L’affaire Eich

L'affaire Eich

In case you’ve been living under a rock, last week, Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, was pretty much forced to resign his position due to having donated to Prop 8 back in 2008. OKCupid dug up his name from a list of donors and changed their website so that if a person using Firefox visited, they were shown a page suggesting a different browser because Eich was CEO of Mozilla and was blasted as “anti-gay” for his donation.

 

As someone who is totally in favor of gay marriage, I’m with Sarah Hoyt and Andrew Sullivan on this one. It’s disturbing that someone’s private beliefs and personal donations can be used to force them out of a position especially after they’ve committed themselves to inclusiveness and equality in the workplace for LGBTs. The man believed that gay marriage shouldn’t be legally recognized. A lot of people believe that. That doesn’t make them anti-gay or homophobic. It makes them against changing the definition of marriage. Yes, some of them will be bigoted arseholes but most of them are not. A good many might favor civil unions that would have all of the same rights and privileges of marriage but just wouldn’t be called marriage. Others might fear that legalizing gay marriage would force religious institutions to perform weddings that go against their teachings — and, in light of some of the lawsuits against bakers and photographers* who don’t want to offer their services due to religious beliefs, there could be something to that fear.

 

But beyond that, do we really want to live in a world where you can be hounded in the streets, driven out of your job, and harassed for something you believe? If we start granting corporations the right to pressure workers — yes, even executives — to hide their personal beliefs and constantly hold the company line, do we really have freedom of speech anymore? Sure, it’s not the government that’s interfering. It’s just your employer. And, it’s not like we’re in the midst of a recession or anything, right, so there are plenty of jobs to be had, right? And, how does this hounding help the gay marriage cause? Is it going to change anyone’s mind? Is it going to make people more receptive to arguments in favor of gay marriage? Or is it going to cause opponents of gay marriage to become more entrenched, to move to insulate themselves more? Is it going to cause greater division in society by forcing gay marriage opponents to work only for others who share their views, putting themselves in an echo chamber?

 

Would you feel the same way about this issue if it were not gay marriage? Say that Brendan Eich supported keeping pot illegal. But, he promised not to fire anyone who thought pot should be legal, who advocated for legalization, who donated to efforts to make it legal, etc. Would it be right for legalization advocates to hound him out of his job? After all, putting people in jail over what they want to put in their bodies in their own time without endangering others is a far sight worse than simply saying “I don’t think marriage should be redefined.” The first denies people their liberty. The second denies them a tax break.

 

And would you want to be in his position with your own employer? I’m sure that most people work at a place where they may not agree with every single thing their employer believes or supports. Would you want someone fired because they were a creationist (when that belief had nothing to do with their job whatsoever)? Would you want someone fired because they were pro-choice (when that belief had nothing to do with their job)? Pro-life? An atheist? A libertarian? An anarchist? A smoker?** Someone who enjoyed a glass of wine of an evening? Coffee drinkers? Someone who had a copy of Chris Rock’s Bigger and Blacker? Do we really want to open our privately held beliefs to scrutiny by our employers? Would you really want to live in a world where that plays out?

 

This is an argument I have time and time again with a lot of people and this kind of power is why I am a minarchist (rational anarchist). If we grant gay marriage supporters a heckler’s veto like this, then inevitably that power will fall into the hands of someone who is odious. If someone can be forced to step down as CEO over this, then later on, another CEO could be forced to resign for not supporting the Kyoto Treaty (which was deeply flawed) or being a Euro-skeptic or an American isolationist. In a free society like ours, eventually the other side will get into power. So, instead of having to fight, fuss, and live in fear of that (like we’ve had to with the frickin’ abortion issue for forty some-odd years now), how about we all agree that no one should have that kind of power and that we can learn to agree to disagree civilly and that the best way to deal with someone who believes gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed isn’t to hound them over it but to talk to them. To show them that it won’t cause whatever they fear it will cause. To persuade and use reason and our brains instead of bludgeoning them over the head and exiling them to the Outer Darkness for a belief that has jack to do with being a CEO (or a developer, designer, code monkey, artist, editor, etc).

 

— G.K.

