Less two teeth and my faith in mankind

I had my #1 and #16 teeth removed earlier today or my top 2 wisdom teeth. Can't say I was unhappy to see them go. About two weeks ago my father called and asked how long it had been since I had gone to the see the dentist. I admitted it had been a while and said I would schedule an appointment. About 2 hours after he called my wisdom teeth started to cause a pain so great I won't flounder around in trying to accurately describe it. For the next week or more I spent a great deal, if not all of the day self medicating myself with liquor store remedies. I went into the Dr's and they pulled them and it was not unpleasant at all. The staff was really nice and the doctor called me (that's right, he called me, on the phone) to see how I was doing later that day. My advice to you, reader, is to get your wisdom teeth out before they hurt if you have health care.

I don;t have health care so I paid $790 to remove 2 teeth, and be put to sleep for the operation. My teeth had fully grown in so they were easier to remove than most. before I went to the dentist I was in pain and Katie found a website full of home tooth remedies. HERE It is really quite sad the lengths people must go to because they are in such pain (and tooth aches are debilitating) and can't afford treatment. If they only had some sort of preventative measures in place they would never get to such a state. I'm lucky- I have no family so I just charge that shit.

Speaking on the subject of health care, the Wal-Mart bastards have given on a bit and offered their employees better health care. Here's a bit from the NY Times article
Starting
Jan. 1, Wal-Mart’s insurance will look a lot like that offered by many other American companies, but with some twists that even longtime critics described as innovative. Independent experts praised several features of the plan and said it could represent a turning point for the retailer, the nation’s largest private employer.

And Hillary Clinton is the leading receiver of campaign contributions from health care organizations. Does this mean she's a sell out on her ideas of health care reform or has she learned to play the game? an MSNBC article touches on the fact that she is the front runner for the presidency, plain and simple. So Health care wants to give money to anyone on either side of the issue even her. Going into 2008 the GOP has fucked up so bad the democrats could get any candidate they put up elected. As long as they seem to not have had a recent frontal lobotomy. I hope sincerely that if Clinton is elected into the White House (that will make 2 families over at least 5 terms, isn't that odd to anyone?) that she has learned to slowly make strides towards socialized medicine. That's a pretty rough job in a country as numb-skulled as ours. We've been bred to believe socialism is communism and we still believe that the world is out to get us for no good reason at all. Come on folks. The argument that one of my friends makes is that you can't trust the government with your health care. If we can't trust our government with our health care than we can only blame ourselves because their our elected officials and our complacency that has let charlatans like our current administration run wild. We should trust that our government will be there to help us and make this a better place to live. Not that we need to work against them.

I tried to find this anti-hillary health care spot I read about that ran in 1997 and scared the shit out of people and away from the Clinton health reforms of that era. I wanna see that if anyone can dig it up.

I'm reading Dashiell Hammett's 5 novels at the moment. I'm on #2 The Dain Curse I read Red Harvest a couple weeks ago. Red Harvest has been remade into so many films (notably Yojimbo and A Fistfull of Dollars- Miller's Crossing has many elements of it too and the Coen's title Blood Simple comes right out of the mouth of the lead character in the book. He's talking about leaving town before he goes all 'blood-simple' like everyone else. Or everyone but him was finding the easiest way out of a situation was killing)
The language and characters in these stories are amazing, and wow, talk about a misanthrope. This guy has no faith in anyone, and I love that in these stories. He has the Thomas Hobbes outlook on the world- that is all people are motivated solely by selfish concerns especially fear of death. Noone can be trusted to not be selfish in these books, even our (anti)hero, the detective. He's just there to do a job and abuse whoever needs it to get answers. In Red Harvest his only motivation is revenge, not cleaning up a town or anything admirable.

Stanley Kubrick had this outlook on the world in many of his works. I rewatched Barry Lyndon today- i gave it another shot and it is a great film. Really tough when I was younger because it is a slow film so I'm glad I gave it another shot at an older age- like David Lean films. Barry Lyndon is a man without any purpose in life but to improve his class and wealth. He is a completely soulless opportunistic leech but his life gets meaning when he has a son- something that wealth or nobility has nothing to do with. So really Barry would have been fulfilled without clawing his way to the top. But the narrator states it best- I'm paraphrasing "Men that strive for great wealth usually lose their riches because of the same traits that brought them to them" The VO in the movie is so fatal because it keeps us really distanced. The narrator tells of of Barry's fall before we see it. Which is to say that was Barry's fate and that's life and here ya go- its sucks.

Fatalism, cynicism and a hopeless outlook on basic human nature is a common theme in many works and is one that I am drawn to. It reflects the world or the outlook that we all have on it in this time. Caring about anything but yourself is really just a waste of time in the eyes of most people. I wonder how we came to this attitude. When I see good stories of people oppressed I get angry and want them to fight back, to overthrow the oppressors. I watch Battle of Algiers or Z and want to take up arms, or Harlan County USA and I'm so furious my hands are shaking and I'm crying. In the past 40 years all of our authority figures are corrupt in our stories and are rarely punished, usually just replaced, for their corruption. Think of the last time a politician or government or military wasn't portrayed as cold-hearted and unconcerned with the people over themselves. I'm sure there are tons of factors to blame but it is an odd phenomena to me. Is it because out Government and media have duped and lied to us so many times? Is it because we are a prosperous, fat and complacent people by nature and everyone should be duping us? Maybe these stories are just more entertaining- the only place we want to see people doing good is in the past. I mean, they already made Ghandi, right?

I hope that a person making strives to install a better way of life here is not torn down only because we just can't trust them or believe its possible. Because we no longer have the ability to believe that someone is actually looking out for our best interests on a serious issue. We as people may not be able to accept that someone is doing something to help us in spite of the money/power to be obtained by exploiting us. So hopefully when the changes to get health care affordable with out working for Wal-Mart or some corporation start to happen, we can accept it. Hopefully we will be ok with some government regulation getting us prescription drugs that we can afford. I know that sounds naive but I don't believe that after civil rights and Vietnam there's no room for anything but shrugging shoulders and bumper stickers for people to have a voice. I'd rather live in a progressive world of change with some hope and read about a fictional world in which it's every man for himself. I don't want the newspaper to read like Dashiell Hammett or Orwell. I want some Common Sense for the generatiom.