Life Like Twitter

What would it be like if we all said our tweets to real people in the real world? Watch this. This is probably how it would be.

I'm Not Feeling Well

It's funny that I was feeling well until I saw the oncology hematologist Friday. I thought it was only a one time thing that my platelet count was low. But it's been the last two tests (6 months apart) that showed a low platelet count. Now that I know it's been going on for awhile, I'm starting to worry a little. After my exam yesterday and talking to my new doctor, it looks like it might be more serious than I thought. How powerful is the mind that once I realizes it might be a more serious problem I start to feel ill. They took more blood to do other tests, more specific tests. It's now a waiting game to know whether it's bad or really bad.

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn I have to haul my ass out of bed to go get an ultra-sound of my liver and spleen. I have to do this fasting. This is tantamount to torture for me. No coffee with loads of milk and a bit of sugar? No dallying with the dogs? Out to pee and then breakfast for them and then I'm gone for most of the day. I have to drop my car off in the AM for safety inspection and to have it winterized. Then a friend is giving me a ride to the ophthalmologists for the appointment I should have made two years ago.

Again, I apologize for not visiting you at your blog to read and comment. I'm still rewriting the novel and tweeting. I've found that twitter is a powerful tool for lobbying politicians for healthcare reform. Now that I'm old and less inclined to do the boots on the ground work of real protesting, along comes twitter to make it possible to demonstrate online. It's a powerful tool. Not a social networking tool, but a power to the people network for societal change. I resist the "friending" thing. If I talk to you on twitter, your part of my network. You're all special to me, so "friending" seems silly to me. It is the friending aspect of FaceBook that turns me off, like high school cliques. Twitter is not like that. And I love the challenge of saying something meaningful in short bursts. I think in many ways this can only help with writing in general.

For the few of you who do still stop by, I thank you from the bottom of my shriveled little heart.

Let's have a passionate conversation about racism in America

Grayquill said...

The speaker seems very invested in keeping racism as a tool in his tool box. Some truth but mostly huge generalities made from a few extremists. I think he became in his talk the one he speaks against.

themom said...

I saw a little of what Graquill mentions...but the general premise is the point. I get more and more frustrated by those who state that this is NOT a racial environment. I beg to differ, and believe just about all the rethuglian mechanics of the moment are all to "stonewall the black man." When will this mentality go away? Not in my lifetime I'm afraid.

Ghost Dansing said...

for pete's sake.... we're talking about the rump core constituency of the Party that has been using the "Southern Strategy" for the last 30 years....

As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to Political Scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' book The Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005 edition of the New York Times. Atwater talked about the GOP's Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan's version of it:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps...?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Utah Savage said...

Interesting points of view here. I believe most of it is racist and isn't even coded. It's blatant. It's in-your-face. It's a view of itself as entitled to be on top even when one lives at the bottom: at least they think they're better than black people who they still think of as niggers. I think that's not even conscious. It's drunk with mother's milk and all of daddy's conversation. It's preached at the pulpit and taught in the schools. Texas school boards have been trying to find a way to take the negative parts out of the history books. What are the negative parts? White emigrant culture slaughtering native peoples and working slaves stolen from Africa. Yes, by all means lets take the history books back to the 50s before everybody got so damn uppity.

All this in response to this video. What do you think?

And They Say It Isn't Racism

Grotesque, Unprecedented, Bizarre, Unbelievable.

You guessed it. I'm talking about Sarah Palin. Those words were used to describe her "speech" in Hong Kong by attendee Robert Fisk.

"There'll be one or two self-deprecating remarks, a reference to healthcare, taxation, out-of-control spending and a poorly told joke,"

To prove her shining Republicanism, Sarah quoted Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. She quoted Lincoln. She quoted Thomas Jefferson. History and common sense were not on the side of liberalism and "utopian pipe dreams". But there'd been progress. In the past, we had the "horse and buggy business", she said, then Ford came along with the motor car and the kids sat singing in the back, but now the kids have headsets. And what happened to the Reagan legacy? "Many Republicans in Washington gambled it away."