 

*Seriously, if a baker or photographer or whatever refuses to serve a gay wedding because of their religious, find another. It’s not like there is a severe shortage of them. Suing them over it is asking the government to tell them that they have to ignore their views for business. No one would object to a gay photographer or baker refusing to service an anti-gay marriage believer’s wedding so why do we think the reverse is okay?

 

**Holiday Inn already does this by refusing to hire smokers. So, I don’t stay at the Holiday Inn or any hotel owned by them. I don’t think that an employer should have the ability to tell their workers what they can and cannot do when they’re not on the clock. So, if Holiday Inn really wants to do this, they should pay their workers 24/7/365 for adhering to their policy. People would scream bloody murder if a place like Wal Mart refused to hire people who ate bacon every morning which has just as much bearing on the ability to work as being a smoker (or non-smoker) does.

I’m Still Around

I'm Still Around

Just been a bit busy lately is all.

 

So, I got Stolen Lives out the door and it’s doing fairly well. I’m cranking away on The Penitent while working on learning how various world governments work for Realpolitick. I’m also promising myself that soon I will let myself have a few hours to play the new Diablo III expansion so long as I don’t skip going to the YMCA for my daily swim.

 

Yeah, I’m on a health kick. I got sick of having a gimpy ankle and knee that bothered me incessantly (and I’m tired of being a humongous fatass) so I got a membership at the YMCA and I swim for at least 30 minutes every day (and as close to an hour as I can push it). My leg has already gotten a lot better (going up stairs no longer causes me problems and going down them only does when I’m tired). I’m hoping soon to be able to add 15 – 20 minutes of Nordic Ski or elliptical to my work out alternating that with weight lifting every other day. I’m also cutting beef and pork out of my diet and living off vegetables and fish (with the occasional treat for good behavior).

 

I’ve told myself that I’m going to set aside a whole $500 and, if I manage to get down to a healthy weight, I’m going to buy three new pairs of blue jeans and have them embroidered on the legs (and have them hemmed so I don’t have to fold them up to my ankles), two new pairs of black slacks, white dress blouses (because white goes with everything), and some new shirts. I’ll also probably redo my pajamas and all that as well. Maybe a couple of pairs of new Converse trainers (black, creme, and blue or red).

 

Oh, and my Fifth Doctor cosplay outfit. Maybe a sundress, a Sunday dress, and a cocktail dress in case I ever need to wear a dress some place. (I don’t like dresses).

 

So long as I don’t go over my $500 budget. I can sense my mother rolling her eyes at me already. She started with the “new pairs of jeans” and is probably sputtering about no dress shoes in my list (seriously, if people are going to pay that much attention to my shoes, I think it’s them that have the issue, not me). Mom and I have vastly different approaches to fashion: I know I have no fashion sense so I keep it cheap, timeless, and simple. Mom actually likes dressing up and I’d rather be strapped to the rack. Color coordination is something you do for a website skin, not your socks.

 

Anyhow, figured I’d just drop a quick line to let everyone know I am gloriously, happily busy.

 

— G.K.

My Dream Neighborhood…

My Dream Neighborhood...

Some girls spend their lives coming up with their dream houses, their dream husbands, their dream weddings… Me, I’m a bit more ambitious. I have my dream neighborhood.

 

If I were ever to win the lottery or become the next billionaire writer like J.K. Rowling, I would set aside part of my wealth to 1) found my own frickin’ country (only writers and cool people allowed in) and 2) build my dream community. It would probably look a lot like The Shire with the hobbit houses (and there would be a Rivendell and Lothlorien nearby for those of the more elvish bent). Actually, it’d probably have hobbit houses next to tree houses next to log cabins. And, the only people who would live there would be writers. Romance, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, thriller, policier, whatever. Only writers. There would be a pub/tavern/restaurant that would be a weird mix of Starbucks-meets-The-Inn-of-the-Green-Dragon where we could all hang out. There would be bookstores, of course. The native language would be Writer-esse, the government would be “whatever” and taxes…well, we’re talking about a country of writers. I doubt there would be much crime beyond “I had to smack him. He used the wrong word!”

 

It would be an eccentric, eclectic place. And it would be awesome.

