Taking a humorous but analytical look at just about anything in the spirit of Groucho Marx: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
I don't know about you, but I find the Burger King "King" with the oversized head creepy. However, I have to admit that ever since the ad agency handling Burger King's account dug him up, the "King" has on occasion provided some very clever commercial fodder, indeed.
My own all-time favorite so far is the one from a few years ago, wherein the King and Darth Vader were standing nose-to-nose, and the only sound was Vader's breathing. What cemented its place in the firmament for me was when a very dear friend suggested it reminded him of the old Saturday Night Live sketch "Quien Es Mas Macho? Fernando Lamas, o Ricardo Montalban?"
There have been any number of lame ads since, but one of the current ones is vying hard for a place in my "best of" list. The Burger King is seen breaking into a corporate headquarters building, stealing the secret recipe for the Egg McMuffin. What makes this ad so great is the voice-over, which says something to the effect that while the Burger King's breakfast sandwich may not be original, "it's only a buck." I snorted my hot tea through my nose, I was laughing so hard.
So, creepy as you are, I salute you, Burger King. Anyone or anything that can poke fun at its own self is not all bad. I just have to remember not to drink anything when a commercial comes on.
Every now and again, I need to be reminded that my lung disease is not the only thing running my life. I just had a "lovely" hospital stay, with tons of tests and lots of blood draws for labs, trouble getting an IV line started, new medicines and disagreements with techs about doctors' orders, all to be reminded that just because I have a chronic and ultimately terminal lung disease, it doesn't mean that some other health problem won't reach up and bite me on my butt.
The upshot? I have been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and am now taking Lasix and potassium chloride in addition to the pharmacopoeia of other meds I must ingest both for my lung disease and for the side effects of same.
Several states allow race horses which are being given Lasix to race, but New York state is not one of them. I have just lost my chance to run in and win the Belmont Stakes.
I am heartbroken.
Overall, my time in the hospital wasn't bad, considering that I was mentally unprepared for the entire experience. Still, I do have a few standing complaints which may serve as warnings for anyone out there who finds him/herself in similar circumstances. First, be 100% aware of not only what the doctors have ordered, but why. My pulmonologist wanted to get readings of my breathing and oxygenation rates overnight while using my BiPap machine, to make sure my machine was working properly. The respiratory tech who was assigned to set up the test didn't want to use my BiPap, because of "liability issues." I had to explain it to her about 7 times that using the hospital's BiPap would defeat the entire purpose of the test. She STILL didn't want to do it, probably for fear she'd get in trouble somehow. I held my ground, and she eventually either checked with one of her higher-ups, or finally realized I was right. I mean, she had the doctor's order right in front of her, and it specifically said that MY BiPap machine was to be used. Good grief!
If she hadn't done it according to the doctor's order, I'd have been forced to stay an additional overnight, which would not have done my mental health any good, and she probably would have gotten in trouble for not following the doctor's order in the first place.
Second, don't let the nurses gouge you over and over in the attempt to start an IV line. I admit to not being steadfast enough here, mostly because I know I am what they call "a tough stick." I sympathize with the difficulties the RNs have in finding a good place to start an IV on me. But I am learning to say "not only 'NO,' but 'Hell, NO.'" to someone sticking me repeatedly and, upon missing the vein, keeping the needle in and digging around to try to find it. It didn't prevent me from winding up with both arms--and hands--black and blue. But what backbone I exhibited did keep my arms and hands from being abused even worse than they had been. Next time [and there will be one, I know--Ed.], I'm not even going to give them two chances. One try, no digging, and if it fails, I'm going to insist that someone else be called upon to start the IV line.
Third, there are some things that just are not worth getting upset about. Leads and wires and oxygen tubes and phone cords and TV remotes will get tangled up. Live with it, be patient (pun intended), and just untangle them as needed. Fourth, even teaching hospitals are overworked and understaffed, so learn to be proactive. If an alarm on something you're hooked up to goes off, and you know why, AND it's not for a true emergency, turn it off! When I finally did receive an IV, the pump monitoring the rate of infusion clanged horridly once the IV was empty. I waited about a minute, and then, realizing everyone was too busy to drop everything and come for such a minor thing, I just shut it off. The patient in the other bed was happy, I was happy, and the RN on duty was relieved that he had one fewer bit of drudgery to accomplish.
