Tag: life

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First, I think the strong positions people are taking before all the facts are know is interesting. The whole point of an investigation is to uncover the facts and come to a conclusion about how best to resolve the manner. This isn’t happening. People are already taking positions based on the accusations made. I am assuming I don’t have all the facts, to take a position is premature.

The woman in the case feels wronged and she has a burden to prove her case. What facts we do have reveal a messy situation. Drugs, alcohol and sex. But this is precisely why a court should intervene. It is messy.

Something happened though and it is worth investigating.

What I find irritating is the tears shed for the men involved. Miranda Devine, in the New York Post, writes: “The young men made bad choices, too, and I would be ashamed to have sons who behaved that way. But they were just as young and just as out of it as she was and don’t deserve to have their lives ruined if the evidence shows they committed no crime. As far as ruining the young men’s lives involved, though, I don’t know what to say.”

If a woman has to be cautious about how she behaves at a Frat Party, then the same applies for the men. Men need to be aware that women may object to these maneuvers to get them into bed and, because times have changed, these grievances may end up in court. This is where we are with the Cornell case.

I would also argue that these are questions worth pursuing and the courts are best place for their resolution.

Why did these men offer an already drunk woman even more intoxicating substances if not to make her more pliable to their sexual advances? By making her even more incapacitated, they were making the woman even less capable of making a reasonable decision. She wasn’t asking for more drugs and drinks, so why were the encouraging her to get even more inebriated? This seems like a line of inquiry worth pursuing.

But men have been doing this for thousands of years, it is all part of the seduction process — a woman has to be aware when given alcohol or drugs. This is hardly a defense of the young men. Making a person so inebriated they will do anything you want, doesn’t sound like a benign seduction maneuver here. They should have to explain their intentions here.

Then there is the message from one of the men to the rest of his fraternity to come join him for free pussy. Two questions here. Did the woman ask him to offer her up for sexual use? If not, why did he think she was offering it up? Again, this doesn’t seem like some benign action from a nice guy. It sounds very much like he was offering her up to be sexually used by the rest of the fraternity without her consultation.

But she put herself in that position. She did.

And the young men put themselves in the position of wanting sex so badly that they behaved badly in order to pursue this end. They now find themselves in a court of law to straighten out the mess they participated in making. Given the numerous ambiguities of the case, there is a good chance that most of them will get off scot-free.

Of course, their parents and friends have learned about their capacity for bad behavior but then, let’s face it, their behavior was bad. Is it really so wrong to learn this? Discovery is the risk a person takes when they do the wrong thing. If their lives are ruined, which I doubt very much in this case, they participated in causing the ruin.

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This Slate Advice column left me gobsmacked. This woman’s daughter-in-law left her kids at the front gate of her house expecting Grandma to take care of them while she dealt with a work emergency. The daughter-in-law called her before leaving her kids there, got no answer and just assumed she was there. She was not. She, in fact, was out of town. The woman’s neighbor, seeing two children abandoned at the front gate, called Child Protective Services who then got involved.

The son and daughter-in-law are now angry with the woman because she wasn’t at home when they needed her. The woman had gone out of town with her new boyfriend. The daughter-in-law informed her she needs to keep them apprised of her out of town visits. Her son had the nerve to say she was whoring around with wrinkly old men instead of caring for her grandchildren.

So much to say about this:

  1. The daughter-in-law didn’t know where the woman was. The woman hadn’t answered her phone. Why would the daughter-in-law assume she was there? And why would she leave her children at the gate based on this lack of information?
  2. The woman could have been in-town and not at her house. She could have been taking care of a sick friend or shopping at the mall. Does her family expect her to keep them informed of her every move? Do they expect her to give them a daily rundown of her schedule? Is she supposed to sit at her home waiting for their emergencies.
  3. I don’t think implying that your emergency babysitter is a whore is a good way to encourage her to be available at a moment’s notice. Just saying there might have been a more diplomatic approach to the discussion.
  4. The woman sounds like she is afraid that she has ruptured her son and daughter-in-law’s relationship with her. This is truly eye opening. I mean they are going to get bent out of shape with their emergency babysitter. The person who will take their children at the last minute. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. Really, this is what you want to do?
  5. Getting CPS called on them was a bummer. But having their two children sitting outside Grandma’s house without any adult supervision was a mistake. The daughter-in-law made a lot of bad assumptions here and hopefully she has learned her lesson but misdirecting her anger towards her mother-in-law is unfair and unrealistic.

