Word-Plosion

My daughter has reached the point where her vocabulary is expanding in leaps and bounds. She wakes up from a nap and starts using words that I've never heard her say before. It is a true joy to witness.

I-S-T-I-L-L-C-A-N-'-T-U-N-D-E-R-S-T-A-N-D-Y-O-U

My daughter was eating her morning snack and started pointing at the top of the refrigerator. We began our usual game of naming everything in the general vicinity of her pointer. She started calling out something but her non-english word was one I'd never heard before and I still didn't understand.

My daughter shot me a tolerant look colored by exasperation. To my suprise she began spelling what she was pointing at emphasizing each letter with a stab of her finger. Once I realised what she was trying to do I went back and tried to figure out what the letters meant. They didn't spell anything I recognised. She gave up and went back to eating.

It Ain't Swine Flu...

...but that doesn't mean that we aren't having lots and lots of enjoyable snot filled, mouth breathing family moments as we work through our first communal, communicable disease together.

I have to take a moment to brag a bit about how well my daughter is taking to blowing her own nose. Frankly, I have better things to do with my fever dreams than chase my daughter around with a tissue and wipe what looks like congealing hot glue from her upper lip. I'm very pleased with her willingness to perform this bit of personal hygiene.

Public Confession of A Failed American

-or-

The True Value of Human Life In America

Had my daughter not been born by cesarean section both my wife and daughter would have died.

Even in something so selfish as having a child we could still support our national insurance company. We knew that natural birth would save our insurance company a lot of money. My wife and I proudly charted a natural plan that would reduce or eliminate the need for painkillers and expensive spinal anesthesia.

We also knew from reading stories online that the greedy doctors intentionally overcharged insurance companies by pushing C-sections on patients who didn't need them. We didn't want to short change the doctors - but as good rate paying insureds we wanted to make sure the doctors stayed honest.

After 30 exhausting hours of doggedly standing by my wife in the labor room the doctor gave us the disappointing prognosis - C-section or face worse complications.

I'm ashamed to say that I was not considering my loyalties when I reluctantly gave the go-ahead for the C-section. I knew in my heart that I was betraying the values of the country that allowed the insurance company to do business which in turn allowed us to have reasonable medical care at reasonable cost.

I know that a better citizen would have let his wife and daughter pass to the Lord rather than pass their personal burden to their insurance company. I am a weaker man than that. As a result of my transgressions, we pay. Insurance companies have been considering cesarean section in women a pre-existing condition and will refuse coverage or increase rates to women being covered:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/17/csection-preexisting/

I know that we deserve this. I know that we could have, maybe even should have, chosen otherwise. Yet now almost two years later when I look at my beautiful healthy daughter I can't help but feel that it would have been unfair to let her die before even being born. I know that my feelings are not in line with those values that my country embraces but I can not deny them.

We will bear the consequences of our actions with humility and shame.

Death Panels

There is no such thing as a death panel in the American health care debate.

I grow weary of my fellow Americans who can not hold themselves to a higher standard in public. I have seen video clips of town hall meetings populated by citizens who have clearly lost their faculties to cowardice. I can't help but think that every hysteria fringed proclamation yelled out of turn builds a very strong case for America's need to "cull the herd."

After thirty years of insatiable greed it's encouraging to see the youth of today following a more conservative code of conduct. Unfortunately it will be a decade or more before they become active in the civic sense and national health care will be yet another well established, mangled, corrupt and ineffective waste of federal taxpayer dollars serving corporate interest over the needs of the citizen.

The Future Of Hulu

-or-

How Hulu Will Suck As Bad As Cable

Right now Hulu shows video programs for free with a few obvious and well placed commercials. This is a wonderful change from the television and cable TV wasteland which consists of 25% to 33% commercials.

People ask me all the time why I refuse to get cable television in my house. The answer is simple: If you are paying to watch commercials then you are a sucker.

Sure the Cable company is just a distribution medium and the content providers put the commercials in upstream. That's all fine and good for the media giant's shareholders but my family has found that it's easier, more convenient, less annoying, and most importantly far cheaper than a Cable Television subscription to buy the DVD's sans commercials.

There have been some noises made by the media dinosaurs who have acquired Hulu that Hulu will go to a commercial free subscription based model. That's fine and good, but you and I both know that it won't be long until they start sliding commercials into the paid services just like with cable television. First it will be a trailer, then it will be the constant interruptions that make Cable programming so content free and worthless today.

So I guess when that happens I will refuse to pay for a Hulu subscription too. Sure it isn't HD quality but if I want to be entertained by people acting idiotic there's always YouTube.

W W W Dot...

Every morning after I've visited all my favorite blogs and web comics I type those four characters into my browser's navigation bar and stop at a loss.

I lightly tap the keys and think to myself: "What else is out there?" "What was it I wanted to look up?" "Is it worth finding out?" "What would it cost?" I feel like there's some sort of adventure just waiting for me – a sexy roller coaster of a ride culminating in a discovery that will change the world for the better and put my name in the history books.

The reality is that I wasted the years of my prime fighting insanity. Now that I'm approaching middle age most of my remaining life has been assigned to the obligations I've undertaken. I have no fifth character to type. Just roles to play and lines to say to keep the audience happy.

I don't know if I'm happy or unhappy with things as they are. For me, survival isn't enough of a reason to participate in society. Society doesn't have any reason to see that I live. If I did not have my obligations I'd probably be dead.