She talked, of course, about the infamous "death panels" – a big smirk here from Sarah – and "market-friendly responsible ideas" (this must have been the speech-writer) and offered slippery advice: "We can responsibly develop our resources without damaging the environment."

She spoke too fast. She gabbled her words. Scatty was the word for it. We slalomed between the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of Yugoslavia and 9/11. Then it started. The war on "vicious terrorism", the war against "violent fanatics who wished to end our way of life", our battle against "radical Islamic extremists" with "twisted vision". This was not a clash of civilizations but "a war within Islam". We slalomed again. Asia – "what an amazing place!" – was at its best "when it was not dominated by a single power".

What on earth was happening? Had Sarah just looked up from her podium and seen China? Addressing what was surely the neo-conservative wing of the Republican party, she could not "turn a blind eye" to Chinese policies that created "uncertainty", which supported "questionable regimes" and "made a lot of people nervous". America wasn't going to impose its values on other countries, but America was going to have to "ramp up" its defence spending.

I would have run screaming from the room, blood pouring from my ears. But there is this last tidbit from Mr Fisk: "Then family again. "I have a husband," she said. "I think I could have used a wife. He's awesome." This really floored the Chinese. Poor Todd."

Peach Cobbler for Cody_K

This is the simplest recipe in the world. You need four medium peaches or three large peaches.
Peel and slice peaches

In a mixing bowl combine:
1 stick melted butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
Mix well and pour contents into baking dish
Gently add sliced peaches evenly
Bake in 350 degree oven until golden brown.
(roughly 45 min, depending on oven)
Let cool on rack.
Serve warm with ice cream.
Yum!
Cody_K I ate your serving and enjoyed it for you. Your hips will thank me. My hips will hate you next time I get weighed at the doctors office.

It's Boob Squishing Time.

This morning I had a mammogram and a bone density test. I have no reason to suspect any problem, but this is part of the early warning system for a lot of women. If I still used the thing, I have my vagina looked into to too, but sadly, it no longer exists. It is true, if you don't use certain things they just close up shop, so to speak. Anyway, whether you use it or not, get your vagina checked out and you boobs squished and if you're old enough to be concerned about bone loss, or have had eating issues, get a bone density test. It's called preventative medicine. If your health insurance doesn't cover preventative tests, it's worthless.

I have medicare, so all this yearly checking, is part of how we keep healthcare costs down. Private insurance companies are all about making money on your healthcare. They know they're going to dump you when you get really really sick and finally need them, so why do preventative tests to catch costly illnesses early? You need to start thinking about this industry whose primary duty is to shareholders, so you can assess how good a job they do taking care of you. You need to examine the books. How much do they pay top executives? How do they come up with record profits year after year? How much do you pay them to deny coverage for your medical needs? Is it worth it?

Medicare does a very good job taking care of me. I've never had better healthcare coverage, and my last experience was with United HealthCare. I was paying them $1,000 a month so they could refuse to cover the specialists I needed to see to stay out of the hospital. Insurance companies don't like the sick.

I Want Some TARP

Jack Cafferty on Tom Delay's Dancing

Snark Alert!

"People are saying mean things about Health Insurance Companies."

Why Georgia

For my friends in Georgia. I woke up to news that Atlanta is under water. If Atlanta is under water, you, Lisa, Mathman and the spawn, and you, Kevin, might be having problems with rain water runoff and might be in trouble too. I hope you're fine, sitting high and dry. But just in case, I'll be thinking about you today. If you want to talk give me a call or look me up on twitter. I'll be here rewriting the novel or chatting on twitter.

Love,
Peggy

Outfoxed!