I think the woman should take a long vacation with her new boyfriend and see how her son does with emergency babysitters while she is gone.

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The reoccurring SNL skits called the Californians amuses because every conversation, even murder plots and infidelity, devolves into a conversation about the best way to navigate traffic. I have lived here for over 30 years and it is one of the most dependable topics of conversations I know. Other than the related conversation topic which is parking.

We talk about traffic constantly. It is as if we think someone will have the answer to cure our traffic ills. They don’t.

There is 1,000 miles of freeway and 17.5 million people in southern California. It is highly unlikely that one of these miles doesn’t have, at least, a fender bender. This seemingly small accident can throw the whole system out of wack.

GPS has made the situation a bit better — occasionally you can catch the traffic slowdown before you leave your house and take alternate routes. The problem with alternate routes is that everyone is using GPS. So while GPS might redirect you to a faster route, by the time you find out about the alternate route, every other driver has also have received exactly the same information. Now the alternate is jammed.

Which brings me back to the Californians. It is satire that is so close to reality that it hurts.

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Judy Sandler, in Huffington Post, made an interesting observation about her reticence to discuss her son’s mental health with others. He is struggling with it but how do you talk about it without causing more, possibly well-meaning but, nonetheless, unwanted follow up questions or invading your child’s privacy.

This leads to a bigger question for me — why is mental health such a forbidden topic of discussion? How is silence helping anyone dealing with mental health? It is a problem that a lot of people experience — either personally or through loved ones. Instead of talking about it, we him and haw, give vague answers that say nothing and undermines any understanding that other people might have about mental health struggles.

There is this hidden shame. My kid is a mess and it is a really difficult time for us. My kid is a failure.

People, by and large, are interested in your life and aren’t nosing around for gossip. It is genuine concern. But it is mental health. We don’t talk about mental health problems. There is this weird connection with good mental health and the goodness of the person. If I tell someone my son is having mental health issues, I have somehow failed as a parent. Alcoholics, schizophrenics, drug addicts, depressed people are all somehow bad people who should be hidden away until they come to their senses.

This silence about people who are suffering with their mental health is damaging. It discourages people from seeking help. It also puts the onus of diagnosing mental health with the person breaking down or their families.

If we, as a country, were serious about mental health — everyone would get a yearly mental health check in to see how people are doing.

But no we would rather wait until a mother kills her children. Or a young man shoots up his schools. Or a depressed person kills themselves. Or drug addicts camp out on our streets. So many of our problems have a mental health connection. An annual mental health check ups would be far cheaper than cleaning up the mess broken people make.

It also might take some of the shame out of seeing mental health professionals. If everyone is doing it we might diminish the silence regarding mental health issues and, more importantly, we might be able to pro-actively address the problems people are dealing with before they breakdown.

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Here is my story in the most neutral way I can think to present it. There is a chance I am wrong about my thinking but the facts are correct.

Bob and I go to trivia night at a local winery. We have been doing this for a couple of years. It has become like a Cheers bar for us. We know a lot of the other players in the contest and it is all good fun. At least that is what I thought.

There are some rules. One of which is your team should be no larger than six. We rarely have a problem with that but we have encouraged friends if they are available to come to join us as the more the merrier. This means sometimes it is just Bob and I and, on very rare occasions we slip past the 6 threshold. Most of the time this is no big deal because it is all good fun and the grand prize is two bottles of wine so the stakes are very low — mostly just bragging rights. There is a bit of trash talking between the winners and the losers but, as I said, all in good fun.

Last Thursday, we had 7 players. The sixth and seventh persons came it late at that — the quiz had been going on a good 15 minutes before they even arrived. But yes there were 7 players at our table.

We continued to play but we warned twice that we had 7 players. I explained that one of the people who joined us was basically drinking wine and chatting while the others played. He wasn’t supplying any answers. What were we supposed to do — tell him to go into a corner and drink his wine alone? Isn’t this supposed to be just fun and games?

I am trying to see the other person’s point on this but I am having a difficult time. It isn’t as if we were bringing in scholars from all over the state of California in order to win two fucking bottles of wine. It seemed so petty. First counting the number of people at each table and then reporting the numbers to the Quiz Master so she would have to act on their observation.

Anyway, it bothered me so much that I brought up throwing the quiz in order to avoid any dispute later. Thankfully, we lost.

Now as I type this I am thinking about whether this was a form of gamesmanship. They brought up our breaking the rules in order to distract us from focusing on the quiz. Mother Fuckers, just you wait until next Thursday. I will show you gamesmanship.

