Let the Light Shine In!!

You don’t realize how much you miss sunlight until you don’t have it for a week or two. I don’t know how the folks in England and Seattle do it. The sun is out and shining bright here for the first time in a little over a week. It’s funny how the weather affects your mood. Fall has come bringing with it lower than normal temperatures, dark clouds, and some rain to top things off. All this nasty weather has made me a Gloomy Gus. But the sun is out now and my mood is brightening already. I love the sun. I love the sunshine. Welcome back sun. You’ve been greatly missed.

That Tingly Feeling

I voted yesterday. This was my third time voting since I reached the legal voting age and the first time I’ve voted in an off-year election. I got that tingly feeling when I stepped in the booth and realized that I was about to exercise my constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. It put a smile on my face. It made me feel as if I had been entrusted with a great responsibility. I read over the ballot and then read it again to make sure I was reading it right. Then I pressed the buttons corresponding to the folks I wanted to vote for. I felt a bit weird cause I only knew or was able to find information on the candidates in the major races. Governor, Senate, etc. There were several races on the ballot that I had never heard of. I hadn’t ever seen those folks’ names anywhere. Not on a sign. Not in a commercial. Not anywhere. So in those instances, I just picked the name I thought sounded the coolest. I know that’s silly but what else could I do?

The privilege and responsibility that comes with voting hit me as I was leaving the voting station. I realized that I had exercised a right that my Grandmother in her 90 + years hadn’t always been able to freely exercise. It’s a right that some people in other countries will never be able to exercise. I think I grew up a little bit in the voting booth last night. That’s a good realization to have come to. It feels nice. I may be turning into a mature adult after all.

America Has Spoken

America has spoken and frankly what was said is very frightening. From all appearances and reports, the Republicans now control the Congress and the White House. That occurrence does not seem like a good thing to this humble observer. The government/political system in this country has built in checks and balances that are supposed to help keep things on an even keel. The Legislative, Judicial, and Executive Branches were established and endowed with certain powers by the “Founding Fathers” that are supposed facilitate the smooth operation of our country while not allowing any one branch to obtain too much power. The Congress For Kids website breaks it down in nice, simple, easy to understand terms.

“Representatives of the Constitutional Convention first determined which powers would be given to the federal government. They needed to decide how these powers would be divided. They did not want these powers to be controlled by just one man or one group. The representatives were afraid that if a small group received too much power, the United States would be under the rule of another dictator or tyrant.

To avoid the risk of dictatorship or tyranny, the group divided the new government into three parts, or branches…”

We’re nowhere near falling under a dictatorship or tyranny but having one political party control two out of the three branches is a bit unsettling. It’s unsettling because it upsets the balance of power. Some will argue that this is a good thing because it will make the bi-partisan bickering and gridlock that has almost crippled our government for many years less of a road block to getting things done. If that truly does happen, which is a BIG if, then that will be a definite positive. But these are politicians we’re talking about here. They’d argue that the sky is green if one of their peers said it was blue on simple principle. The Republican controlled Congress and White house had better use this 2-year love fest they’ve been granted by THE PEOPLE to actually get some things accomplished. There can’t be any excuses now. The President can’t argue that he’s unable to get his legislation passed because of a Democrat controlled Senate or House that opposes him at every turn. They’re either going to do some good and get the country (foreign policy, economy, domestic policy, etc.) turned around and headed in the right direction or fall flat on their face. This Independent voter is going to sit back, cross his arms, and watch the festivities. Hopefully the country won’t be harmed by our collective decision put this one party in power. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Doctors

Doctors really have a great racket going. You get to sit in their lovely waiting area for 25-40 minutes watching the paint dry. Or you can read the magazines that were old two months ago. Then you finally get called back in the back where you get weighed and then seated in an exam room. Once in the exam room you proceed to wait for another 10-20 minutes. Finally, roughly 50 minutes after your appointment time, the doctor walks in. You exchange pleasantries, he listens to you breath a bit, feels your belly and says see you in six months. Roughly 4 minutes work for a 15 dollar co-pay + whatever he charges the insurance company per office visit. Great racket. I suppose they feel it’s their right after enduring 8+ years of medical school, residency, etc. to work as little as humanly possible once they’ve got their own practice and that sheep skin on the wall that says that they’re real doctors. What a crock. Great racket, Docs. Great racket. I wish I could find a money making racket as brilliant you yours.

Needless to say I just got back from a doctor’s appointment. Complete waste of time. Everything we did there could have been done over the phone. The following is a complete transcript of my conversation/ “visit” with “my” doctor:

How are you breathing? Fine. Good. You feeling okay? Yeah Doc, I feel great. I see here that last time I saw you, you were complaining of knee pain. How’s that going? It’s fine. I’m wearing a knee brac… (interupting me). So do you need an prescriptions filled? I think everything is okay. Okay well, good to see you. We’ll see you in six months.
Heck I think he’s got an email address. We could have just exchanged this information via email and been done with it. I could send him my co-pay via Paypal. I waited so long to see him that I forgot to mention the concerns I wanted to bring up to him. Oh well. I guess I’ll just save those until my next appointment. The receptionist was kind enough to go ahead and schedule that for me. It’s in April. I can’t wait. Oh yeah, and as I’m leaving the office, the doctor puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “You should try to lose some weight.” Yeah I’m working on that. Thanks. See you in April.

Uh….. (Can’t think of a catchy title today)

Quick entry to get my feet wet again. It’s been a while. (I know the ‘experts’ say that blogging rule number one is not to write about not writing but…. forget them it’s my blog.) Rachel made a recent post about The Ring. Thanks Rachel it was very informative. When I first saw the trailer I got the feeling that that movie looked very familiar. Sitting here at work one day I realized where I knew it from. I made the comment to my co-workers that the plot of The Ring seemed to be ripped directly out of a Japanese movie I had seen several summers ago back home in Okinawa. James, who’s way more media savvy than I (if that’s even possible) told me that I was correct. Neither of us could remember the name of the original film but according to several sources he read including aintitcoolnews.com that was indeed the case.

The Ring looks rather corny based on the trailers I’ve seen. But then again I don’t really go for that type of movie anyway. The original seems much better to me. It was made on a much lower budget and it definitely shows. That movie shows, as has been proven time and time again, that you don’t need a big budget to produce a powerful piece of filmmaking. It was done completely in Japanese. (Duh!! Of course it was.) I would have understood what they were saying a little better if the characters had talked slower. Alas they were talking at regular Japanese conversational speed, which was way too fast for me. The great thing about it though was I really didn’t need to understand the dialogue to understand the movie. The visuals were so powerful and striking that I was able to follow along with the story pretty much without translation. That’s powerful filmmaking in my opinion.

Obviously I’m a bit biased since in haven’t seen the new version of The Ring. I’ll have to go see The Ring before I can truly pass judgment. My enjoyment of the original probably has to do with the fact that I watched it with Japanese friends who translated all the parts that I didn’t pick up. Did I mention it was a bunch of girls too? They thought it was so cute how I tried to translate things using my feeble Japanese skills. I found it cute how they were helping me with the translation with their meager English skills. Skills, which I must say, that were better than my Japanese skills.

The movie was downright eerie. It wasn’t slasher film scary though. It was more of a really, really disturbing kind of scary. I’ll do some research and see if I can dig up the name of the original film. Maybe when The Ring comes out on DVD, I’ll rent both and try to do a side-by-side comparison to see which one I truly like better. I’m definitely not going to spend my hard earned $7.50 to see The Ring. That must be saved for no plot, all action films like The Transporter and the new, budget is no object Bond flick, Die Another Day.