A Shout-Out For All You Right-Wing Values-Voting Rednecks

More Teabagger Insanity

My Healthcare Story and the Insurance Company That Bankrupted Me

United Healthcare was the insurance company I bought coverage from. I was considered contract labor so I had to provide my own healthcare. United Healthcare was the only insurance company providing coverage for individuals at the time I needed coverage, so they had a monopoly and could and did charge exorbitant rates. My coverage started at $325 a month one person and increased every four or five months. I got sick and needed tests. My insurance went up to $500 a month. I got a diagnosis they didn't like and my premium doubled. I couldn't afford $1,000 a month for coverage of just me. And every time they raised my rate they raised my copay and deductible. Every charge was denied and had to be fought. I couldn't work because I was too ill. I couldn't fight with my insurance company because I was too ill. I didn't have to money to keep paying $1,000 a month while refusing to cover anything. Then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and they dropped me. I was hospitalized for two weeks and put on four very expensive drugs. My only option then was to put medical charges on credit cards. I was late with a payment, my interest rate doubled. I got behind on making my minimum payments and the credit card companies came after me. After two years of struggling to make minimum payments while being called a deadbeat twenty times a day by the credit card companies I filed for bankruptcy. Finally I applied for disability. It took two years to get disability, but finally I had coverage for my medical treatments and prescriptions. Medicare has never questioned a test, or change of medication, or treatment by a specialist or a drug order. This is the public option I want for all of you

The Smoking Woman

Ms M takes a photoshop class and uses my photographs to experiment with. I heartily approve. This is now my new twitter avatar. And I think I want this hair-do back. I still have the lipstick. Now if only everyone would wear the proper filter I'll look just like this.

An Award From A Soul Sister

Right from the start I knew I was going to like her. With a name like Menopausal Stoner what's not to like. I was sure we could just sit down and start right up like we were such old friends we had real history that got us through the worst of times and made us want to share the best of times. She's my kind of broad. Yet how is it possible she lives on Park Avenue and I live in a State more backward than Texas and not half as fun? Where's the justice in that? I'm good in New York. Everybody loves me. But here, I'm the reclusive old woman who talks politics at the grocery store. Well, make that everywhere, since I do believe that everything is political and what better place to talk about Utah's horribly regressive tax on food. Yes, really, food!! In the land of big families, and I mean really big families. Where better than standing in line at the pharmacy to talk about healthcare reform to Mormon men picking up their viagra which their insurance covers, but not the twenty something's birth control just ahead of him in line. This is how I amuse myself in the land of Zion.

So she gives me an award called the Kreativ Blogger Award. Funny to me that I spent a good part of the evening talking about my bad spelling. I've tried so hard to learn the difference between bear and bare, between bate and bait. Why can't I remember these things? I so envy those of you who just know. Oh yes, I was taught somewhere along the line, but like most things that require certain kind of memory I just keep having to have them pointed out to me. I have blamed it on a type of dyslexia, but I'm not sure that's it. I know I'm not stupid, but those little errors mar my writing.

Anyway, to get back to the award, it comes to Menopausal Stoner from Liberality. I miss you Lib. I know, it's a two way street, but I have been neglectful of all of you, so don't take my absence as anything but preoccupation. I'm rewriting and wondering if I'll ever finish writing what was, last we talked about such things, Maggy. It is now, this month, The Narcissist. Is all this rewriting making it better or just an elaborate way to avoid writing a good query letter? Is all this talking just a way to avoid making a list? Oh who knows? Maybe I need the freedom to express myself in more than 140 characters. I have become a twitter junkie. Today I passed 700. A couple of weeks ago I had 349 followers, today 700. How addictive is that for a writer. Readers who converse with me about politic and other things, but mostly politics all day long. We are tweeting things before they've been reported in news stories. I am mastering the art of the retweet. Oh yes I am. Can't spell, but I can retweet.

Back to the list of things I love, but not about people. This should be a piece of cake.
I. I love cake. Dr Zaius and I have a special bond in our love of ice cream and cake. Also he comments on my poetry now and then. I especially love chocolate cake. I love devil's food cake. I love brownies with walnuts. And I always have ice cream in my freezer. The mark of a civilized woman is a well stocked bar plus cake and ice cream.

