Written by We’ve finally made a long overdue migration to the latest version series of WordPress. If you see little irregularities, bear with us – we’re working on it. Also, until we get everything straightened out, R&K will be readable by registered users only. Sorry for the inconvenience; it has to be this way for right now.
A Triumph Indeed
Kristi hates Portal. We have several games that she dislikes but that I love (such as Dead Space), but rarely do we reach a point where I’m outright forbidden to play such-and-such when she’s at home. For her, Portal stands at the top of the Games To Be Hated.
And it has nothing to do with gameplay. She’s never played it. She hates the sounds. She hates the creepy little turret robots who say “Are you still there?” and “Preparing to dispense product” just before they open fire on your ass. And most of all, she hates this song.
Personally, I think “Still Alive” is what turned a really great game into an outright brilliant work of genius. Too bad I’ll never get my wife within a mile of playing the game herself.
See It, See It Everywhere
You know how you’ll hear a new word, or hear a song, or see some billboard for the first time, and then suddenly it’s popping up everywhere?
That’s a cognitive malfunction. That item, whatever it was, was always there: you just never took direct notice of it before. But now that you have, the malfunction corrects itself and you have a newly consistent addition to your everyday conscious experience.
Part of what makes life fun is that we’re all chock full of these things: software bugs, brain flaws, perceptive tricks, optical illusions. Nothing’s ever exactly what meets the eye, because most of the time our own biology lies to us.
Yesterday, Kristi and I took a trip to the optometrist. My wife has this strange insistence that I address my health care directly and preemptively; she fails to fully appreciate that I’ve never had a broken bone or serious illness, never needed surgery or significant corrective medical treatment – in short, that the universe has graciously blessed me with immortality along with a winning personality. But alas, not one to put too much stock into her husband’s autoapotheosis, Kristi insists that it is best for me to consult with qualified medical professionals from time to time.. if for no other reason, just to make sure we get full street value for the big health insurance checks we’re writing every month. And thus we went and I sat down and read off the eye charts and did the “OH MY GOD THE SUN’S REALLY BRIGHT” eyedrops and all that fun stuff.
And lo, we learned that I needed glasses.
What. The. Hell.
Okay, so I knew that I was nearsighted. I’ve actually kind of known that for ten years, since realizing one day in my old IT shop days that the world’s battery of street signs had all acquired an odd blur to them at distance. But yesterday I also learned that I had color stigmatisms in both eyes, certainly new information to me.
But the big surprise? The discovery that my left eye is a bit off kilter, making me just very, very slightly crosseyed. Probably been that way since birth or at least early childhood, and just never discovered or diagnosed. “Do you find that you have trouble using binoculars?”, the doctor asked. Well, yeah. It takes me a couple minutes usually to focus my eyes right, and even then I can’t use them long before I get a headache. Always just thought that was normal, that everyone had that. “Nope, ” he replied. “Just you.”
I guess that would also explain why Avatar gave me a splitting headache, after three hours of staring down a pair of 3D glasses. My eyes don’t naturally line up perfectly and have to work a bit harder than average to add up a stereoscopic view.
So anyhow, we figured out my new prescription and picked out frames, and I’ll have my new glasses in about a week.
Now here’s the bizarre part. Now that I know the issue is there, I can feel the steady eye strain. It’s slight, but it’s there – something I never noticed before, like a tiny headache living in the muscles just behind my eyes, a light dull pain both constant and pressing. And now that it’s been pointed out to me, I see the slight stereoscopic off-focus. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that I’ve been living with this probably for decades but just without taking any real notice, because hey, it’s just how things are. You live with it until it’s not even there anymore, and then it’s pointed out to you and – BOOM – it’s just there.
They say ignorance is bliss. Well, in my case, it’s also slightly screwed up vision that won’t get better with age. Given the choice, I think I prefer just eating the fruit of knowledge, sacrificing my immortality for precision-crafted glass that allows me to see properly.
I’m guessing that clear vision will probably make it easier to notice interesting things more often, which I suppose will have to be my compensation for a suddenly limited lifespan. Not to mention my somewhat disappointing lack of superpowers, as well as my inability to travel in time and to make endless and effortless riches online. But I suppose you take what you can get.
Damn you modern medical science.
Health Care
Written by I’m not ashamed to be a Democrat. I voted for Clinton. Twice. I have never voted for a Republican and so help me, I don’t ever plan on it. I’m a church-going Christian who is pro-choice. Where health care is concerned, I AM OVER THE MOON about this bill being passed.
We pay almost $1000 a month for health care using my COBRA benefits from my last job. We are 2 healthy adults but I have pre-existing conditions, namely migraines, which will make it virtually impossible for me to get coverage after our current benefits are up in December.
The anger, the hyperbole, the “they’re cramming this down our throats” rhetoric that can be best traced back to the lackeys of Fox News make me silently seethe. Why? Because people like Glenn Beck don’t have to worry about not having health coverage. He’s got plenty of money from his form of conservative irritainment. And people like me? People who run a business, who scrape by each month, who can’t afford NOT to have insurance, are left stressing about how to pay insanely high premiums and terrified that one trip to the hospital could mean thousands in medical bills that we cannot pay. The stories of people like me don’t anger people the way Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh want. (When is he leaving the country anyway? I can arrange for some free time to help him pack.)
Don’t get me started on those receiving Medicare and how they want the federal government to leave their Medicare alone. Seriously? I don’t know how many people thought in 1965 that Medicare was the beginning of a communist regime in the US but today, it’s amazing how many people have bought into the bullshit propagated by conservative news and talk radio.
The question I’m left with in response to the hyperbolic vitriol? Why don’t we deserve the same access to quality care without being bankrupted in the process? We contribute. We pay our own way. We own a business. We don’t ask for hand-outs and don’t expect them. But come December, without this new bill, we would be left with no option but to go without health insurance, or at least without dental and vision and somehow deal with the ass rape that would be medical (if I could even get covered).
Having lived for 2 years in the UK where I had coverage for simply holding a visa, I paid nothing for a doctor visit and a whopping £6.50 (about $12) for migraine medication that without insurance costs me $150 (£100). For 6 pills. Yes, you read that right. 6 pills. Yes, people bitch about the NHS, and many with good reason but the bottom line is this. You don’t get denied coverage if you are sick, if you get sick, if you are healthier than a horse, if everyone in your family had cancer or you have some wonky blood vessels in your head that you cannot control for love or money. Yes, there are wait lists for procedures and yes, this royally sucks ass. But you also have the option to have private insurance, either that you pay for out of pocket or that your employer provides. Doesn’t make it a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination but when you consider that in the US, we have over 32 million people who are without adequate health coverage and consider ourselves to be the last great superpower in the world? It’s despicable that we would deny care to those who, through no fault of their own, are without.
So enough with the rhetoric. Enough with the hate speech. Enough with the talk of secession from the union and suing the federal government on my behalf. Please don’t. My health depends on it.