News & Links: Friday, November 17, 2023

CRANKY
OLD FART'S
BROWSER
HISTORY
#383  [archive]
NOV. 17, 2023

UnitedHealth pushed employees to follow an algorithm to cut off Medicare patients’ rehab care
    If you have enormous imagination or you’re stoned, perhaps you can pretend UnitedHealth is the only insurance company doing this. 

Center for Constitutional Rights sues Biden for alleged 'failure to prevent genocide' in Gaza
    On first flash of this news, my reaction was that it's stupid, and an irresponsible waste of funds, because as awful as the genocide in Gaza is, what the fuck has it to do with US Constitutional rights?
    On second mulling, I can see the logic. The Constitution says treaties have the force of law, and America's signed on to the Geneva Conventions, which are treaties, so by that chain of logic Biden ought to oppose crimes against humanity, instead of endorsing them.
    Still, though — a judge can't order the President to suddenly have a soul. 

Greenhouse gases soared to another record and there’s ‘no end in sight’ 

They did it; the jury didn't care: Climate protesters acquitted of causing damage to HSBC London HQ
    This is the only good news of the week, but it's pretty darn terrific.
    Said it before, and I'll say it again: On the climate catastrophe, the time for polite protests and letters to the editor has passed. Direct action is the only strategy that remains.

Volkswagen demanded a $150 fee before using GPS to locate stolen vehicle with 2-year-old child inside 

America’s news deserts grow as newspaper closures accelerate  

Americans’ trust in scientists, positive views of science continue to decline
    Excerpt: Overall, 57% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society. This share is down 8 percentage points since November 2021 and down 16 points since before the start of the coronavirus outbreak. 

FBI raids home of prominent Bureau whistleblower 

The Guardian deletes Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America' because it went viral on TikTok 

‘No one else is saving it’: the fight to protect a historic music collection 

Speaker of the House: Separation of church & state is "a misnomer"  

Derek Chauvin makes another bid to overturn federal conviction in murder of George Floyd
    Excerpt: Chauvin, who is serving a 21-year sentence at a federal prison in Arizona, filed the request without a lawyer. He says Dr. William Schaetzel, of Topeka, Kansas, told him that he believes Floyd died not from asphyxia from Chauvin’s actions, but from complications of a rare tumor called a paraganglioma that can cause a fatal surge of adrenaline. The pathologist did not examine Floyd’s body but reviewed autopsy reports. 

Pelosi hammer attacker David DePape tearfully testifies he was radicalized by 'Gamergate'
    If you've forgotten it in the endless maelstrom of daily bullshit, Gamergate was a mob of on-line misogynists who terrorized women with doxing, rape threats, and death threats, for being women.  

Christian parenting expert recommends spanking toddlers so they act excited to see you 

House Speaker Mike Johnson is a board member of a Christian publishing house that called ‘monkeypox’ a penalty for being gay  

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley vows to abolish anonymous social media accounts: 'It's a national security threat' 

How long does it take WalMart to earn an average employee's annual salary? A little less than a second and a half. 

• Amusing, Interesting, Outrageous, or Profound
    AIOP is my Lemmy page, for anything that's (in my opinion) amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound. It's mostly a rough draft of this page, but you're invited to stop by.

♫♬  MUSIC  ♫ 

The Air That I Breathe — The Hollies 

Dazzling in the End — Murray Gold 

Hit Somebody! — Warren Zevon 

The Logical Song — Supertramp 

True Love — Pink with Lily Allen 

⚰️  OBITUARIES  ⚰️

Khalil Abu Yahia
climate change researcher 

Radcliffe Bailey
artist, Low-Lying 

Johnny Green
basketballer, New York Knicks 

Roger Kastel
artist, known for movie posters 

John Morris
rock promoter, Woodstock Music & Art Fair 

Terry Taylor
first female sports editor at Associated Press 

Wilhelm von Dachshund
good boy

11/17/2023    

Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited. 

Tip 'o the hat to the AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Chuff, Dirty Blonde Mind, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Lemmy.world, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, Miss Miriam's Mirror, Self-love Is My Superpower, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.

Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo emeritus, Jeff Meyer, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn't always shitty.

