Wolf Blitzer Annoyed Me

I was in the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Wolf got on my nerves.

Wolf was carrying on about new guidelines on how frequently younger women need Pap smears. He had a public health expert on from Columbia University. Wolf asked if this was the beginning of rationing health care. The woman patiently explained these guidelines came from science-based evidence.

But Wolf would not listen! Just this week, there were new recommendations for mammograms, Wolf said, people think this sounds like rationing health care. Of course, it is not, and that is just what the expert said. But it seems like rationing, Wolf whined. The woman said the history of medicine is rife with people not understanding new practices, like hand washing or how TB is spread and it is important for people to know that this has nothing to do with rationing.

"Well," Wolf sighed, "we're not going to solve this here. Thank you for being with us."

I wish that expert had said, "Hold up! Don't you dare cut to commercial! What part of 'this is not rationing' don't you understand, Wolf? You are supposed to be a journalist! Why aren't you listening to the words that are coming out of my mouth?" But she didn't.

Stupidity. Just stupidity.

Rocky and Me

I always tell the Lord, if He wants to get some norepinephrine coursing through my brain, He needs to let me win the lottery. Or at least have Chewitel Ejiofor fall in love with me. Yesterday morning, He chose a raccoon.

I opened the door and there was a big furry thing sleeping like I had just walked into his bedroom. I put two and two together and figured this was wear the poo on my welcome mat came from last week. I called my landlord, who listens to Rush Limbaugh:

Me: I think there's a raccoon at my back door.

Landlord: I don't see how.

Me: No, really. I didn't get a good look, but it was big and too long-haired to be a dog. Maybe it's staying up on the roof.

LL: That's not possible.

Me: Well, why would it climb three flights of stairs just to sit outside my door?

LL: Are you leaving trash out side?

Me: No.

LL: Well, it must smell food.

Me: It must.

LL: Maybe it's some of that Southern cooking of yours.

Me: I haven't cooked in ages. I've been eating Middle Eastern food of late.

LL: Maybe it's a terrorist raccoon.

SMH.

I came home after work and opened the back door. Rocky the Raccoon reared up and I shut the door. I've got Fran to think of. One of my co-workers told me "predator urine" would do the trick. That sounds like something from Dateline NBC, but you can get it from a sportings good store, he said. It even comes in pellets. But since I am not the owner of this building, shouldn't my landlord get it? Or at least call Animal Control?

Well, at least I don't feel gray.

Sad World

Dag.

The World Health Organization predicts that in 20 years, more people will be affected by depression than any other health problem. Good thing the world is gonna end in 2012.

Seriously, that's deep, because depression is so poorly understood. I have the damn disease and when I'm in the throes of it, I don't know how to manage it. I was outside smoking at work and--the only way I can describe it--I had a gray consciousness. I just wasn't. I have the legal right to take two days off when I get like this, per my shrink's prescription, but I caught myself worrying about taking the days so close to the weekend and Thanksgiving break. I can't get to the gym. I'm tired. I'm just gray.

I'm in the richest country in the world and the only thing anyone can think to tell me is to up my dosage of Cymbalta. WHO says depression is going to be a serious problem in developing countries that don't have the means to treat depression. Add to that, people don't understand depression here in the U.S. and start to get frustrated with the depressed--"snap out of it!" "cheer up!" "quit whining!" Imagine hearing that in Zulu.

I think I am going to check out Andrew Weil's holistic stuff. Vitamin D is supposed to help and I have been taking that through Ben & Jerry's. I'm gonna get a massage, too.

China Popping That Yang

Communism must make you batshit crazy. China ain't got no sense.

Most of what I know about China and Tibet, I learned from Martin Scorsese's move, "Kundun," and reading a couple of biographies of the Dalai Lama, which is why it's a good thing I'm not Secretary of State. As I understand it, China invaded Tibet in 1950 or so, and started knocking down monasteries, committing atrocities (nuns and monks forced to fornicate in the street, children forced to kill their parents), and destroying centuries of Tibetan culture. The Dalai Lama fled to India and set up a government in exile.