Do you see the problem here?

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We moved. One of the onerous tasks involved in any move is changing my address with the various institutions I do business with. In the past this could be done by two simple actions. The first was making a phone call to the institution. The second was a letter to the institution.

In 2026, due to the wonders of modern technology this can be done with a quick visit to the institution’s website. Quick is the operative word here. What would seem like a quick tick of a few boxes in order to retrieve my address has turned into a major production which now involves a trouble ticket to the USA Government one logon for all agencies help desk.

The steps so far:

After my initial logon into Medicare web site, I received a message telling me they were sending a code in order to verify my identity. Done.

They then asked what I wanted to do. I told them change my address which they informed me I could do by choosing one of the four pathways into the Federal Government’s web site. I chose the one I already knew I had a log on in — the USA Government one logon for all federal agencies.

I was informed that I would have to verify my identity yet again. I had to photograph my driver’s license (both sides) and then take a photo of myself. The computer then verified that my driver’s license and photo matched.

I had to verify my social security number.

Then my address appeared on the screen with the option to edit. I tried to edit but I received an unhelpful message informing me that there was an error in my address — most likely my social security number. I checked it was correct. I reviewed my address. It was correct. I tried again to enter. The system found an error in my address but did not point to what the problem was.

I noticed that there was a chat feature. I tried. But before I could chat, I had to verify that I wasn’t a robot. I tried but for some reason I must have missed one of the squares with a car. I tried again but I kept getting a new screen with the same instruction to mark all the squares with a car. I tried several times and each time a new set of pictures appeared with an instruction to mark all the squares with a car. I couldn’t get into chat.

So I searched for a phone number. This proved more difficult than I anticipated as it was nowhere to be found. What ever page appeared on my screen also kept giving me a message that all I had to do was use their system and that it would be a whole lot quicker and easier if just used the internet to change my address. I laughed at this little joke.

Finally, after searching for a few minutes I was able to find a phone number. I called.

I was greeted with an automated message. She asked me what I wanted to do. I told her I just wanted to change my address for Medicare. She told me that I could do this on line and directed me to the USA Government one logon for all federal agencies web site. I screamed numerous times “agent” loudly and clearly. I waited. After a bit of a delay, the automated voice returned. She thanked me for my time and disconnected the line.

I went back to the website and after vigorously depressing a few keys I came upon a screen that allowed me to complete a trouble ticket to their help desk. I completed. I should have an answer within 24 hours.

All this to change my address which, if I talked to an actual human being, I am fairly certain could be done in less than a minute.

But, no, I had to use the easier and quicker web site.

My address has not been changed after about 45 minutes of trying.

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One of the continuing irritations with the present medical system is the administrative confusion that arises when it is time to pay the bill. For some reason, the provider and the insurance company make me the middle man in their struggle for payment or for non-payment as it were. Now the only value, to use corporate speak, that I bring to the argument is I don’t want to pay the bill.

Nonetheless I am continually being dragged into these discussions where my growing irritation is the only clear relevance I am bringing to the debate.

My participation usually begins when the provider, after numerous attempts, has failed to get payment from the insurance companies. They then decide to bill the patient which seems fair and reasonable as the patient ultimately received the service.

Let’s stop here for just a moment. I thought that this was a service that was paid for by my insurance company. I never expected to be billed more than the co-pay. All I can add to the discussion is I didn’t expect to be billed. The provider, rather cleverly, has pulled me into the argument.

But why? I don’t know the arrangement between the provider and the insurance companies. I don’t know how the provider is supposed to code their bills in order to get payment. All I can do is complain to the provider for billing me which is where the provider explains their dilemma — the insurance company won’t pay.

Apparently the ire of the patient helps the insurance company to do the right thing. I grudgingly can accept this tactic although I am baffled why the provider can’t just work it out with the insurance company without involving me. I suspect it is based in confrontation avoidance of the young office workers tasked with resolving these matters. For some reason, they would rather piss off me over pissing off the insurance companies.

Any way, this is where things get truly irritating. The provider wants me to contact the insurance company in order to get payment. WTF. Why am I the one calling the insurance company? Why can’t the provider call them? I am embarrassed to say I fell for this little gambit numerous times mostly because I fear having to pay a large dollar amount bill.

