Social Observations: September 2004 Archives

Hi *waves*. It's 4:45 in the morning and guess where I'm going. Have you gueesed? Well you're wrong. I'm actually going to the county clinic so I can keep from getting sued by the county over medical costs.

They call it health issurance, but it's not really health inssurance as much as letting them know that I have no money therefore I cannot afford to pay for even the most basic of medical care. It's quite depressing really, but I have to do it in order to get my zoloft and progesterone, which I need in order to live.

Yeah, it should be pretty fun. Standing out in the early morning twilight with the rest of the poor people, waiting for the clinic to open at 8:00am in hopes of getting one of those little pieces of paper with a number on it saying we can see the county worker today. Then it's another 3 hour wait until our number is called. Often they take you into one of those depressing rooms and ask you to pull out your ever monuting county medical bill (mine is up to about $300 now), so that they can take pity on you and give you a 6 month wavier to get discounted medical care.

If only we had socialized heathcare in this country. You'd think that everyone having a very basic need ( such as healthcare) without worry would be important, but it's not. Why, do you ask? Because in this country we worship one thing... MONEY. Fuck everything else. If you can't make money off it, it's not worthy of your time. And even if you do have health issurance, unless you're rich or have a kick ass job that actually cares if their employees live or die, you get a shitty plan that makes you take out a second mortage on your house, and you have to deal with doctors that get paid bonuses not to treat you, as well as companies who'd rather wait out your illness until you die from it than treat you for it, or better yet, use preventive medicine so you don't get it. You see, waiting you out is much cheaper than actually helping you get better.

Yes, my lack of zoloft is starting to catch up with me... as you can tell. I'm just disgusted with the world right now. There's so much injustice. There are more things wrong then there are right and that's sad. I guess it's just human nature. We live to kill each other.

Hi *waves*. Am I enjoying my weekend off? Why yes, yes I am. I gave my shift to a co-worker on friday so I could go to the Long Beach Harvest Festival with my Mom and my aunt Ellene. Okay, she's not really my aunt, but she's my moms best friend and I've known her since I was knee high to a grasshopper, so I think of her as family.

The Harvest Festival was fun. I bought these incredible prints of charcol drawings by this Japanese artist. He specializes in celebrities and he's fucking brilliant. He does these insanely detailed charcols. It's like he's taken a picture with his mind. I bought 2 prints of Audrey Hepburn and 1 of Katherine Hepburn. All his stuff is in black and white, so it goes with my room perfectly. I also have a huge Breakfast at Tiffany's print over my comp, so the Audrey Hepburn stuff goes with that.

I also bought two of the most yummy carmel apples I've ever had. They are huge and covered with pecans and almonds. Those type of carmel apples usually go for like 30 bucks in a specailty chocolate shop, but she was selling them for $8 bucks a pop. Fantastic.

Overall, I had fun and didn't regret one bit giving away that shift. It was nice to get away from the job from hell for a while. I'm just going to relax for the rest of the weekend. Just chill.

I also saw an interesting thing while driving to dinner after the Festival. Two Mexican kids were walking down the street. A cop was driving by, saw them, backed up his car, jumped out and yelled for the kids to put there hands up. He shoved them up against the hood of his car and started patting them down.

Now, from what I could see, these kids weren't doing anything but minding their own business. The were just hanging out in Downtown Long Beach on a friday night, probably going to see a movie or something. They weren't doing anything that should cause a cop to back up in the middle of traffic and start patting them down.

Both me, my mom, and Ellene were looking at this like "what the fuck?". But that's the way cops are in Long Beach. People may think this city is the hood, but it's the land of rich white people. In fact, the only gang around here wears navy blue and calls themselves the LBPD. It sucks that in your own city you have to be concerned about walking while black or mexican or asian... whatever. It makes me sick.

Anyway, I gotta go get back to work on Matt-Czuchry.Com. Yeah, I've finally started working on it again. I gotta get that site up and running soon.

Peace and Love.