Hatam Soferet

Times this morning:

As the nation’s obesity crisis continues unabated, federal regulators on Monday issued their bluntest nutrition advice to date: drink water instead of sugary drinks like soda, fill your plate with fruits and vegetables and cut down on processed foods filled with sodium, fat or sugar.

This makes me so angry. How about federal regulators quit subsidising corn, which is used to make CHEAP SUGAR and CHEAP MEAT, and start subsidising vegetables? How about adjusting rental laws so that landlords have to provide fridges and cookers so that low-income renters can actually produce and store that unprocessed food? How about they investigate what's in the water, so that people don't drink so many hormones and carcinogens?

Yes, I admit it's an advance on "Eat more lean meats like chicken," but it's not THAT much of an advance.

The offices of Dr Robert Morrow, of Riverdale, are staffed by idiots who can't follow simple instructions.

Since January of 2008, we've been having the following conversation:

Me: My insurance is XYZ. Bill them for this visit.

Them: We billed Insurance 123 and they will not pay. You owe us $100.

Me: That is because my insurance is XYZ, not 123. Bill insurance XYZ.

Them: Oh, okay. The last girl who worked here was a bit of a ditz.

Months pass.

Them: We billed Insurance 123 and they will not pay. You owe us $100.

Me: That is because my insurance is XYZ, not 123. Bill insurance XYZ.

Them: Oh, okay.

Months pass.

Them: We billed Insurance 123 and they will not pay. You seriously owe us $100. Pay up or we will set the dogs debt collectors on you.

Me: What part of "bill XYZ not 123" do you not understand?

Them: Oh, we need to bill XYZ? Sorry, the last girl who worked here was a bit of a ditz.

Months pass.

Them: We billed Insurance 123 and they will not pay. You owe us $100.

Me:...

Insurance: Claim denied. Reason: Claim Not Filed By Filing Deadline.

It infuriates me - INFURIATES ME - that I pay $370 a month in health insurance plus office visit fees to enable this kind of idiocy.

Is there an adult way of saying to the office "Don't even THINK about trying to bill me for this. This is COMPLETELY YOUR OWN FUCKING FAULT and if you try to lay this one on me I am probably going to come up to your stupid office and scream and throw things"?

So yeah. Dr Morrow of Riverdale. Office of fools. You'll probably go in for antibiotics and he'll cut your foot off. Steer clear.

There's quite the lightning storm going on out there. I'm at the airport, so I have an unusually large amount of horizon to look at, and the lightning's the kind that plays acriss the sky as far as you can see, back and forth, these gigantic parallel streaks filling the sky and flicking off again.

It's the strange kind of lightning storm that fills the sky but makes no sound. There's no rain, no thunder, just the sky lighting up, like headlights across a ceiling, but it's the biggest ceiling *ever* and the biggest headlights too. Every so often a bigger whopper than usual breaks through and you can see the bolt shaking itself into the ground.

There might be thunder, actually; I'm wearing earplugs because someone's talking about healthcare on the piped television and it makes me mad to listen to white dudes with health insurance pontificating about why the existing system is made of cookies. Cos from where I'm standing it's a question of "how many people have to be permanently crippled from inadequate care before you start feeling sorry enough for them that you want your health money to pay healthcare costs rather than insurance executives," which seems like something of a no-brainer to me; I'd much rather my friends got treatment than that we should pay for some twerps in an office to shuffle claim forms and misfile things. I mean per capita the US could spend what the UK spends, and everyone would have health care, and there'd still be bloody masses left over, and we could use it for unemployment benefits for those recently fired from insurance companies. Anyway, I'm wearing earplugs, so if there is thunder I can't hear it. But I don't think there is.

Talking of health insurance, as part of my divorce paperwork, I and he have to submit a form which says: I [NAME] fully understand that upon the entrance of this divorce agreement, I may no longer be allowed to receive health coverage under my former spouse's health insurance plan. I may be entitled to purchase health insurance on my own through a COBRA option, if available, otherwise I may be required to secure my own health insurance.