So, I would call the insurance company who then tries to explain to me what the provider needs to do in order to get payment. I am not the one who needs this information. I am not billing them. I don’t care what the provider needs to do, the provider does. At this point I suggest that the insurance company calls the provider to explain. This is usually greeted with mumbles and vague promises to contact the provider. Speaking from personal experience this rarely happens.

Because the insurance company has provided me with some useful information that might help the provider get their money, I try to pass that on to the provider the best I can with the suggestion that they themselves might themselves call the insurance company to ensure I have my information straight. More mumbles and more promises. Speaking from personal experience this rarely happens. I know I repeat myself.

The good news is I have came up with a new strategy that sometimes works. I don’t pay the bill and you know the provider and the insurance company seem to find a resolution without involving me. It sometimes takes awhile but they eventually work it out without me paying a thing or becoming the middle man.

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This might be the man in me, which despite being gay that ugly male chromosome sometimes rears its ugly head causing me to have typical heterosexual male sentiments, but I am trying to understand Melissa Garner Lee’s anger with her husband over missing the Taylor Swift Travis Kelce Wedding. Lee’s husband had worked with Taylor Swift once in the past — this is her only connection with the happy couple which, speaking as a totally neutral outside observer seems, at best, really tenuous. So she basically wants to ride her husband’s coattails as a plus one to a wedding that he, apparently, isn’t too driven to attend.

This is why she is angry with her husband? He may have ignored an invitation to the wedding of the century. He saw something in his email queue with a subject like Taylor Swift’s wedding. He thought it was spam, didn’t even open it and deleted it. Crime of the fucking century that is.

First, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, what kind of crass mother fucker sends wedding invitations through email. PLEASE. Taylor Swift. Wedding of the Century. I just don’t think Swift’s the type of woman to send email wedding invitations. If I were her husband I would have been suspicious too and would have deleted it as spam without giving it a second thought.

And, if it was an invitation from Swift, who would want to go to a wedding from such a crass mother fucker. Amy Vanderbilt must have rolled in her grave and I would have been right there helping to spin her coffin. Call me old fashioned but if you don’t have enough class to spend a first class postage invitation through the US mail, I am not coming to your wedding with an electric toaster in hand. This is where I am afraid I draw the line as any self-respecting person would.

Then, did I mention, her tenuous connection? She barely knows the bride and has never met the groom. I am surprised that she was on the list at all. This would be reason enough for me to ignore the invitation. I really don’t know them that that well to feel comfortable sharing such an intimate moment. I have not attended weddings of people who I knew better than this and I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.

No. No. You are missing the point. It is the wedding of the century. So what? Your claim to fame is that I was a plus one at the wedding of the century? Give me a fucking break. More troubling, is Lee is a psychotherapist. Talk about over reacting. I mean if I got a wedding invitation from someone who I worked for many years ago and that my partner knew even less, the idea that I would even bring it up with my partner in the first place is a bit of stretch. That my partner would get mad about this missed opportunity would leave me a bit baffled. Why am I getting so much grief over this?

But it is the wedding of the century. I heard you the first time and I repeat so what? I can think of a lot better ways to spend my weekend that watching two strangers get married in front of thousands of other people on a hot July day in New York — just so you can say you attended. I was fucking there and you weren’t. So take that. I don’t know about your psychotherapist but this would certainly make me one think twice before laying down on her office couch and telling her my problems.

Lee does seem to come to her senses at the end of her piece but not before making her husband feel bad enough to apologize to her for not understanding how important going to the wedding of the century might be for her. He apologized to her! If anyone deserves an apology here it is the poor husband who suffers through his wife’s over reaction to missing a stranger’s wedding.

Get a grip lady because the world has much bigger disappointments coming your way.

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Five years back, my partner and I bought a Kia Sportage. It was a smart car — which means, in our case, it has an internal computer system that will tell you when something is wrong with the car. The sales man’s pitch was that the Kia computer network would also see any of these warnings and all we would have to do is take the car in and they could take care of it. Sold.

So a week or so back, our Sportage computer system told us that our front headlight was malfunctioning. Bob took a look and sure enough one of the lights was out. He made an appointment with the service department and this is where things get a little weird.

Keep in mind all that needs to be done is change the headlight. This is a task that in my younger days I could actually perform. Yes, a gay man without any interest in cars whatsoever, changed an automobile headlight. It wasn’t easy because nothing mechanical is easy for me. It took me a few minutes to figure it out, a mistake here and there, but I was able to do it in under an hours time.