 

The first people I would invite to live there would be Rayne Hall, Denis Fitzpatrick, Wallace Cass, Vicktor Alexander, Lor Rose, TN Tarrant, Brandon Sanderson, and Sarah Hoyt. Oh, and of course my quasi-sister and her wife, my parents, and my niece and nephews. They would probably be the only ones with “normal” houses. Unless, of course, I built a TARDIS-themed Earthship which would probably make Mini-me run away from home to live with her crazy Whovian aunt. Neil Gaiman would be welcome, of course, as would just about any other writer. We would build our own homes, pitching in to help like the Amish do in their communities. Bartering would be perfectly acceptable and declining an invitation “because I have to get these characters to get in line” would be a perfectly acceptable excuse. Our national pass-time would be reading and writing. Our national colors would be black and red (black for the inkstains on our fingers and faces, red for the pens we use to correct our later drafts). Our national sport would be either Trivia Pursuit or Scrabble. You could marry whoever you wanted so long as they were 18 or older and human. Civil/criminal trials (if they had to be held at all) would consist of a non-busy writer selected at random acting as the judge. It would be practically Heinlienian in some ways. And it would be the most interesting place on Earth.

 

In school, the popular kids would be the ones with the most books. Sarcasm would be considered a second language. Daydreaming would be encouraged — as would doodling and rambling. Sitting around silently reading at the pub would be considered a perfectly acceptable form of socialization.

 

All in all, it would be heaven on Earth for writers.

 

So, if there are any wealthy people with money to burn reading this who are interested in developing and funding such a community, feel free to drop me a line. Using solar panels and windmills, we might actually be able to have “free” electricity. Building Earthships or other sustainable houses might make development costs trivial. Tapping into a nearby water supply (aquifer or a river) could help with both water/sewer and electricity. And, while it wouldn’t be the richest place on Earth, it’d probably be the most interesting place.

 

Because, you see, us writers…no matter the genre…we’re interesting (aka “weird”) people. Which is why we shouldn’t have to live in the mundane world. Our inner worlds are so much cooler. Just ask anyone who’s written for Doctor Who!

 

— G.K.

Sometimes…

Sometimes...

I really miss living in Europe.

 

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the United States. I’m quite proud of my country and all it’s accomplished in the last century or so. I’m proud to be part of a culture that isn’t defined by blood or territory but by something entirely new on planet Earth — an ideology. An idea. A belief that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator (whether you believe that to be a deity or random chance) by certain inalienable rights. A belief in rule of law over rule of man. A belief that it doesn’t matter what color your skin is, what kind of accent you have, what God you worship — or if you worship a God at all — how much money you have, what kind of job you hold…that you are equal before the law to everyone else. A belief that men are best left to govern themselves without some ruler standing over them dictating their lives to them. And, a belief that so long as you hold that to be true, you are American whether you speak with an accent or worship Christ or Shiva. You don’t have to be born here to be one of us. Immigrants who just recently gave their oaths to the United States and the Constitution are just as American as I am though my ancestors came over during the 1700 and 1800s.

 

Not to say that we hold perfectly to those ideals all the time — we don’t. Not to say that Americans have never done anything wrong or horrific in our short history. We have. But I am proud to have been born of mixed blood in a country where we welcome everyone who dreams of living free and working hard to our shores.

 

Still, there are times I really miss living in Europe.

 

I don’t fetishize Europe or anything. I don’t think that Europe is the future that America will “grow up” to become. America and Americans descend from people who, by and large, thought that Europe with its royalties, its monarchs, its caste system, its iniquitous rule of men over law sucked. America is the “un-Europe.” But, Europe still is a very special place to me.

 

Europe has a history, a depth, a permanence that is both alien and comforting to me, a perpetual outsider on that continent. I could have stayed in France, spoken nothing but French, converted back to Roman Catholicism, sewn the tri-color flag to my undergarments, and eaten all the cheese I could stomach and I would never have been French. My French ex-husband could pack up tomorrow, get on a plane, fly to the United States, and, after a few years, he’d be just as American as I am. Even if I were to go to the United Kingdom where most of my ancestors hailed from, even if I were to give my oath to Queen and Country, serve tea and crumpets every afternoon, pick up the local accent as best I could, and proudly flown the Union flag while burning Guy Fawkes in effigy every November 5, I wouldn’t be “British.”

