Just a few comments about the economy, news and problems with doctors.
Archives for September 2008
He Should Have Used a Mohel
Talk about a routine circumcision gone bad. This story makes me cross my legs. But I have to ask why the man was put under for the procedure.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Shelby County man and his wife said two doctors amputated the man’s penis without his consent, and have filed a lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Philip Seaton, 61, went to have a circumcision last October as part of treatment for a medical condition. Seaton said when he woke up from the procedure, he realized his penis had been amputated.
If you read the full story you’ll see that the doctors say that they cound cancer and made an emergency decision to remove his penis. The next line in the article just kills me: ”
“The lawsuit states that Patterson received consent to perform a circumcision and only a circumcision, and that Seaton did not consent to his penis being removed.” (emphasis mine)
You think. Talk about waking up to a nightmare. I am not saying that to be cute or clever. I have read stories before about medical mishaps and why sometimes the pre-surgery routine includes labeling which body part to remove. But you’d think that in this case they wouln’t need to use a Sharpie to let the doc know what to cut and what to save.
Related Story: Man Goes to Court After Butt Stapled Shut
Goodbye Washington Mutual
My grandparents told me many stories about what their lives were like during The Depression and how lucky my siblings and I were not to have to worry about living through such a time. I always enjoyed listening to their stories about their childhood and can remember being really impressed at how they overcame hardship.
Sometimes I wondered what it was like to live like that. It piqued my curiosity, but it would be an exaggeration to say that I really wanted to find out. It is like so many other questions people ask themselves, “what would I do if I witnessed a bank robbery. Would I try and be the hero or would I freeze?”
Most of the time the honest answer is that you do not want to know. On the anniversary of 9-11 a friend looked at me and said that he was confident that we would have fought the hijackers. I think that I would have. If my family was threatened I haven’t any doubt that I would hesitate to maim, disable and or kill the person(s) who were doing it. But I never want to find out. I am ok not knowing the answer.
So it was with much anger that I read about Washington Mutual.
“NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — JPMorgan Chase acquired the banking assets of Washington Mutual late Thursday after the troubled thrift was seized by federal regulators, marking the biggest bank failure in the nation’s history and the latest stunning twist in the ongoing credit crisis.
Under the deal, JPMorgan Chase will acquire all the banking operations of WaMu, including $307 billion in assets and $188 billion in deposits.
In exchange, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) will pay approximately $1.9 billion to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Separately, JPMorgan announced plans to raise $8 billion in additional capital through the sale of stock as part of the deal.”
Until this afternoon Wamu was my bank, not to mention that I had their stock in my retirement savings. It wasn’t a huge investment, but that is not the point. Part of the reason that I held their shares was that because I believed that it was a safe investment that would help me maintain a diversified portfolio.
Look, I am 39 years-old and have young children, I am not planning on retiring anytime soon. But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like some really stupid people robbed me of my hard earned cash.
As I watch these institutions crumble around me, as I listen to commentators discuss how the government is going to bail us all out, and try to save the country from economic ruin I just shake my head.
I understand risk. By nature I am a gambler. I have always been willing to take risks on various enterprises. Sometimes I roll snake eyes and have to make do, but other times I win. Still, I don’t gamble on everything. There are somethings that I am very conservative about. There are areas in which I don’t screw around. That is why I didn’t pull all my eggs in one basket.
But what ticks me off more than anything else about all of this is knowing how there are executives who failed miserably but are receiving incredibly large sums of money for their failure. There are compensation packages that pay far too much to people who screwed others.
Life isn’t fair and it never will be. But that doesn’t make it any less bitter to lose the money. It doesn’t ease the sting of knowing how all of my hard work was for nothing.
I am bitter and angry. I’ll recover. I’ll find a way to get back on my feet. I always do. I’ll find a way to make it all work because I do. But I won’t forget this.
Like I said, I have been curious what life was like during The Depression, but I never wanted to know. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect to be living on the street. I am not concerned about being able to feed my children, but it is going to be rough around the Shack for a while.
It is one thing to accept that because I did something. It is one thing to accept because of the choices I made, it is quite another to be forced to because some jackasses couldn’t pull their heads out of their collective asses long enough to see that they were driving the bus off the cliff.
Why A Schedule is Important
Not unlike many people I am in search of that fabled state of balance. You know the one that I am talking about, that place where I feel fulfilled in all areas of my life. There have been moments in life in which I feel like I have had it, but they seem to be few and far between.