Now days, I try not to waste my hours figuring shit out when I can pay someone to do it. They will probably take a few minutes as opposed to my hour. We gladly turned it over to the Kia Service Department.

Well, it wasn’t as quick a task as we thought. Indeed it was, at least, a two day process. First we had to bring the car in so that Kia’s mechanics could determine what the problem was. Wait. The computer system warned us. Bob visually confirmed it. Couldn’t a mechanic just do the same thing?

Apparently not. The mechanic had to inspect it first to see if the computer was right. OK. That makes sense, but once the inspection was completed, why do we have to come back another day. Because they would have to order the part. A headlight? Keep in mind this is a huge sales and service center that runs across two blocks and multiple buildings. If we were looking to replace say an engine, yes by all means, get the part, but a headlight why wouldn’t they have that in store or, at the least, call a Kia parts store in the city and get the headlight the same day. But no, we were assured it would definitely be a two day process.

Bob takes the car in and the mechanic confirms what Bob saw and the car’s internal computer system warned us about — the headlight was burned out. The mechanic also helpfully informed us of an array of other tasks that the service department might perform. None of them were particularly urgent and we didn’t ask him to investigate in the first place. Thanks but no thanks.

The mechanic would order the part and let us know when it came in. Wait, this should take 24 hours right? Not necessarily. There might not be a Kia headlight in all of San Diego county — the 8 largest metropolitan area in the United States sitting a short drive away from the 2nd largest metropolitan area in the United States. But OK, we will wait for the call.

Forty-eight hours later Bob had an appointment. Bright and early one morning, he took the car again and asked if he could just wait for them to fix because surely putting on a headlight is a pretty quick fix and would require very little time to implement. Bob was then informed that no it wouldn’t be a quick fix and he should return home because they would have to take off the bumper in order to replace the headlight.

What? Now this seems like a major technological faux pas. Why would you create a car where a relatively simple task like changing a headlamp requires the removal of a bumper? Particularly when the cars of yesteryear had already mastered this particular design. Why would you make something that was so easy to do in the 20th Century so difficult to do in the 21st Century? The technician, of course, didn’t design the car so, of course, Bob left the car and waited for his call.

And waited and waited and waited. It was mid-afternoon and Bob was getting concerned about the delay. He, called the technician to check on the delay. The mechanic informed him that the car wouldn’t be available until late afternoon at the earliest. Indeed the car still hadn’t been worked on. A headlight. We agreed to pick it up the next day.

The good news was the headlight was under warranty and we didn’t have to pay but this seems like a lot of hassle to replace something so basic as a headlight.

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All I wanted to know is if I paid my Macy’s bill. Pretty simple right. Wrong.

This should be a quick look at the online Macy’s site. Except, for some reason, my browser no longer seems compatible with Macy’s credit card payment information even though it will still show me all the marvelous things I can buy at Macy’s – page after page of sale items but every time I depress the credit card history link — a spinning hourglass. OK. No problem. I will just go to another browser.

The new browser doesn’t have my saved password and user ID. I can, however, see all the marvelous things I can buy at Macy’s but my personal profile which would lead me to my payment information is off limits. OK. A bit of a problem because I rarely use my Macy’s credit card and I don’t have the user ID and password memorized. Contrary to all security recommendations, but absolutely essential because there is no way I can remember all the password and user ID’s I have, I locate these details in a separate Word document.

I attempt to log in. Except the password and user ID don’t match Macy’s records. OK. Maybe I made a typo. I try again. No luck. What to do?

I go back to the old browser that will allow me to log in but will not display my payment history. I go to the log in screen. My password doesn’t display but I can see my user ID but not my password. Now I have one out of two items I need. The password is hidden by *. I can however count the number of * and from that I deduce the correct password. Bingo.

I am in except I can only see the marvelous things I can buy and not the actual amount I owe on my credit card. I eventually, after randomly depressing every link I can find, stumble across the credit card history page. Success.

I paid my bill.

This all could have been handled with a quick phone call to customer service but, as we all know, there is no such think as a quick phone call to customer service. A phone tree will answer with numerous questions about why I would like to talk to customer service and, while I am on hold, frequent reminders that this could all be handled much more quickly if I used the online site. Some of the time, this is true. This wasn’t one of them.

If I can use the online system, I will use the online system. But, sometimes it is easier for me to just talk to someone. The problem isn’t easily routed through phone tree analytics. So, if I am calling, I really need to talk to someone. Any one would do. Just let me talk to someone. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top. It will take them seconds to understand what I want and give me a reply.