 

But still…even with all of that, there are times I wish I could go back and live there again. I’d probably choose to live in the UK, though, even if my French isn’t too terrible considering I’m largely self-taught. Europe has this mystique to it. It’s old (and I like old things). It’s got this wonderfully great depth of history to it. Europe (well, Western Europe, really) doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Even if the air there felt oppressive to me on occasion, as if it were weighted down by its very history, as if it were more a museum than a living, breathing, vibrant set of nations…it still had a magic about it that I haven’t found in the United States at all.

 

Now, I do like living closer to Mini-me — especially since I know that she’ll be part of my life from here on out. I love talking to her on the phone and hearing her tell me how much she likes the things I like. Mini-me adores me (I don’t know why) and, when I go back to Mississippi to visit, she doesn’t seem to want to let me out of her sight. When I was there for Christmas and had a migraine, she wound up coming with me back to my bedroom and laying down on the bed with me while I laid a cold cloth across my forehead and waited for that last dose of Excedrin to kick in. She curled up against my back and fell asleep. Later, we watched Doctor Who and she still talks about the episodes she watched with me. The plastic people, the Nestene Consciousness, the blue girl, the flat girl, the flying grammy, the “Trabeen” (Siltheen), the piggy astronaut, “victory should be naked!” and, of course, the Targis (TARDIS). She loves her ol’ Aunt Kelly even if Aunt Kelly can’t quite figure out why. But still, all things being equal, I’d love to go back to Europe for a while.

 

I think that Mini-me would like Europe, too. I could see her visiting me there and going to see the castles and palaces, listening to all the different languages, eating at a sidewalk café in Paris. Having greasy, vinegary fish-and-chips in London. Walking along Hadrian’s wall near the Scottish border. Yes, she and I would always be étrangers, auslanders, foreigners in Europe. But I think that she would feel the same magic about that place that I do.

 

I miss the mass transit — even if it was unreliable sometimes due to strikes. I miss the flowers decorating the streets. I miss the smell of the boulangeries, seeing the meat on display at the boutcheries, the fromageries, the little shops along the rues, the grocery stores where you could get just about any kind of meat (except venison). I miss the pubs and taverns where you could see older men sitting back and having a pint or two. I miss the slower pace of life where vacations were important.

 

Yes, Europe had its bits that drove me crazy. The strikes in France. The high taxes. The elites’ tendency to condescend to the lower classes. The belief that people there knew more about my country, its history, its government, and its politics than I did (and, to this day, though I lived in France for nearly a decade, you will never hear me claim to be an expert on French government, let alone other European governments). The riots in the immigrant quarters because the immigrants know they’ll never be “European” no matter how many generations they live there and because they are treated rather poorly. The constant nagging question in my mind as to what it is that actually makes one “French” or “German” or “British” or “Italian.” The way that a lot of people looked down on me for my accented French. The way that, though I loved the place and its history, I never quite fit in.

 

Still, I’d go back tomorrow if I could. There’s something about living in an old country — even if there were days I swore I could smell death and decay from old age on the air — and living among an old people — even if I sometimes wondered why they didn’t move forward more instead of looking back — that is magic.

 

There are times I really miss living in Europe where the ancient sits cheek-by-jowl with the modern and is considered normal.

 

–G.K.

Oh Thank God, It’s the Flu!

Oh Thank God, It's the Flu!

That was my reaction today at the doctor’s upon hearing that she wasn’t going to have to do a throat culture because it didn’t look like strep — it looked like the flu.

 

Let’s take a step back, shall we? See, I know what having strep throat feels like. I’m something of an expert in it. I also know when I have a sinus infection (and thus a sinus headache versus a migraine) instead of allergies. And, I can generally tell a flu from a cold, strep, sinusitis, or bronchitis. When it comes to self-diagnosing those, I’m about a 9 out of 10.

