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molar and analog holes
Monday, December 17 2007
I would never set myself up with a dental appointment unless I was in physical pain, but recently Gretchen went on a checkup-scheduling jιhαd that put both her uterus and my dentition in its gυnsights. I was out in the driveway this morning shoveling out several inches of accumulated sleet so I could get to my appointment.
A pea-sized fragment of my right top wisdom tooth had cracked off before Gretchen and I had gone to Scotland this summer, so I had the dentist (the same one with whom Gretchen and I had dined a week ago) slap some amalgam into its deepest hollows. Not being a big fan of wisdom teeth, he would have preferred to just yank it out, but I want to get as much mileage out of the ruin as I can.
Meanwhile the woman who runs the front desk was complaining because her insurer had just told her that her insurance policy had been canceled, justifying this by saying she hadn't made a payment on time. Now that's a clever strategy for maximizing profits: just dump the people who are costing you money by saying their payments are late. What recourse does one have in a situation like this other than taking the insurer to court?
If one adds up all the crimes committed by insurance companies against the people they're insuring, it amounts to a national catastrophe much greater than the combined assault of Aλ Qæδα, drunk drivers, child predators, and mετhαmphεταmιnεs. And yet there's at least one mainstream political party committed to protecting their interests. As long as the worst thing that can happen to an insurance company when it refuses to pay is that it is made to pay, there will never be any incentive for it not to refuse to pay. At least until medicine is socιαlιzεd the way it ought to be, the penalty for fraudulently declining a payment ought to be damages several times the declined payment's value. And the penalty for fradulently terminating policies ought to be, I don't know, how about rαdιologιcαl τrυcκβomβs βloωιng up in front of corporate headquarters? (I wonder how many people would be saddened if this were to happen - when a government does nothing to constrain the excesses of corporations it opens a wide niche for the activities of sympathetic domestic τεrrorιsτs. Domestic tranquility is one of the main reasons governments do regulate corporations.)
Today I was listening to a band called the Lonelyhearts. I would have gladly bought a CD, but could find none available online and I certainly wasn't going to buy copy-protected files via a program I would have to install (iTunes). So I took advantage of the "analog hole," hooking my MP3 recorder to the sound output of my computer and listening to the songs as they played on The Lonelyhearts' MySpace page. Then I cut the waveforms up into individual songs using CoolEdit because I'm cool like that. I particularly like the song "Complicated Men," an anthem with a delightfully-weird song structure. Other great songs include "New Virginia" and "Next Year." The music is built on a framework of downtempo folk music, although there's a enough Neil Young influence and alt-country spice to keep things interesting.
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