Here's Part 2 !

The first part of this is the entry just below this.

In 1942 there was a Navy recruit who trained to be a gunner on an aircraft carrier. Being somewhat hygienically conscious he asked his trainer if he would have time to brush his teeth after battle stations were sounded. "Why certainly!," said the instructor. "Who in their right mind would send a sailor out to battle with dirty teeth." That was before the Battle of Tuvalu Sea when the sailor spent 72 hours on continuous duty shooting enemy planes, getting shot at and becoming generally dirty and messy. By the time the last surviving plane had landed he had lost his toothbrush and was using a cold chisel to clean the grit and gunpowder off his teeth.

Today I got the cheapest estimate for the Root Canal. It would cost only $528 out of pocket. "Then there's the Cap," said the receptionist. Apparently a Cap is necessary to protect the Root Canal stuff. It will cost only $1050 out-of-pocket. I think it is made out of a titanium-gold alloy. You understand that for $1600 I could buy a small farming community in northern Russia. It felt a whole lot like the gunner after the battle.

Tomorrow I am going to call up the Clinic and tell the Battle Surgeon to prepare for an extraction. For about a hundred bucks and a hammer and a pair of pliers much can be accomplished. The hammer is to knock me out and the pliers, well........... Soon maybe I will be able to whistle out of the side of my mouth. Ta!

Here's a Blog !

Three years ago I decided take advantage of my fancy dental insurance. I never had it before and it cost only $19 a month. I thought I'd have my teeth cleaned so I would look like like a movie star and called Aetna (yes, that's who it is) to find an in-network provider. And they sent me to Doctor C1 who had flat-screen tv's in his waiting room with ads for cosmetic restoration of teeth and some tear-off Botox coupons at the receptionists counter for me to take care of my battered nose. Provided really excellent dental care. And I wound up paying him a lot of money from time to time and didn't worry about it too much because I figured everything's gone up in price including dentistry. If I hadn't had the insurance I would have been paying a lot more and taking a part time job.

But the Big Kahuna came down last week. I had a toothache, just little, and went to my combat-zone basic tooth-pounder. Who took an xray and told me that I would need a root canal proceedure and he didn't do that except with a nine millimeter in burglary emergencies.

In my investigations with Aetna and a couple other dentists who actually did root canals, I suddenly found that my original provider, C1, was an out-of-network practitioner, Oh Horrors!, and that his associate in another location, C2, was an in-network person. Thank you Aetna! So I went racing to C2 who said they were accepting new patients, but they didn't do root canals and they always referred Root Canals to C1.

Now this might be something to just laugh about or sue somebody about except my dental clock is ticking. What is just an occasional zing in my #15 molar today is going to be a screaming siren in a week or ten days and I don't have time to shop around. So C1 is going to get my money. $600-and-some after the 65% Aetna pays for out-of-network services. (Not the 80% an in-network would pay...)

Once this tooth is fixed and I stop worrying about it, I am going to do something not nice to Aetna. I don't know what it will be yet. Maybe hack their computer network and charge their top executives for the Federal Bailout.

But today it isn't hurting much at all and I am going to have bacon and eggs for supper against next week sometime when I will eat baby food for a couple days to be nice to the newly manicured molar. Don't you just hate it when that happens? Ta!

The Bitch of Life.

This has not been a great year. Back before Christmas a couple family members got diagnosed with something bad. A good friend died in February. Another one in March. One of the family members died in June. The other one is still hanging in there. And I got depression which I didn't know I had until somebody told me I should go see my Doctor. Who fixed me up with a time-release antidepressant, all 37.5 mg worth. Then I had no depression and I was rocking and rolling until I started sleeping the best part of every day. At night. In the mornings. In the afternoons. After supper. So we cut the dose in half and I was sleeping in the mornings, at night, in the afternoons and sometimes after supper. And we cut THAT in half and I was sleeping in the mornings, at night, in the afternoons and rarely after supper.

There must be a song about sleeping that much, and it goes to the tune of The Music Goes Round and Round but I haven't figured out the words yet. So I conferred with my pharmacist, then called the Nice Lady Doctor and she put me on the Classic version of the medication, the non-time-release version. There I was yesterday, two days off the sleepytime goodies and the new stuff hadn't kicked in yet. Every time another driver cut in front of me on the road I wanted to yell "Die, Bitch!" or "Hope you wreck!" They wouldn't have heard me, I had the air conditioner on.