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Line of Duty, and a few films

NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#218  [archive]
NOV. 17, 2023

Line of Duty
(debut episode; 2012)

Police are completely out of control. They can do anything to anyone for any reason, and unless there's enormous media attention, they'll almost certainly get away with it. If, for example, there hadn't been a cell phone recording and a teenager brave enough to post it online, you wouldn't know who George Floyd was. He would've been just another black guy killed by cops.

So when I'm not on this blog, I spend too much time on a copwatching page I started. A reader there recommended a British TV show I'd never heard of, Line of Duty, about good cops going after bad cops, and tonight I gave it a look-see, hoping for the best.

In this debut ep, the cops are executing a no-knock raid (which ought to be illegal), but they've — whoops — got the wrong apartment. As soon as they've blown the wrong door off its hinges, a young cop hyped on adrenaline shoots and kills the first person he sees.

A cop named Steve Arnott — code name 7156 — knows what happened, but his supervisor instructs all the cops to tell a story that's very different from what we've just seen:

"You got to the flat. You shouted 'Armed police!' You heard something going on inside, a struggle, a fight or something. 7156 gave you the order to go in. The suspect's there. He's acting aggressive. You shout 'Surrender! Armed police!' The suspect doesn't comply. He comes for you. You've got no choice. ... I want those statements copper-plated by noon, got it?"

Arnott complains to his boss about the killing and cover-up, and the boss's response is: "You're finished."

And with that, less than ten minutes into the show, this story line is abandoned. The botched raid, killing, and subsequent cover-up are barely mentioned again. Instead, Arnott is transferred to the Anti-Corruption Squad (what Americans would call Internal Affairs).

Reality check: It is extremely unlikely in the extreme that a whistleblower cop isn't simply fired, so the show has already stretched credulity like a rubber band.

We're now shown a different cop, who interrupts his off-duty dinner date to run across the street and single-handedly stop a mugging. 

Reality check #2: Such cop heroics do happen in real life, but not nearly so often as you see on television and in the movies, and I am certainly not watching this show to see more cop worship, same as you see on every other cop show.

But wait — soon this good guy cop is being investigated for helping his mistress get away with drunk driving (which in England is called 'drink driving'), and also for 'laddering' (apparently a British term, for when an obviously guilty perp is smothered in multiple charges so as to inflate the conviction rates, while crimes that look like they'd be harder to solve are quietly cold-cased).

That's police corruption too, albeit less flashy, and it's a clever way to show it — introduce a cop everyone wants to believe in, a hero to the rescue, and then pull back to reveal that he's not such a great cop after all. At this point, Line of Duty earned my respect.

I would've liked to see that bad cop arrested, but this is a 'continuing saga' type of show — it ends before there's a resolution.

Do they get the bad cop in next week's show? Is it a season-long story arc, and he'll be arrested in the last episode? Or will it be realistic enough that this corrupt cop, like 99% of them, gets away with it?

I won't be back to find out, sorry, because the show got on my nerves artistically. Everything is shown as super-serious melodrama, and filmed with hand-held cameras, a technique I hate. The lead actor, Martin Compston as Steve 7156 Arnott, looks too young, incredulous, and he's always oh-so-serious. And he only becomes determined to go after the bad cop because the target or one of his buddy cops left a turd in Arnott's car.

Also, it's awful enough that I know American cop lingo from so many shitty US TV shows and movies. I ain't learning British cop lingo — "I've noticed an upsurge in Class A detections on the bog" — just to keep up with what seems to be a soap opera about bad cops.

That said, Line of Duty is a good prime time TV drama, and any show that presents police as less than virtuous is a major breakthrough. I've seen enough, but everyone else should watch this show.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Big Brown Eyes (1936)

This is a quick-patter flick, snappy wisecracks and quick retorts, that's sorta centered around a busy barber shop that's also an ice cream parlor. Cary Grant stars, but never gets a haircut and only once a sundae.

He's a cop, pursuing mobsters when he's on duty, and after hours chasing a tough-talking quick-patter manicurist/newspaper reporter (Joan Bennett) who works in the clip-and-banana-split joint.

Mismatched with the quick-patter light comedy, the mobsters include a hothead with a gun who accidentally kills a baby in its carriage. The baby's mother screams in horror, and then immediately the movie's quick-patter and wisecracks resume.