I have these memories of the lazy days of summer in which my responsibilities included going to the beach, chasing girls and just hanging out with the boys. I was poor, but relatively happy, most of the time. Every now and then I’d find myself wishing that I was out school and making money.
Oh, did I mention that in this fantasy it never occurred to me that I’d spend all day at the office and then come home and tear my hair out trying to figure out how to take care of household chores and errands. At least I don’t really remember thinking about it, maybe I did.
What I do know is that when I entered the workforce I began to have fantasies about being independently wealthy so that I could do whatever I wanted. I craved having entire days to myself to do nothing. And that leads to my comment about why a schedule is important.
In the decades since I left school I have upon occasion found myself out of work for periods of time. Initially I was always excited to have the time to myself that I had been thinking. But I quickly learned that having nothing to do everyday was a terrible way to spend time. Boredom and I don’t mix well, it is a recipe for trouble.
During my school days you could always find someone to hang out with. We weren’t in class all day long and even if we were, it was easy to play hooky. Not true in the working world. You only received so much sick/vacation time so you were careful about how to use it. So in those in between jobs moments I found out that most of the time I was on my own for the day.
It is not a bad thing, but like I said it can get old relatively quickly.
More to the point I found that if I didn’t adhere to some sort of schedule I didn’t get much done. I couldn’t stay up all night and sleep in all day. If I took too long to shower and eat breakfast I’d find that half the day had escaped.
So in the end I learned that for me a schedule is very important. If I don’t block off time for specific goals I just don’t get them done as quickly as I’d like.
Of course I am not as anal about it as The Shmata Queen. I don’t use a planner to map out every minute of the day nor do I take copious amounts of time to develop a list of groceries. My lord, you have never someone take so much pleasure in crossing off items as they are completed.
Hee hee. Excuse me, I need to go and duck and cover before I get smacked in the head.
Search Terms That Led You Here
Every now and then I like to put together a post that shows the keywords that led you here. This time around I am going to include the keywords and what post they led to.
Now that I see some of these old posts I find myself cringing, oy.
Taking stock of life-Taking Stock of Life- A General Accounting
Meaning bras-Bras That Do Tricks
Upset shoppers “happy holidays”-Happy Holidays is An Appropriate Greeting
what does it feel like to die-What Does It Feel Like To Die
men’s emotions-Men, Our Emotions and Dating
significance of crotch-“Crotch Durability Problems”
fortune smiles upon me-Fortune Smiles Upon me- Someone Else Wants to Make Me Rich
how to bless telemarketer-More Fun with Telemarketers
things to do in an elevator- Things to Do In An Elevator
if you could read my mind lyrics meaning-A Story Using Song Lyrics Revisited Continued
meaning of penis-She Broke My Penis
Using The Blog to Make Money
My Right Word deserves credit for tipping me off to this report about blogging which says that there are more than a million blog posts a day. Here in the U.S. more than 77 million people a day visit blogs.
“Blogging has certainly “arrivedâ€, said Technorati’s chief executive Richard Jalichandra, via VentureBeat. “Blogs are media. That is the difference now. They are as relevant as the
New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. The blogger with 5,000 readers may be just as credible a source of information for those 5,000 people as anyone else.â€And how many unique readers does it take to make serious money out of a blog? According to Technorati’s report, a blogger can earn around $75,000 a year with a unique audience of 100,000. The mean annual revenue from blogging, however, is somewhat more sobering at just $6,000
which isn’t too bad when annual investment in a blog costs, on average, $1,800.”
Obviously most bloggers are not making anywhere close to $75K a year, but the point is that you can and that is part of what interests me. For those of you who are rolling your eyes in disbelief let’s talk about advertising for a moment and how you can obtain some of those ad dollars.
Advertisers are interested in eyeballs. They want to find the most cost effective manner to distribute their message. Blogs can be an excellent venue for doing this. Here is a rough draft of how to do it:
1) Pick a topic and start populating your blog with content related to said topic.
2) Build up a readership. Comments can be used as an effective tool to demonstrate audience interest and awareness.
3) Use tools to develop an audience profile that you can present to prospective advertisers.
4) Sell ads, make money, retire. Don’t forget to send old Jack a couple of bucks as a
thank you.
Clearly that is a very rough outline and you can safely assume that it will require hard work to make your blog into a real money maker. But the real point is that it is possible. Not possible in the sense of “it is possible that one day I might take a rocket ship into outer space.”
No this is possible in the sense of “if I save money I can take a vacation.” Simply put, it can be done. So what are you waiting for.