2. My dogs are the creatures I actually talk real spoken words to most days. They seem to understand me just fine. In fact I have better conversations and receive more appropriate responses with them than I did with any of my three husbands. The dogs are more honest.

3. My little house and the big house and the great yard. Yes, I bitch about them, but I love this sanctuary in the middle of the city. It's like a forest in here and very quite. And the minimal income I get from renting the big house makes it possible for me to eat. I do not have to leave home to toil for others. Don't hate me for this freedom. I earned it the hard way.

4. I love to hear the words "Payggy! Payggy! Can you come talk to us?" These words are spoken by the four year old and her twin brother who live next door. I know they are people, but still it's the little ritual we perform to keep in touch that I'm talking about, and so is really about words, my element. I have a fence that runs between our properties and just by my deck there is a tiny gate in the fence about two feet off the ground. It's like a window in the fence. They love it, and I listen to what they say as probably no other grown up does. They tell me things that someone needs to hear. So often parents and caregivers of small children get so tired and overwhelmed and overloaded that they don't really listen all that carefully. I'm like a grandmother who lives by herself, but can be summoned for a chat.

5. Twitter. Yes, I admit it, I love twitter. I love following 15 conversations at once. I was once quite good at a cocktail party. Only on twitter it's okay to talk about politic and religion. I saw TheMom there today. It's also easy to find any kind of network you desire: writers, agents, publishers. It's so easy.

6. I love blogging, though you wouldn't really know that lately. I'm not getting around much and twitter kind of ruined my comment style. I say it fast and in as few words as possible. I miss you. But blog reading is a real commitment. Twitter is a flirtation. Does this make me shallow? Perhaps, but I think Dr. Zaius would say anyone with cake and ice cream on hand all the time can't be that shallow.

7. I love the neighborhood I live in. It's quite chic for Salt Lake City. Good restaurants, an honest-to-god Art Theater. Nice shops. Good schools.

This next part is the hard part. I would like to give this to Freida, Dr Bee, but I'm not sure if it's okay to link to her. She's a bit undercover or was last I wasn't lost in twitter land. I'd also like to give it to Lisa, but she's too busy with real life at the moment. I'd like to give it to Vigilante but I've never seen him agree to this sort of self revelation. In fact most of you men think you're too serious to engage in memes. And since I've been absent as a visiter to most of your blogs I'd need to reintroduce myself. So I think I'll take this opportunity to give this to some the saints who follow my poetry with no encouragement at all. You can't imagine how surprised to find that I have followers on my poetry site.

1. I'm betting someone else got to Randal first, but if not, it's you Randal
2. Rusticana. I'm sorry it's take me this long to let you know how much I appreciate your interest in my poetry.
3. A.J., your site is gorgeous. It's a sensual feast. I highly recommend it.
4. Jang Chub-Ozer Who inspired a poem and has two of the most extraordinarily opposite blogs. Bogus Zen is my favorite, and that is the link here.
5. Kayleigh, who is going through hell right now and might enjoy a distraction.
6.Up4More who is one very incredible writer and who shows her inner world by showing us the real drama of the day to day.
7. Daryl is an artist who defies categories. She does a bit of everything and does it all with great style. You should follow her home.
8. EizzyK gave me one of my favorite awards--Humble Scrap. I loved it's workmanlike design. It's like a shingle I'd hang over my door. It came here from Uganda. I see it here and there in my travels, so it has fared well once passed from my hands.
9. JoJo is another woman I wrote a poem for but don't know how to contact except through my poetry. I'll try to contact her there. To my knowledge, she is not a blogger.

Even Hitler Hates Kanye West

Anderson Cooper Sucker Punches "Tea Party" Leader

Billionaires for Wealthcare

Thanks Fran, I needed this!