I was a little disappointed in Barack for not meeting with His Holiness when he was in D.C. this past fall. But Barack is all ju-jitsu about things and I hoped he had some plan. I was glad Barack brought up Tibet and talks between the Dalai Lama and China during his trip, although he wasn't too forceful about it.

Anyhoo, Qin Gang, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told Barack that, as a Black president who admired Abraham Lincoln, he should be sensitive to the Tibetan people's "slavery" under the Dalai Lama and side with China in the matter. Qin Gang equated the Communist Party of China with Lincoln, as they "freed" the Tibetan people.

How you gonna call the Dalai Lama a slave master? The fact that Barack is not the descendant of slaves must have also escaped Qin Gang. And it's offensive to link my president's skin color with his policy decisions.

SMH.

Mea Culpa

I was in Marc's yesterday. I saw a Black man, about 40, handing in an application for a job. Immediately, my mind did what it do, "Grown-ass man, trying to be a stock boy--Black men ain't—" then I heard him speak. He had the thick speech of someone who had had a brain injury. The crooked smile he gave me suggested he had had a stroke. As he begged the cashier to get his application to the manager, I felt all the shame I should have.

I bring this up, not just to do blog penance, but because of all the hand-wringing I'm reading in the papers about the Anthony Sowell and the Imperial Street murders. Columnist Phillip Morris writes: "Eleven women died horrible deaths...a city, and far too many families, failed to miss them." Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Connie Schultz pleads --with far too much guilelessness to be a U.S. Senator's wife--for surviving victims of Sowell to come forward and call the Cleveland Rape Crisis hotline.

These articles irritate me. I agree with the columnists that we, as a society, failed these women; I think that we failed Sowell, too. But I don't think the horror of Sowell being able to kill Black women for years without detection has changed us. First of all, Nidal Hasan came along and stole Sowell's thunder by killing more people in a shorter amount of time, with a hint of Middle Eastern mayhem to boot.

As Sowell's rape and murder spree fades into part of the Cleveland's new normal, I still see people treating people like they're expendable. I have been in Black Baptist churches and seen women in big, bright hats cover their noses or smirk when a disheveled woman in dingy clothes sits near them. I was in a local high school yesterday and heard a security guard talk to a Black child--a child-- like she was a felon-in-the-making. I myself looked at a Black man looking for work like he was another trifling brother.

And that's just how Black people treat each other; I haven't even mentioned the people I know with BMWs and elite zip codes who get their hackles up about how welfare mothers, non-documented workers, and health care reform are all about undesirables living it up on their tax dollars.

The minute I stop looking at another person as a child of God or a sentient being, and start seeing them as a social burden, I help create the environment in which a mentally ill man can rape, murder, and hide bodies and nobody notices.

Damn.

Credit Card Companies Are Evil

Oh, hail no!

My credit card company decreased my limit! They didn't even tell me. OK, they might have, but I don't open letters from them because I pay them on line. I just figured they were sending a thank-you note for me being such a dutiful customer.

I called them to see what had happened. Of course, the customer service gal did not know and read some statement about how the bank had reviewed my account and decided to decrease my limit. She said I could call TransEquifax or whatever and see what was what. Have you ever tried to call a credit report company? It is humanly impossible. I tried to press the key for vision impaired to see if I could get a live human being, but you have to have some special code.

I did more than just pay them on time and more than the minimum payment--I bailed them out! And this is how they repay me? SMH.

I cut 'em up. All of them. I'm downright frugal (again). I'ma start watching Suze Orman.

PMSBuddy

I need this. To remind my damn self when I get persnickety.

PMSBuddy is a free on-line service that sends you an e mail (they're on Facebook and have an iPhone app, too--yes, there's an app for this!) when the lady in your life is entering the zone of crazy.

Of course, it's designed to help men be more sensitive to their woman's "ladies' days" (lots of ads for flowers and chocolate), but I think women can use it, too. You know how once a month you can't stand your best friend? You think she think she cute. You wonder how you became friends with such a bitch. You want to fight her in her face. PMSBuddy will remind you that both of you are PMSing.

I'm signing up right now.