That is, before your divorce is admitted for the consideration of the court, you have to turn in a sworn statement to the effect that you understand just how much a divorce can bollocks up your healthcare. I know that benefits and pensions and stuff can play a part when deciding whether to get divorced or not, but healthcare - and sworn statements - sheesh.

For those not used to the US system: there's this magical thing called a pre-existing condition, you see; if you have ever been sick before you are a Bad Risk. If you actually have real chronic problems and need to get your own insurance after your divorce you'd better marry a doctor pronto, and if you once got sick ten years ago and got better and didn't think it worth mentioning you'd better pray you never need expensive treatment because then the insurance company digs that up and says "oo you had a pre-existing condition your insurance is invalidated now we don't have pay your bills NEH NEH NEH and btw you owe the hospital several hundred thousand dollars" and you're screwed again. So getting your own insurance isn't necessarily going to happen, even if you've got a job that offers it. Oh, your insurance premiums pay for the dirt-digging peons as well. It's in their interest to deny you care so they put a lot of effort into it. Ugh.

The downside of watching spectacular electrical storms from the airport is that...they close the airport. Planes are great big Faraday cages so people in planes are okay, but I suppose it's dangerous for the ground crews, and I spose it might fry the tyres as well.

Comment on the healthcare debate (which you may have noticed I have not been commenting on).

Quote from a random American, on why private health insurance is much better than a publically-funded system:

I just don't think it's right to have to subsidize other people's insurance.

What on earth do you think insurance is? It's a system of shared subsidisation based on an assessment of collective risk, but adding a nice whack for the shareholders. Zounds, but this foolishness wearies me.

This apropos of the US Right's recent effort to prove that publically-funded healthcare is Evil, by claiming that Steven Hawking wouldn't have lived to grace the world had he been born in the UK.

This is obviously stupid; what's additionally interesting is how it's a lovely example of the smouldering tissue of invented truths, lack of fact-checking, wild assumptions, and smoke blown out by stirring same, being presented as reasoned debate in this country.

WHY DO I HAVE TO HAVE AN INCH-AND-A-HALF-LONG COCKROACH RUNNING AROUND MY APARTMENT? WHY WHY WHY?

EWW IT'S RUNNING ALONG THE CURTAIN POLE

OMG IT CAN FLY

IT FLEW ONTO THE ARON KODESH

THEN IT FELL OFF THE ARON KODESH

PLEASE GOD IT'S WANDERING AROUND BECAUSE IT'S OUT OF ITS MIND ON POISON IN THE ERRATIC STAGES OF ROACH DEATH

PLEASE GOD PLEASE

I MEAN I KNOW IT'S THE JEWS' NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING AND GENERAL PRIVATION AND MISERY AND COMPARED TO THE LOSS OF THE HOLY TEMPLE ONE ROACH MORE OR LESS ISN'T MUCH, BUT IT'S A GIANT ROACH IN MY APARTMENT AND I'M ONLY WEARING A NIGHTSHIRT AND IT CAN FLY

"being molested" is so ubiquitous that it is considered a normal part of growing up female

Source thread.

This was my first sexual experience: I was eleven. It was my first year in big school, in a technical drawing class. The teacher was out of the room. The Popular Boy groped me from behind while the rest of the class, girls and boys both, looked on and laughed. Through a fog of terror and utter humiliation, I managed to stab his arm with a pencil. It drew blood. As well as the shame of having been groped and laughed at, I was frightened all day that he would tell on me and I would get into trouble with the school authorities for having stabbed someone with a pencil. I guess I must have known on some level that being groped wouldn't be viewed as sufficient grounds for defending oneself violently.

Like other kids, I grew up being told about Stranger Danger and how if someone touches you in ways you aren't comfortable with, it is okay to tell on them. So, since I had been invaded and humiliated in a sexual, unwelcome, public, shaming manner, and since I was extremely upset, I tried to tell someone I trusted.

