Summary thoughts post solstice...
1. As mistressmarla has already posted, the Waterpark ruled this year. Instead of doing any kind of holiday bullshit, we went and had an absolute blast with many friends of old, and many friends anew! Much alcohol was drunk, a bunch of bagels and pizza was eaten, and I topped last year's record of 81 slides in 2 days with 90 slides in just over 24 hours this year...
needless to say, my calves felt like they were just about to pop off my shins after we made it home and then headed out to telsin's and 1ntegral's xmas eve bash...
In any case, next year we would like to have even more of our close friends come with us up to the waterpark. Seeing that the celebration of the wrong date for the birth of a small jewish boy falls on Monday next year, we are planning on going up for Saturday(December 23) and Sunday(dec 24) of 2006.
ALL OF YOU FRIENDS OF OURS ARE HEREBY REQUESTED TO COME, AND NO CLAIMING THAT YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ABOUT IT SOON ENOUGH!!!! If you are tired of crappy awful family shit that only gives you ulcers and makes you feel terrible and depressed, THEN AVOID IT AND COME HAVE A GOOD TIME WITH US!
If your holiday isn't actually a partyday.. then something is wrong!
So.. mark it down on your new 2006 Britney&Kevin Calendars right now and give yourself a reminder sometime earlier in the year so that you don't forget that you are not going to suffer through the holidays but are rather going to come and have fun drinking Margueritas and having 10,000 gallons of water dumped on you numerous times...
I'm serious.. fuck this stress bullshit once and for all.. (or if need be, just push it off till the actual day of x-mas, if you really feel obligated to suffer.... ;) )
2. To gain perspective on how wonderful we all have it here... it was great seeing two different foreign films recently. One, City of God is about what it is like to grow up in the slums outside of Rio De Janeiro--and is based on the true story of a photographer who grew up there...
A second movie, which I just happened to catch on IFC, was called "Men with guns" and was about a Rich Mexican doctor who goes to find out what happened to some of his students who went to work in poor isolated villages, and he discovers how monstrous and fatal the poverty in those regions can be..
3. Two interesting articles... On the one hand, there is this article about the clean-up job going on in the Gulf. In it we find out just how incompetent the federal government--and especially the Army corps of Engineers--can be. One can note that the Federal Gov't is footing the bill for the entire cleanup in those areas, which probably would have been extremely difficult for the local communities to do all on their own, but when it comes to the actual clean up job, the use of private firms and local contractors is progressing far better than with the Army...
On the other hand, there is also this editorial article by Paul Krugman on health care (login=gothkiller pswd=takemenow). I've been reading about health care in America consistently and also have talked to a couple of doctors, and as far as I can tell, the use of private sector insurance companies in this area is actually significantly less efficient monetarily than a more public sector approach. Although Krugman doesn't raise the issue in this article, he has noted in the past that in the private sector, administrative costs for health insurers are 4 times as high as by programs like medicaid or medicare (as a percentage of their costs) due to the fact that private firms spend tons of money trying to figure out who they won't insure... Basically, because health care is being treated not as a right, but rather as a kind of luxury item, the free market is not necessarily the best solution here... unless we believe that it is okay to allow people to die from relatively small problems that don't get treated because people without any form of insurance are less likely to go get any form of treatment due to high costs.. (this point is raised in the article...)
4. One last thing... a reposting of my favorite poem, since I just came across it again.. I've posted it before and I'm sure I'll post it again...
It's called "The street" and its by Octavio Paz
A long and silent street.
I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall
and rise, and I walk blind, my feet
stepping on silent stones and dry leaves.
Someone behind me also stepping on stones, leaves:
if I slow down, he slows;
if I run, he runs. I turn: nobody.
Everything dark and doorless.
Turning and turning among these corners
which lead forever to the street
where nobody waits for, nobody follows me,
where I pursue a man who stumbles
and rises and says when he sees me: nobody.
That's all for now, I need to start working again...