Today it is four in the afternoon, I have just finished my breakfast and I'm starting my day such as is left. And I had to call the dentist a few minutes ago because all the sleeping has given me a cavity which is starting to talk to me loudly. For the last couple years I went to a fellow who had a nice office, video presentations in the waiting room about cosmetic dentistry and bills that I had to dip into my savings - now non existent - to pay. And I had the firmest, shiniest teeth in the county. Before that I hadn't gone to anybody for ten years because I had no problems with my teeth. And back when I was a legitimate working stiff I used to go to an inner city clinic that sat just in front of a public housing project at an intersection where there was a wreck or a robbery now and then to spice things up. And, years ago, my wife and four kids went there too. Nothing fancy, if something hurt you went there and got it fixed with no frills.

I am going back tomorrow to the good old clinic place with the old chairs and no TV in the waiting room and moderate expenses for services rendered. And the dentist who is older than God and still has a steady hand. I will get a filling and no sales pitch about caps or crowns or botox-bo-teeth. Half the clientele in the waiting room will be poor folks or meth addicts with no teeth to speak of. Kind of like having an experienced battle surgeon remove a mole. And it will be tight and right and only I will be responsible for having the shiniest teeth in the county. Unless I ask.

Patience! Patience, Dammit! Ta!

You Choose

A couple times a week I view the website of ABC News Australia. It is very similar to USA news except that the police don't have guns - well, most of them don't - and everybody drives on the wrong side of the road. This week there is a contest of wills going on between the Australian Meat Producers and PETA. The Meat people who want to keep making lots of money with their packaged carcassian product have commissioned a series of video ads for Australian TV on the benefits of red meat in the national diet. Here is an example:






The PETA's who want everybody to become vegeterian, give up natural fur and not kill animals, have also commissioned their own set of advertising posters of which one is here:



Now you can figure out which side you like. Personally I think baby pigs are a lot more fun than dogs and certainly more intelligent. I also have no objection to eating their garlic and pepper coated loins with oven-browned potatoes when they get too big to play in the living room. Ta!

Fly Paper

Is that one word or two? Well, I got some today. I have a couple flies and this is the best stuff anybody ever invented for that. It's not green, it's only a dollar for four rolls and the FDA and Homeland Security haven't gotten around to evaluating it yet. It's hard to find because everybody has too much Green insectiside with no phosphoric acid in the propellant. At $4 a shot. Old Cranky Fart and 1943 ride again! Flies don't!

Cindy got funeraled and buried a couple days ago and it was nice. Lots of flowers, solo piano with old Protestant hymns (long may they wave!) subdued emotions. The preacher was a young kid who probably will become a really good preacher with some practice. We had a show and tell on a couple psalms and his entreaty to ask ourselves where we would be spending eternity. And something about a ship sinking.

My first impression was that I was shocked at how old the brothers and sisters seemed to me. We haven't been in one place together for 15 years. One seemed the same, he is always himself. Another - Joe Slick - is still slick but with gray hair. Aside from an Elegant Lady all the rest of us including the aforementioned are beginning to look aged like old...........life preservers? Every one of us has weathered unexpected death or chemical dependency or living with chemical dependency or poverty and the wrong kind of stuff to eat. Having jobs, getting laid off, having rotten kids, having good kids, paying the bills on time or not. Disastrous love affairs. Disastrous affairs.

I love you all kids, these are observations which is why you are unnamed. If you think my perception is skewed, you're right. Say a prayer that my skew gets un-.

I wore to the funeral: A pair of khaki ladies cotton slacks but you couldn't see the elastic waistband; a khaki t-shirt; a dark blue vest that I sewed up out of an old combat jacket with pockets from blue jeans material made from a ladies skirt. Thank God for sewing machines. I was so proud of myself that I didn't wear a suit. But half the rest of the bereaved apparently also hit the thrift stores before the funeral and looked at least twice as good as me in no suits. God bless us everyone!

My brother Steve commented that we are all survivors. I think that expressed what we were all about, and Jesus loved the outfits and the people. Kind of reminded him of the reprobates He used to hang around with.

So we are all home in scattered locations in the State and brotherhood and concern has been served. We are all so much happier sitting on somebody's front porch freshly shaved and cologned, and dressed like trailer trash with a guitar in the front and the NASCAR races in the back! Safe journey Cindy! Bless us one and all! Ta!