I got told to shut up and stop making such a fuss. Being molested is a normal part of growing up female, you know. So I shut up and absorbed that shame and embarrassment and knowledge that if you are molested, other people are going to laugh at you for objecting, and it is your own fault for being insufficiently invisible.

And it's only very very recently that I've realised that something doesn't have to be full-on rape to be Wrong, and it's okay to object to being groped, and if someone tells you to shut up, that's not because you suck, it's because they suck. Hear that? It may be normal to be molested, but that doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't mean you have to shut up and stop making such a fuss. It's okay to want to be a human being, and to want to be treated as such.

Well, that's today's post. It doesn't have much to do with Torah. On the other hand, it has everything to do with Torah.

PS - Comments are screened and will stay screened unless you indicate specifically that you're okay with them being unscreened.

PPS. Telling women that they should learn self-defence IS NOT the answer. That validates and reinforces the assumption that molestation is the norm, accepts that such is completely inevitable, and plants or strengthens the idea that someone who is attacked is somehow at fault for not having learned to defend herself. A woman shouldn't have to learn self-defence in order to avoid being molested.

or, Why I Like Hanukah More Than Purim.

Because parading your wife in public as a sex object isn't funny.
Because getting mad when your wife doesn't want to comply isn't funny.
Because governmental fearmongering with wild speculations about women isn't funny.
Because turfing out your wife in a fit of pique isn't funny.
Because government legitimising intimidation in domestic relationships isn't funny.
Because abduction isn't funny.
Because fetishising virgins isn't funny.
Because rape isn't funny.
Because imprisonment in a harem isn't funny.
Because your husband being allowed to kill you isn't funny.

Don't tell me I'm wrong in reacting to the text in a way that disturbs you.

Don't tell me I'm reading it wrong.
Don't tell me what the Midrash says.
Don't tell me to lighten up.
Don't tell me it's all just a joke.
Don't tell me it's parody.
Don't tell me that if I read it like you read it I wouldn't get upset.



Comments will be screened. Comments failing to understand the above will not be passed.

ETA: For instance, "Did you not notice that none of these things you complain of are supposed to be good or wise?" is telling me I'm reading it wrong. FAIL. Yes, I did notice. Pipe down and think.

I observe that these days, you are allowed to take pointed scissors onto planes provided they have blades less than four inches in length, yet you are still not allowed sealed cans of Coke. I don't know about you, but I think pointed scissors with blades three and seven-eighths inches long are inherently somewhat more threatening than cans of Coke. "Take this plane to Cuba, or I will drink this Coke and belch mightily at you" isn't especially compelling, when you think about it.

( Parenthetically, on goons... )

As ever, I would rather the Israeli approach, which credits terrorists with sharp thinking, and reasons that if your adversary is cunning, original, and determined, it is better to counter him with personnel of similar calibre and outwit him, rather than attempt to thwart him with goons who would only be able to spot a terrorist if he put a twenty-pound bomb in his luggage tray, labelled ACME BOMB and with the string fizzing. And even then, you'd have to hope the goon wasn't distracted by any cans of Coke someone might be trying to sneak through.

It's frustrating...when you spend $100 on a lamp, and it expires after eighteen months. The bulb is supposed to last 10,000 hours, which is a fat lot of use when the lamp dies first. There's nothing obviously wrong; I took apart the bits which can be taken apart and can't find any fuses or anything that looks bust. Just...it doesn't work, and the company's advice is: it's out of warranty, you should go buy a new one.

I don't want to throw out a lamp. It took masses of resources to make, and it shouldn't be that difficult to fix. A lamp ought to last for years. But I don't know how to fix it, and I don't know enough to find out how, and most of the components are fused into plastic cases that you can't open, anyway. That too is frustrating. I frequently wish we lived in a Fix culture rather than a Replace culture. Now is one of those times.

I think I posted about arriving at London Gatwick September 2nd to find no plane to New York because the airline had gone bust...well, yeah, that sucked, but,

the credit card refunded it!

I got the money back for the flight that never was! I don't know how that works, beyond "credit card magic," but I was jolly jolly happy about it.