So it's an odd hybrid — cops and mobsters, laughs and another murder — but the mobster part isn't convincing, and the comedy part usually falls flat.

And I'm as much a Cary Grant fan as anyone, but Grant as a cop simply doesn't work.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Man Who Thought Life (1969) 

There's this guy called Steinmetz walking across a bridge, stopping all the other pedestrians to show them the mouse he's carrying. "Can you see the mouse?" he asks everyone, and of course they can see the mouse, so the cops are called and Steinmetz gets taken to a mental ward.

He's not quite crazy, but he has a wondrous ability to create stuff with his mind — he created that mouse. Locked in a cell, when he thinks about it hard enough, he conjures up the key.

He's dissatisfied with such easy tricks, though. What Steinmetz really wants to do is conjure up something more impressive than a mouse. He wants to create a human.

And that's enough synopsis. If it sounds intriguing, you will enjoy this. If it sounds silly, it's not for you.

Sumptuously photographed in living black-and-white, this is intelligent science fiction — the kind that doesn't need ray guns and space ships. It has a sense of humor, sprinkling a few laughs to lighten the tension in what's otherwise increasingly a terror.

Bring your mind, because you'll need it to keep up, and bring your reading glasses, because it's in Danish subtitled into English.

Verdict: YES.

11/17/2023   

• • • Coming attractions • • •

The Internet's Own Boy (2014)
Nothing But a Man (1964)
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
Romper Stomper (1992)
Room Service (1938)
Who Farted? (2019)

... plus occasional 
schlock and surprises 

• • • But wait, there's more  • • •

Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Brainwaves (1983)
Cellular (2004) 
The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985)
The Day My Parents Became Cool (2009)
The Decline of Western Civilization (1980)
Downsizing (2017)
Frankenhooker (1990)
Hugo (2011)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
Love Happy (1950)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
The Man with Nine Lives (1940)
Phone Booth (2002)
PickAxe (1999)
Poison (1990)
Revelations (1993)
Same Kind of Different as Me (2017)
Saved! (2004)
Scared to Death (1947)
Secret Weapons (1985)
The Shooting (1966)
The Soloist (2009)
The Train (1964)
Welcome to New Orleans (2006)
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:

Alter • Cineverse • Criterion • CultCinema Classics • DocsVille • Dust • Fandor • Films for Action • Hoopla • IHaveNoTV • IndieFlix • Internet Archive • Kanopy • KinoCult • Kino Lorber • Korean Classic Film • Christopher R Mihm • Mosfilm • Mubi • National Film Board of Canada • New Yorker Screening Room • Damon Packard • Mark Pirro • PizzaFlix • PopcornFlix • Public Domain Movies • RareFilmm • Scarecrow Video • Shudder • ThoughtMaybe • Timeless Classic Movies • VoleFlix • WatchDocumentaries • or your local library. 

Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.

— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free, or at least spoiler-warned. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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That girl at summer camp

My parents sent me to summer camp every year. It lasted a week, and I never once said, "Can I go to summer camp, can I please?," so I think they enjoyed the week without me more than I enjoyed summer camp. Most years, anyway.

It was always a Christian summer camp, where kids were required to attend Bible studies, morning, midday, and before supper, but if it wasn’t raining, the Bible study might be at the lake shore. There were singalongs, but the songs were hymns. There were arts and crafts classes, but the art was always supposed to be about something Biblical, like my macaroni Joseph and his coat of many noodles.

The best part of summer camp was an hour and a half daily when all the kids got to hang out at the main building, or on the basketball courts right outside. I wasn't there, which is what made it the best part.

It was easy to sneak away, and there were Christian bullies to avoid, so I spent that hour and a half having fun instead — in the woods, climbing trees, telling myself stories, and eating ferns I'd discovered that tasted like licorice.

♦ ♦ ♦

One summer at camp, in early adolescence or on the cusp, I stayed out of the woods long enough to have an almost-girlfriend. Her name was Anita, and I liked her, and she liked me. We didn’t make out, and our only kill was a kiss goodbye, but she was a real live girl who spent some of her time with me, by choice. That had never happened before.

