Last Week Tonite (DNC)

John Oliver says what a lot of us are thinking about Trump these days; that Trump should have been taught the definition of the word "sacrifice" by the time he was 10 years old. A candidate seeking a key to the most powerful office on the planet should not have to be reminded that its meaning has nothing to do with personal wealth or success.

On Aging

When we’re young we can’t wait to get older. Envy of “grown-ups” is part of youth. Time moves at glacial speed when we’re little, and this is never truer than during the weeks leading up to Christmas. As we attain adulthood however time seems to slowly accelerate. Every time we turn around it’s another holiday, birthday, season, year, decade, wrinkle or grey hair in the mirror.



And then there’s the tooth thing! Losing them is somehow *fun* when you’re little. You get money for teeth when you're little! Tooth Fairy visits are something we look forward to. What a concept! But it's vastly different when we get older and no longer so much fun no matter how you lose them. Maybe if you’re a hockey player it’s not a big deal. After all, goals aren't scored with teeth in hockey (that's what the coaches say anyway) so you don’t need teeth on ice. But the vast majority of us aren’t hockey players meaning the loss of a biter is more of a big deal.

And that Tooth Fairy… well, she stops coming after a certain point. She sends a bill instead. Usually a big one.

Why mention any of this? It should be obvious. The Tooth Fairy sent me a bill today. What was supposed to be a fairly routine examination following my recent cleaning and update visit turned into an extraction. Ouch!!! The X-rays showed a root cracked all the way thru to the tip. There was no hope of repairing or saving it - it had to go. Double ouch too because all the yanking, cleaning and scraping work seemed to start well before any of the Novocain took effect.

Extractions usually go fairly well for me. Yes, there have been two others before this one, not counting four wisdom teeth *many* years ago… so that’s really six others (ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch)… and other than the normal amount of bleeding and soreness there’s never much swelling. But life for the week or two afterward is always awkward. Eating is a hassle (nothing but soft things and smoothies for a while), and some weight loss usually shows.

The post op examination will be early next week. Then it will be up to some of that accelerated time for the healing to complete. Eventually (in this case) the healing will be followed by a bone graft, more healing, and eventually an implant. And more bills.

Go away, Fairy. Just go far away and leave me alone.

Banner Ads

Normally I wouldn't post this sort of stuff... but banner ads are everywhere on the interweb now and they often pop up in the most unusual places and almost always out of context. Most often we completely ignore them. This one however came up on my system tonite and it completely stunned me.

Everything about it is so wrong. Everything. Just. Totally. Wrong.

And no, I won't insult you with the link.

Looking Over the Fiscal Cliff

I saw something similar to this earlier today and thought it was rather clever:

The modern American, “Fiscal Cliff”, as seen from a different perspective:

Lesson #1:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000


Now, let’s remove 8 zeros from everything above and pretend it’s a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700
Money family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Current outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total household budget cuts so far: $38.50


Got it so far? Okay, now look at the "Debt Ceiling" from the same homeowner perspective:

Lesson #2:

Assume you come home one afternoon from work/the bar/the garden club/the golf course/your typical activity and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood during the day. Your home now has sewage inside all the way to the ceiling. What do you think you should do?…

Call a contractor to bring some jacks and raise the ceilings or pumps to remove the wastewater?

NASA | IPCC Projections of Temperature and Precipitation in the 21st Century

It's far too late now to argue anymore about who may be to blame for this. It may also be almost too late to start planning for it. But denial is surely as useful as saying the sun won't rise in the morning.

Do You Really *Need* a Smartphone?

I don't own a smartphone and honestly don't feel as if I *need* one either. I have a clam shell cellphone issued to me for work purposes... but it's far from smart. It makes and receives phone calls, and can text, but that's it, and that's more than enough. The best part about it is that someone else pays the bill. Other than that it's mostly a bother.

I've been alive long enough and survived just about all of it just fine without any cell phone at all, much less a modern smartphone, so I know quite well how to find my way around, how to find out what's going on via other media, and how to communicate sans phone at all. Because of this background it turns out I actually LIKE human interaction AND being completely out of touch. I'm perfectly comfortable in my own skin and listening to nothing more than the sound of my own thoughts, so I don't need to be online 24/7, don't need constant reassurance from others, and find it can be quite nice being completely in the moment with other people without constant phone call interruptions. Given these stipulations it's probably no wonder that I happen to agree with most all of what Louis C.K. said the other night on Conan about modern smartphone "culture" and what it appears to be doing to us and especially modern youth.

Feel free to agree or disagree with me or Louis. It doesn't matter to me in the least. But ask yourself, when was the last time someone disengaged from interacting with you face to face so they could answer their phone? Did it make you wonder who was more important to them at that moment - you, or the unknown entity behind that ring? Ask yourself if it's any wonder that pedestrian accidents are up over 25% in the last few years when so many in crosswalks have their attention buried in a cellphone? And the next time you're out on a typical drive try and count how many drivers you see in other cars texting or reading a cell phone. Do cellphone rings bother you in restaurants, theaters, or in public in general? Do you really enjoy hearing those (often far too loud) telephone conversations (the one side you can hear) in public? How easy is it to ignore them?! Has any of these scenarios just made you wish telephones were just connected to wires again? Do kids seem less engaged to you today than you were with your friends when you were their age? What are the major differences between then and now?

People with iPhones will most likely wildly disagree with all this, and I'm fine with that because I've never been afraid to go against a trend or fad. I think Louis is in this camp too. Judge for yourself. Regardless... I've saved a lot of money on five (5) iPhones as of today... and counting, depending on when you may be reading this.

Cable Wars Again?

Every so often we (in the USA) seem to have to go down the rabbit hole above. Our cable television companies get into fights with their content providers over how much one is going to pay the other, and when they can't agree the cable delivery company simply pulls the plug. Channels like HBO, or networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, etc, just disappear from the lineup along with all their content for a while.

The cable delivery monopoly, be they Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Fox's Murdock, or others always have the upper hand because they get the signal into your house, and they get to frame the argument. Until the contract issues are settled your local news and/or favorite shows are simply yanked off the air. It's not like it used to be when everything showed up via air waves and antennae. Pay TV is here to stay. (My dad swore he'd never pay for TV. He did however.)

To quote Dennis Miller's, "I don't mean to go off on a rant here", line, I read the news about this the other day on the interweb. Then last night when I got home experienced it personally when Showtime (SHO) and a few other stations were AWOL from my channels listing along with a message about it in the onscreen guide. And today the local cable company, Oceanic Time Warner Cable (OTWC), sent me the email above. What caught my attention in particular was how that message itself was formatted! It's not very easy to read, is it?! The entire message isn't shown but trust me, it gets far more confusing further down. Yet this is on OTWC's own internet website email system!

Now you would think that if they can deliver HBO into our homes they would also be able to format an email on their own website correctly. But you'd be wrong. They can't. Their profit margins don't allow it apparently.

Meanwhile we wait for this to be resolved. I sure hope there weren't any good boxing cards on SHO this weekend because I'm missing them. And boxing is about all I watch SHO for anyway. Meanwhile, OTWC... when you get your big pay raise, hire a couple summer interns to fix your email system.

It stay broke.

Update:

Now CBS is blocking Time Warner Cable! Yes... we just read that correctly. CBS is blocking TWC. Apparently if TWC is your cable provider (mine too) all CBS content that might have been delivered to you over the interweb is now going to be withheld by CBS until the contract dispute is settled. So you can't watch them on television or on your computer. Great. Stay off long enough and I might not even care.

But will someone please tell me how this isn't CBS shooting themselves in the feet. I must be missing something.