Finally, remember that the hospital is no place to get any rest. Set things up so that you have at least 48 hours after you get home wherein you have to do nothing, so that you can catch up on your sleep and get your mind and attitude recalibrated. Your family will love you for it.
While certain aspects of the right-wing political yowling in this country have made perfect sense to me, other aspects didn't--until I realized something, that is. What I realized is that social studies, or civics [as opposed to straight "history"--Ed.] education seems to have disappeared from our educational system.
When the Tea Partiers, for example, yammer about their rights and freedoms being taken away by an oppressive government, and when idiots like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich pontificate about the current administration being "the most radical" secular, socialist government in US history, and people take them seriously, what other conclusion can be drawn?
The Tea Partiers have taken the name for their movement in honor of the Boston Tea Party, which I hope even people with virtually no knowledge of American history recognize was a protest against a British imperial tax on tea imposed upon its then-colonies in North America. Fair enough. Empires, almost by definition, are despotic and largely opposed to the will of their subjects. But the Tea Partiers in fact are more like the governments in southern states before and during the US Civil War
The distinction the Tea Partiers have failed to recognize or even acknowledge is that the British government imposed its taxes on its American colonies without the colonials [more precisely, the colonials' representatives--Ed.] being able to vote on the imposition of those taxes in Parliament. The secessionists, on the other hand, were (as they well knew) a minority population in the country as a whole. They HAD representation in the national government. They HAD legal recourse and access to get their opinions known and their voices heard. They HAD a place within that very government they railed against. They just didn't like being on the losing end of the votes.
I remember social studies in junior high and high school. One of its most fundamental teachings was that when people come together to form a government and participate in an attempt to form "a more perfect Union," their obligation under that social contract or social compact is that everyone agrees to accept, peacefully, the outcomes of the votes that go against them, and that their recourse is to work within the system to win enough votes to change the outcome in the future--and unless and until they regain that majority, that they abide by the results they do not like, and peacefully comply with the law. WE all ARE the government. It is not some alien thing being imposed upon us by some distant, evil, nefarious "them" which wants to destroy us and take away "our freedom."
This teaching seems largely to have been lost on members of the Tea Parties and the GOP toadies who further incite them. This teaching is so basic, so fundamental to what being a responsible American citizen is all about, that its failing to have taken hold in the minds and hearts of the Tea Partiers mystifies me. I conclude, therefore, that this teaching is no longer offered in our school systems, and I for one mourn its passing. In the long run, it means the end of what the American dream really constitutes.
And I know that rhetoric often gets heated in the course of the discussion. But I'm not talking about heated rhetoric. I'm talking about people threatening to "take back" what they feel has been "taken away" from them by force of arms or even revolution. I'd have said "or secession," given the proclivity of numbskulls like Texas Governor Rick Perry to resort to that language, but anyone who knows the outcome of the US Civil War should know that secession as an idea is dead. The Confederacy lost. Get over it, already.
What scares me at this point is the increasingly violent stridency with which these allegedly disenfranchised people are pushing their agenda. America, it seems, is for everyone--only so long as everyone is just exactly like them [which is the unstated but essential linchpin of their equation--Ed.]. And they are willing to say they'll shoot people who disagree. Watch very carefully all the pro-gun, pro-Tea Party rallies that have been scheduled to take place near Washington, D.C., on April 19th. The tone of our political discourse is changing in some fundamental--and I use that term deliberately--way. Threats of violence should not be a part of everyday politics, but of late, such threats have become all too common. Two quick examples: I remember a sign at one of the Tea Party rallies. It said "We left our guns at home. This time." Second, a recent political cartoon in the Washington Post may be about to come more literally true than anyone with even half a brain should want. The cartoon depicts the exterior of the US Supreme Court building, with bullets whizzing everywhere all around it, and a speech balloon coming from inside the building [probably from Justice Scalia--Ed.] saying in a self-satisfied tone, "Ah, a robust Second Amendment in action!"