 

But good God, when it’s strep…oh, I start praying to every deity in history that I’m wrong. I have to take strep seriously. It’s one of the few things that can result in me going from “I dun feel so good” to “Oh, hey God. Nice place ya got here…” in less than 24 hours. I can muck around with sinusitis, sinus headaches, allergies, and bronchitis (to some extent) but the minute I suspect I have strep, I’m off to the doctor.

 

See, when I was a kid (probably 5 or 6 years old), I had strep almost constantly for a year or two (I don’t remember clearly — Mom, care to clarify, here?) I swear that it was every couple of weeks I was in my doctor’s office having a tongue depressor shoved down my mouth and a throat swab being done followed shortly thereafter by being told to lay on my stomach while they gave me a shot of penicillin in my hip. Eventually, they figured out that I wasn’t picking it up from other kids — colonies of streptococcal bacteria were happily living it up in my tonsils. I can’t remember if I actually had tonsillitis or not but they decided to remove my tonsils because there was a very high risk of me developing rheumatic fever (or scarlet fever, not sure which) due to the constant re-infections if my tonsils weren’t taken out. Whatever fever it was, it’s the one that can give you heart problems. Since I was still just barely into elementary (primary) school, they didn’t want to risk that. So, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed (which apparently helped with my snoring for a few years) and, after that, I’ve only had strep throat three times. Once when I was sixteen, once when I was in France, and once this past year because someone with strep came to the office and I’m practically a beacon for that particular infection.

 

Aside from the headache, the vomiting, the spiking fever, and the general “Christ, I feel bad” of strep, there’s another reason I dread having it. The throat culture.

 

I remember being a little kid and freaking out. The tongue depressor always felt like it was gagging me and made me want to throw up. I had trouble breathing. And the scrapping on the back of my tongue/top of my throat hurt. I swear I could feel it for the rest of the day afterwards. Even now, I have a pretty sensitive gag reflex (I’ve had popcorn kernels get on the back part of my tongue — not even *near* my throat — and I’ve puked because of it). And, even though I know they need to do the culture to be certain I’m getting the right treatment and all, I cannot override my panic switch. The minute they get that super-long Qtip out, that’s it. My adrenaline kicks in and my reason goes right out the window. I can sit there and close my eyes and tell myself “it won’t be long, it’s quick. It’ll be over soon. Don’t freak out. Just breathe. It’ll take longer to count to three than to have this done,” and my body is like “Fuck you. We’re going to freak out.” They now have to give me a mild sedative and restrain me when they want a throat culture. And the whole time, I’m fighting them (even though my brain knows the reasons, my body can’t quite agree to a truce on this). It was even worse when I was in France and could barely speak French and the poor doctor didn’t know what to make of this American who was crying and shaking and jerking until she finally understood me saying she would need a couple of big men in there to hold me in place.

 

It’s not only bad enough to deal with the panic (even though I know there’s no reason to panic), the humiliation of having that reaction and the embarrassment of being an adult and not able to control my reaction? That’s just adding fuel to the fire.

 

So, if I’m ever a patient of yours and you have to do a throat culture on me, please understand when I tell you up front that you will have to sedate me and restrain me. Don’t argue with me that I can reason it out — I can’t. I’ve tried. I’ve tried every trick in the book including meditation. I could finally get myself not to flip out over having a medical person behind me to give me a shot in the hip (I have a *serious* thing about letting people stand behind me where I can’t watch them) but I can’t get over this. It’s too deeply ingrained, I think. Yes, I realize that each forced sedation and restraint makes the next reaction worse. I also realize that this is one of those few things I just can’t be rational about no matter how much I wish I could be. And, to that one nurse practitioner I hit last year — I’m still really sorry and really embarrassed about that incident and I’m glad you liked the flowers I sent you to apologize.

 

Now, please God, tell me I’m not the only adult on this planet who freaks the fuck out over something silly. My ego could use the boost.

 

— G.K.

Quick Call Out For Betas!

Quick Call Out For Betas!

It is done.

 

It has been an emotional roller coaster with the characters throwing me for a few loops here and there but it is done. It is done, I am exhausted but sated. Just one last editorial pass and Stolen Lives will be ready for beta-reading which is where you, my friends, come in.