We lived hundreds of miles apart, so I knew I'd never see her again, but when camp ended we exchanged addresses. We sent each other a few letters, and then stopped, of course. Now I remember almost nothing about Anita except her name. She hasn't been even briefly on my mind in years, perhaps decades — but she mattered to me that summer.

On the drive home from camp, my parents asked whether I’d had a fun week away, and I answered their questions. I told them about the so-so food, and the bugs in the cabin, and complained that there’d been too much Bible and too much God … and I told them about Anita.

Mom and Dad listened as I prattled on. Mom didn't say anything, and Dad said only this, about my beloved girl from camp: “Anita, huh? The same name as your grandmother. I wonder what that means!”

Until Dad said what Dad said, I'd been pleased with myself — super-shy kid goes to summer camp, reinvents himself as a little ladies’ man, and actually holds hands with a girl? This was my greatest accomplishment so far in life!

But wait, was I not allowed to like any girl who shared my grandmother’s first name? Was I also supposed to avoid girls who had my mother’s name? My sisters’ names? What about cousins?

I was just a kid, and Dad was just joking, but I hadn’t yet heard of Oedipus Rex, let alone GrandOedipus Rex, and to me, Anita was Anita, and my grandmother was ‘Grandma’. I hadn’t even noticed that they had the same name.

What my father said pissed me off, obviously — it’s fifty years later and I’m still annoyed.

I know, of course, that it was just my dad not knowing what to say, so he made a lame wisecrack. That's what dads do. I'm not a dad, but I do that, too. The experience didn't warp me, or make me into an axe murderer. But my first big crush was a joke to my old man.

And from that day to this, it was the last time I was simply open and honest with my parents about anything that mattered to me. After that, always there was a moment or a month of hesitation, as I calculated the risks: If I tell them, will I be scolded? Will I get laughed at, or get a Bible verse? Will I get anything helpful from being straightforward with Mom & Dad?

The answer was usually nope, so there's a lot about me that they never knew.

7/14/2021   
Republished 11/16/2023   

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Get Shorty, and a few more films

NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#217  [archive]
NOV. 16, 2023

Get Shorty (1995) 

Chili Palmer (John Travolta) is is a Miami debt-collector and darn it, a nice guy. Mostly he's a movie fan who'd rather talk about Touch of Evil than break your legs. Come to think of it, we never do see him break anybody's legs.

Chasing a $300,000 debt for his boss, Chili goes to Vegas, then to Hollywood to collect a casino debt owed by low-rent moviemaker Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman). He's a fan of Zimm's work, so instead of breaking his legs Chili pitches him an idea for a movie, and things go wrong, things go right.

Elmore Leonard said he was happy with this adaptation of his novel, and it certainly captures his patter all the way through. Even the violence is funny.

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Men in Black), it also has Danny DeVito as the biggest star in show biz, Rene Russo as a sometimes-snarling starlet, should-be-more-famous Dennis Farina as Chili's mobster boss, and young James Gandolfini as a not-so-tough enforcer who's also a stuntman, because it's L.A., where everyone's in the industry. 

"Rough business, this movie business. I'm gonna have to go back to loan-sharking just to take a rest."

Travolta has never been better, and as for Hackman — I'd wondered a while back if he ever played anything but Hackman tough guys; well, here he's not a Hackman tough guy, and he's fine at it. The beard helps.

With its star-studded ensemble cast, plot twists too numerous to detail, Elmore's rat-a-tat-tat clever dialogue, plenty of laughs, elegant music, and a great ending and fade-away shot, this adds up to the best gangster comedy I can remember.

It's a Hollywood movie about Hollywood, big as the letters on the hillside. Great fun, very nearly perfect entertainment.

Verdict: BIG YES.

Bonus: Ben Stiller's deleted scene.

♦ ♦ ♦

Doctor Who Am I (2022)

In 1996, Doctor Who had been off the air for seven years, and BBC had no interest in bringing it back. America's Fox network did, so they rented the rights and made a pilot to re-launch the series as a BBC/Fox co-production.

It was the TV-movie Doctor Who (1996), which I mostly liked, but it scored only so-so ratings, the series didn't get made, and some of the nerdiest fans hated what Fox had done: The Doctor was suddenly half-human, like Spock, which is stupid. And he kissed his pretty companion, when until then he'd always, always been basically sexless.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, that poorly-received and failed pilot/movie was written by Matthew Jacobs, who 25 years later went to a Doctor Who convention, brought a camera crew with him, and directed this documentary about Matthew Jacobs going to a Doctor Who con.

