a history of me

Not in a very good mood today. I learned little from my trip to the doctor, other than the fact that I now owe him $350. I have to get some tests run tomorrow. One of them involves collecting all of my urine today, the other two involve my blood. All three will no doubt involve a serious impact on my bank account.

What's the answer? Medicaid! I spent a few hours sitting in Bellevue waiting to apply. It felt worse than going to the DMV. I have no idea what the answer is yet, as I need to submit more information before my application is formally "accepted." Once that happens, it still may take four to six weeks before I get an answer.

In the meantime I've had plenty of time to reflect on society's woes which are larger than my own. I watched The Corporation yesterday and it was awesome in a depressing sort of way, as I feel like I can't do a single thing to act towards changing the problems that the film highlights. On a different but equally frustrating note, I laughed and felt sad when I read this week's edition of This Modern World. It's a very funny cartoon but in reality that's a very serious problem threatening the basic intelligence of millions of real children. I've had a hard enough time dealing with the fact that I grew up with the softball version of American history:

Columbus, Puritans and Democracy, good!
Monarchy, Communism and Fire BAD!

Can you imagine the impact on children who grow up learning intelligent design and then try to incorporate that nonsense into the real world? Why bother teaching science at all if the backbone of that education is grounded in pure myth? In thirty years, will two hydrogens and a oxygen make water because of chemical bonding or because Poseidon willed it to be so?