 

Weighing in at 70,380 words and 276 pages in Microsoft Word, Stolen Lives is more than a short story and less than a novel. Set in the near future where medical advances have made the impossible “possible” and have brought out some dangers unforeseen, Stolen Lives takes you through the eyes of those who have lost everything — their lives, their memories, and their very selves. Read as they struggle to reclaim that which once they took for granted — their very identities.

 

If you are interested in beta-reading this and providing me with feedback to correct errors, fact-checks, grammar problems, plot holes, pacing issues, etc, then just post “I’m in!” in the comments below followed by your email address. I will edit out your email address when I approve your comment.

 

Interested? Well, get cracking then, would you?!

 

— G.K. Masterson

Why the ACA Won’t Do Squat: Part II — The History of American Physical Medical Practices

Why the ACA Won’t Do Squat: Part II — The History of American Physical Medical Practices

For Part I of this series, go here.

 

In Part I, we discussed who the players were in the modern American healthcare system and a little bit of history behind them. In this part, we’re going to dive in deep into the history of American medical practices starting with the state of affairs during the pre-Revolutionary era and ending with the state of affairs as they were just prior to the 2008 Presidential election and the subsequent passing of the ACA. I do this so that we can be certain that everyone is on the same page. Again, in this part, I’m making no judgement calls on if something was “good” or “bad.” Nor am I suggesting an ideal manner for things to be. Once again, I’m not an ideological purist. I’m a pragmatist at my core and am more interested in understanding how things really work (not always how they are “supposed” to work) and trying to find a method that brings about an optimal result even when, at certain margins, that result might seem “unfair.”

 

So, let’s hop in this TARDIS I nicked from the Doctor when he wasn’t looking (silly Time Lord) and set the coordinates for the British American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century (the 1700s).

 

Medicine in the American colonies (and in most of the rest of the Western world) in the 1700s was little different to our modern eyes than superstition. Germ theory was not even a dream in the mind of the most forward-thinking doctor. Sterilization of instruments simply did not exist. Illnesses were blamed on bad air, bad humors in the blood, or even witchcraft. The only medical treatments we would recognize from this era as being useful were wound treatment (binding and stitching), amputation (not always conducted under anesthesia), and childbirth (which was done in a most barbaric and traumatizing manner!1). During the pre-Industrial era, if a person fell ill with strep throat, Typhoid fever, Scarlet fever, chicken pox, small pox, measles, mumps, Rubella, tetanus, polio, or pretty much any illness that involved a fever, they were believed to have taken “bad air.” The normal course of treatment was for a doctor to bleed them by cutting open an artery and letting the “bad blood” that had been created by the “bad air” or “bad humor” out. Leeches were also employed in helping to rid the sick person of these bad humors in the blood. When that treatment didn’t work — and especially in the cases of consumption (what we now call tuberculous) — medical professionals suggested that a change in climate was necessary2. This is why so many people would move from a colder climate to a warmer and wetter climate. This change might prolong their life for a few months or years since the body no longer had to battle the chill as well as the disease, but it brought about no cure. The ordained clergy of the church (Catholic priests or Protestant ministers) were often called upon to attend to the sick or dying in hopes that a benevolent God would show mercy through their prayers and petitions and restore the sickly to health. In other cases, trying to “cleanse” the air before it entered the body using perfumed handkerchiefs tied around the mouth and nose was considered a good form of treatment. And, when these handkerchiefs were soaked in brandy or another alcoholic substance3 this might actually have helped — albeit more by accident than knowledgeable design.

 

Doctors and their apprentices during this era also depended heavily on “illicit knowledge” in order to advance their art. Autopsies and the dissection of corpses was all but completely forbidden by Christian institutions. However, some men, desiring to learn more and to make medicine into a science, dug up cadavers and dissected them in an attempt to learn more about the inner workings of the human body4. Their teachings were handed down through the universities and the master-apprentice system. It was from here that we see the beginnings of an understanding of the human body and its organs that would later play a vital part in surgical procedures. Also, in the latter part of this era and into the Industrial Revolution, doctors were willing to experiment a bit (not always ethically, though). Treatments and surgeries for conditions like clubfoot were tried until someone hit on something that seemed to work more often than not. Bear in mind, again, that sterilization and germ theory did not exist. Many good doctors were discouraged when their procedures wound up resulting in a full amputation or death because of infection because they did not understand that they or their instruments had contaminated the site! Many doctors also felt at a loss to explain the deaths of laboring women or their children even though the doctors had done everything “right.” Many times, the doctor had been visiting or working with an infected patient or corpse and went immediately to the child-bed without washing their hands. Medicine in this era was primitive by our modern standards. Remember that before you judge!

