

So I could be paying $2 or $200.

The company that sells the electrodes told me over the phone that they could sell them to me at the "out of pocket" cost (i.e., the cost without going through insurance), for $21.60 a pack. A pack, by the way, should last me 10 days. That is a lot of money.

What do you bet they charge the insurance company about three times that amount? And then the insurance company "allows" so much - but will it be less than $21.60 or more? I don't know.

So I asked my physical therapist today if they sell the electrodes by the pack. Why sure they do! For $9 a pack.

Will my 20 percent share on my insurance be more or less than $9 a pack? I don't know.

How am I supposed to make any kind of an informed decision about purchasing these items? How do you work that kind of thing into your budget when you don't know the amounts?

Tell me, somebody please, how all of this - this making up amounts and back-door dealing - isn't one great big fraud being perpetuated upon the American public. We Americans think we have the greatest health care system in the world when it really ranks 38th, right under the health care of Costa Rica and just slightly better than that of Slovenia! Slovenia, for Christ's sake. We are not number one. That would be France. Yes, France.

Health care should be regulated. Free market my ass. F--k capitalism and the so-called Free Market. This is nothing but a rape of the sick, who generally are too ill to fight and advocate for themselves. The greedy shysters in the industry know they can easily take sick people's savings, cars, homes, and lives. What a distasteful and immoral system we have, one that allows such devils to prey upon the weak. Blood sucking leeches, every last one of them, and they all should be behind bars serving time in jail.

This is why we need real health care reform, one with regulations, checks and balances, and oversight that keeps people who are ill from having to grow even sicker trying to figure out how to keep food on the table and the lights on.

Unfortunately, fraud is legal in US health care, where only dollar bills count and people are just so much chum in the ocean filled with sharks.

Put the Love Back

It will surprise no one that my Tuesday rant today will talk about the health business.

I'm not talking specifics, I'm talking about the state of the whole affair. Because our "health care" is no longer about HEALTH CARE. It's about money.

Anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves. Of course there are individual doctors out there who care very much about their patients, and who are working diligently to help. But they also see that the system is broken. I know this because some of them have told me so. That's one of the good things about being a reporter; you hear stuff. I know how to ask the right questions.

Wellness models would work much better, and that is what we should be working towards. We need more dieticians, nutritionists, and mental health therapists. We need folks who make calls and check up on people.

We need to put the love back in the system, and take out the greed.

I have tried many different ways to take care of myself. Some of those are non-western medicinal modes, such as acupuncture, Reiki, and Tai-Chi. I also like physical therapy (western style) and chiropractic care as healing modalities. I have found some benefit from all of them at various times. I prefer all of these to a traditional doctor's visit at a big facility (I do like my independent and feisty primary care doctor). However, western medicine has its place and can be useful. You can't heal a broken leg with acupuncture, after all, though you can certainly help it heal better.

The problem is, those types of healing modalities aren't quick fixes. We all want to be better in the next minute. We can't miss a day of work, after all (gosh, there's that money thing again). Hence the "pop a pill" mentality. Or the "blast it with chemo" mentality. Sure, these might work, but I have to wonder at what cost - not monetarily, but health-wise. What are we doing to ourselves?

I think diet changes would fix a lot of health problems, not just for me, but for the large majority of the population. If we have to have a nanny state to bring people back to good health, I don't have a problem with that. Outlaw big milkshakes and force the food suppliers to come up with safe ways to preserve products. Make sure every single additive in a food source has been tested, and not by the company that wants to use it, but by an independent laboratory. Our food should not be poison. I suspect a lot of it is.

When I was having a major surgery a year there for six years, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I found the best health care came not from the actual surgery, but from the healing hands of the nurses who soothed my brow and encouraged me to get out of bed by holding my hand, putting an arm around me, or gently touching my knee on their way out the door.

Touch is, I think, one of the most underrated healing modalities out there. We all need more of it. Go get a massage!

I am quite concerned by the lack of follow-up from western medicinal facilities. I have a friend with breast cancer who stopped going to her oncologist and switched her care to her breast surgeon (the oncologist office made her cry every time!). But the oncologist's office never once bothered to call and see if she was okay, if she was receiving treatment, etc. I know people have the right to refuse care, even to chose to die from what is ailing them, but somebody ought to at least make a phone call.

This cold callousness is going to be the death knell of the health business in the U.S. I predict people will turn more and more to alternative methods - and unfortunately to some of the quackery things that were predominate in the 19th and early 20th century (which will only make things worse) - if the health business in the US doesn't actually become true HEALTH CARE.*



*This has absolutely nothing to do with the Affordable Health Care Act. Health care had become a health business long before that became law. Just so you know.*