If your next question is Who cares? you're asking the right questions. Jacobs is a writer, but nothing's interesting about that, so this is a movie only for hardcore fans of the show. I'm the hardest-core fan I know, and only about half of this held my attention.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Greener Grass (2019)

Jill and Lisa are neighbors and friends, watching their children play soccer badly. Lisa compliments Jill on her beautiful new baby daughter, so of course, Jill gives the baby to Lisa. To keep.

Soon, though, Jill's son becomes a golden retriever, and suddenly childless, Jill wonders if she's made a mistake giving the girl away.

"I don't want to be a native-American-giver, but I wanted to ask — now that my only child is a dog, would it be possible to get the baby I gave you back?"

Set in a pastel upper-class suburb where everyone wears braces and drives golf carts instead of cars, this is an enthusiastically weird movie about the extreme awkwardness of humanity.

It's a world of conformity, where good manners are valued above all else. Relaxing and being yourself would be gauche. There might be a serial killer on the loose, but I'm sure he or she is very polite about it.

This is a comedy, if you haven't guessed, and while I certainly laughed, it's more unsettling than funny. Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe wrote, directed, and star. The flick made me uncomfortable for an hour and a half, but still left me feeling I'd had a good time.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Inhuman Woman (1924)

Claire Lescot is a world-famous singer, beautiful and forever pursued by men of means and reputation, but she rebuffs all advances.

The story opens with a dinner party at her palace, with many of her pursuers in attendance. Dinner is served on a table in the middle of the swimming pool. The waiters wear masks that lock perpetual smiles on their faces. Everything is weird, man, weirder than Greener Grass, and every new act of the drama is vividly tinted in a different color.

One of the men sniffing after Lady Lescott can't handle her rejection, so he storms out and drives away in a snazzy roadster, then intentionally drives over a cliff. That's when she regrets rebuffing him, and instead of being universally beloved, some in the audience at her next show have turned against her as "the inhuman woman."

That's the basics of the beginning of the story, which then goes too wild to recount. Doesn't matter, anyway, because more than the plot, it's the fantastic visuals that hold your attention. Like the guy on his back, legs in the air, balancing a barrel on his feet as he furiously mimes running — for about five minutes. It doesn't get boring, it only gets weird. Same for the whole movie.

Some of the sets are Fritz Lang-worthy, as the story moves into science fiction. The camerawork and effects are always imaginative, and everything's bathed in strangeness. It's a silent movie from a century ago, but most of it still feels fresh.

Claire Lescot is played by Georgette Leblanc, who Google tells me was a big opera star of the era. Seems Leblanc provided half the film's funding, and in return got the leading role, which is the only serious fuck-up in this otherwise fine film. She's weak as an actress, and at 55 years old even buried in pancake make-up, it's hard to pretend that her rejection could lead a young man to suicide.

Verdict: YES.

11/15/2023   

• • • Coming attractions • • •

The Internet's Own Boy (2014)
Line of Duty (debut episode; 2012)
The Man Who Thought Life (1969)
Nothing But a Man (1964)
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
Romper Stomper (1992)
Room Service (1938)
Who Farted? (2019)

... plus occasional 
schlock and surprises 

• • • But wait, there's more  • • •

Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Brainwaves (1983)
Cellular (2004) 
The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985)
The Day My Parents Became Cool (2009)
The Decline of Western Civilization (1980)
Downsizing (2017)
Frankenhooker (1990)
Hugo (2011)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
Love Happy (1950)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
The Man with Nine Lives (1940)
Phone Booth (2002)
PickAxe (1999)
Poison (1990)
Revelations (1993)
Same Kind of Different as Me (2017)
Saved! (2004)
Scared to Death (1947)
Secret Weapons (1985)
The Shooting (1966)
The Soloist (2009)
The Train (1964)
Welcome to New Orleans (2006)
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:

Alter • Cineverse • Criterion • CultCinema Classics • DocsVille • Dust • Fandor • Films for Action • Hoopla • IHaveNoTV • IndieFlix • Internet Archive • Kanopy • KinoCult • Kino Lorber • Korean Classic Film • Christopher R Mihm • Mosfilm • Mubi • National Film Board of Canada • New Yorker Screening Room • Damon Packard • Mark Pirro • PizzaFlix • PopcornFlix • Public Domain Movies • RareFilmm • Scarecrow Video • Shudder • ThoughtMaybe • Timeless Classic Movies • VoleFlix • WatchDocumentaries • or your local library. 

Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.

— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free, or at least spoiler-warned. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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Medical and dental

Shart happens — the fart that's more than a fart. It comes with old age, and I've done it about a dozen times. It was a big surprise the first time, but that was years ago. Now I carry a few paper towels when I'm on the bus, because you never know.

At home on Sunday afternoon, at about 3:30 if you're keeping track, I suddenly sharted the largest shart of my life. Usually there are pre-shart rumbles, and I sorta know something's coming soon, but not this time, man. This was brown out of the blue.

It felt like the mildest, tiniest fart — pppt — but it left about three applesaucey ounces spread all over the inside of my pants.

Further old age updates:

After months of assorted discomfort and worries, Dick, the older of my two remaining older brothers, has had a flurry of tests and procedures and a second surgery, and they've decided he never had cancer after all. It's something much less scary, or so they say.

Clay, the younger of my two remaining older brothers, kicked cancer's ass several years ago, by undergoing a long and vomitous series of radiation treatments. Now he hasn't been feeling well lately, so it's tests, probes, and appointments again.

Sis-in-law has pneumonia, her sister has bunions, but me, I keep rolling lucky dice. I'm in remarkably good health for an fat old man — occasional sharts, pills for gout, and that's about it.

My beloved mom, meanwhile, lost her dentures again. A couple of years ago, she accidentally flushed 'em down the toilet, and they had to be remade. This time, she spent a week looking but never found her chompers, and she thinks she left them in a restaurant, or possibly they fell from her purse on one of her walks.

When she called to have the dentures replaced again, she was told to have her remaining ten teeth yanked first, and all the roots removed. The cost: $5,000. Sounds like a scam to me — why would a 90-something woman need dental surgery to get replacements for her dentures?

The dentist has to make a living, that's why, so Mom had all her teeth pulled and the roots uprooted, and texted me the next morning:

"I wanted you to know that God worked a MIRACLE for me. I had ten teeth pulled and I have no pain the next day."

Being a smartass and an atheist, I replied: "Wait, Jesus pulled your teeth?"

"No, the dentist pulled my teeth, ten of them. The MIRACLE is that I have no pain the following day. No pain, zero. PRAISE GOD! Do you remember the song 'God can do anything, anything, anything, God can do anything but fail'?"

God can do anything, but He couldn't save Mom's real teeth, or find her fake teeth when she'd looked and looked. And she still has to wait 4-6 months before being measured and fitted for the new dentures, which God can't make or deliver. But God can do anything, and this is a MIRACLE.

"Sure glad you're not in pain," is all I texted back. Later that afternoon, Mom texted me that her mouth had started hurting.

Riding a bus to nowhere in particular, I was oddly transfixed by an ad behind the driver. It's a picture of (a model pretending to be) a doctor. You can tell he's a doctor, from the white coat and stethoscope, and he's bent over to high-five a little kid. The kid's smiling. The doctor's smiling. Everyone's happy and healthy and fake.

The text over the picture says only, "140 years of putting local communities first. MultiCare."

All health plan slogans are vapid, but this seems especially dumbass. Putting local communities first? What a strange thing for a medical company to brag about.

When I see a doctor, I expect five minutes of questions and answers and hmmms, and then to be told to lose weight. That the doctor puts local communities first is not high on my agenda, but it must've tested well at some dipshit ad agency.

I was also curious how, despite growing up here, I'd never heard of MultiCare, an allegedly 140-year-old company.

Googled it and found the expected answer: They're a big but local company, formed in 1980, which later renamed itself MutiCare "to reflect a multifaceted yet unified health care delivery model," which is near-maximum corporate-speak.

And this brand of rat bastards owns Tacoma General Hospital, which was founded in 1882 — that's why they can lie and claim 140 years of putting local communities first. 

11/15/2023   

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