I Love This Movie

I hate "health care." 

To me, there is no more devious menace to society then America's health care system and especially in California it is a complete black hole of human care and sanity. Everyone kind of knows how crappy the health care system is but if you have a job or parents that provide you have no idea how asinine it really is. 

For instance: Since I consider myself to be a somewhat responsible adult I made it a point to make sure that once my job's health benefits expired that I would get my own coverage. The fact is I never go to the doctor, but I am not up to being paranoid about random acts of catastrophe causing me to be in hellish debt the rest of my otherwise defunct life. So to ease my stress I get health coverage. I figure that at least caps the amount the man can take out of my pocket if the worst should happen. 

Of course Anthem Blue Cross has a website that is only partially functional. Annoying. Their paperwork totally makes sense to normal people who don't work for insurance underwriters. Not. Each benefit plan has fair terms and are made to accommodate all types of people in all types of health brackets. Health has nothing to do with health insurance. 

So I find a manageable plan with dental that is only $85/ month for basically nothing but emergency insurance and cheesy dental. Ridiculous. Then I get their response in the mail. Basically saying I have to pay a 20% higher premium $102/month because of tobacco use and my arm injury last September. Oh and the plan is way worse then the one I looked at originally everything is more expensive and I have a higher deductible.  

So a healthy 27 year old man with NO prior health issues, who is on NO medication gets hosed for over $100/mo. for "peace of mind?" The form doesn't even ask how much you smoke or how long... I could have smoked 1 cigarette in the last 6 months or 6 packs a day for the last 6 months, and I have to pay a higher premium because I USED my health insurance when I hurt my arm! Never have I experienced such a coldness and impersonality.

When I had a job paying for health insurance it was already intolerable and now I say it is not worth $100/month, but do I really have a choice? 

Yes. 

Bite me health coverage. I will take care of myself. If I fall again and break something I will load up on pain killers and take the next plane to Panama and get it fixed. Cheap vacation. If some clown bag runs me over and puts me in the hospital I will make him pay for it. If he is broke and has no insurance like me I will take it, but then I will file Bankruptcy and I will walk away with only injured credit. Who cares. 

I hope you die and rot away health care because you care for nothing more then the health of your bank accounts. 

Well...

So I had a smoke today, but I gave my pack away. I think I am less addicted to smoking then I am to quitting smoking. 

Passenger Side

I just had such an amazing experience. 

I was leaving Hollywood after seeing Star Trek (AMAZING!!) with some friends. It was midnight so I thought it prudent to go to the local 7-11 for a vitamin water and a pack of smokes. I left the 7-11 and lit my cigarette while driving down Sunset Blvd. all the while listening to Wilco's "A.M." The windows of my car were down as to avoid the unpleasant odor of a smoker's car and I was enjoying some of the last cool weather of Spring with the heater blasting. This continued as I got on the 101 South and all of a sudden it happened. 

While the wind howled thorough my car at 70MPH I was all of a sudden attentive to the fact that I was smoking. I realized I didn't really feel like smoking but I was doing so compulsively, and the conversation started. I was confronted by a voice in my own mind, while Wilco drowned in the rushing wind, that simply said, "What are you doing?" 

Immediately my brow furrowed as if I were an indignant child responding to a correcting parent. I responded, "I'm smoking." 

And then the deepest philosophical question followed by the concerned voice, "Why?"

I had no response since I was already aware I was being compulsive (AKA addiction.) I felt no shame or guilt but all the time my brow was angry and unmoving. The voice said with heartfelt concern, "You have to stop." 

Now, wanting to change the subject in my mind, I went to think about writing. The  voice said, "You will be a writer." My brow lifted, but the subject at hand was immediately brought back in to my minds eye while I sailed down the 5 South. 

The loving voice had parted and left a final thought: You will die. Not as a message of doom, but as a reminder of my mortality. My days on this Earth are numbered. I was instantly sobered and when I went to take another drag of my cigarette I realized that the wind had blown it out. 

I will remember that final thought because it came to me as if it was a man's dying words filled with desperate compassion.  I realized those were a man's dying words of desperate compassion. He died because he knew I would too and so that while I do live I have the opportunity to live fully if I so choose.

Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit. 

Contemporary Western Humanity

Steve Turner- quoted by Ravi Zacharias

Contemporary Western Humanity

We believe in Marx Freud and Darwin. We believe everything is OK as long as you don't hurt anyone- to best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your definition of knowledge. We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage. We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that adultery is fun. We believe taboos are taboo. We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence. We believe there is something in horoscopes, UFOs, and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves. He was a good moral teacher although we think some of his good morals were really bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same (at least the ones that we read were.) They all believe in love and goodness they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, god, and salvation. We believe that after death comes the nothing because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing. If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it is compulsory heaven for all excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan. We believe in Masters and Johnson, what's selected as average, what's average is normal, what's normal is good. We believe in total disarmament because we believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. Americans should beat their guns in to tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow. We believe that man is essentially good its only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society, society is the fault of conditions, and conditions are the fault of society. We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly- the universe will readjust history will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought. 

If chance be the father of all flesh disaster is his rainbow in the sky, and when you hear state of emergency, sniper kills 10, troops on rampage, youths go looting, bomb blasts school it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker. 

http://htod.cdncon.com/o2/rzimht/MP3/LMPT/LMPTCD125-2.mp3