 

The Industrial Revolution brought with it not just a tendency of people to flock to a city or factory area for work but also a slightly better understanding of sanitation and sewage/water treatment5. Once again, these standards were barbaric compared to our own and, in some ways, epidemiology6 had been known and studied prior to this era, but the Industrial Revolution did put doctors and universities together with a lot of people and contagion, planting the seeds for later understanding of disease, contagion, germ theory, and the other bases of modern medicine. During the latter part of the Industrial Revolution, especially during and after the American Civil War, doctors became more adept at performing amputations and understood a bit better the stress that surgery inflicted on the human body. Though this was mostly hard-won knowledge by the Southern doctors forced to perform amputations without opium or any other painkillers, the understanding that pain played a role in survival and recovery was part of this era. Another hard-won piece of knowledge from the late 1800s was childbirth. Forceps and the understanding of a woman’s hip width (and thus, the advising the women with narrow hips not have children) contributed to a slightly higher rate of survival without damage in childbirth. As the Industrial Era progressed into the twentieth century and germ theory, pasteurization, and other sterilization practices became more widely adopted7, medicine began to more closely resemble what we know today. Vaccines became more widespread as well. Penicillin also became more understood and its usage more widespread8 during this era.

 

World War I was the first modern era war where more causalities were inflicted by combat than by disease9. This was in part due to the better understanding of germ theory, better use of quarantine, better design of camps and sanitation, and more effective treatments. After World War I, development of vaccines continued and eventually exploded in the post-World War II era, resulting in the eradication of small pox, the near eradication of polio, and the removal of measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, tetanus, and other communicable diseases as deadly killers. By the latter part of the twentieth century, these diseases — once considered a common part of childhood — had become so rare that the vaccination side effects were viewed as more deadly than the threat of these horrific diseases themselves10. Indeed, in some parts of the world, vaccination rates have fallen enough that herd immunity11 no longer functions and innocent and un-inoculated children die due to misinformed fears that vaccines cause autism12.

 

Several other major changes in medical practices took place in the twentieth century. The first was the practice of sterilization for both medical instruments and care-givers (via heating, boiling, use of isopropyl alcohol or other cleansing and anti-bacterial agents), more effective anti-biotics, better hospitalization and quarantine practices for outbreaks, germ theory, and the ability for doctors to dissect human corpses in order to better understand the human body itself. Another major change was the introduction of medical “insurance.” This privilege was first available to the rich and was more akin to an understanding between the doctors, hospitals, or other providers that the patient or his estate would provide recompense for treatments given. As medicine advanced as a science during the 1900s, resulting in the development of laboratories for testing and identification, insurance moved to cover these services. When the Second World War broke out and women flocked to the factories and companies were forced to find non-financial ways to attract workers — such as medical insurance or pension plans — medical insurance became more widespread13 in the United States.

 

During the latter half of the 1900s, insurance companies were forced to explore ways to reduce costs. With the introduction of the government into the medical market through Medicaid and Medicare (which resulted in its own set of problems14), insurers who had relied on group policies needed to find ways to cut costs. This, broadly speaking, resulted in the creation of “networks” for doctors, Healthcare Maintenance Operations and Preferred Provider Organizations15. Costs to the patient were masked by insurance agencies, the government, and the doctors’ long-established practice of not posting costs. As the 1900s came to a close and the 2000s began, some aspects of modern medicine that were not covered by insurance, such as LASIK and other procedures are forced to compete on price as well as satisfaction of outcome16. Some private hospitals have even begun to post their procedural costs such as one Oklahoma City surgery center17.

 

So, with all these changes, what impact has the ACA actually had? We’ll explore that a bit in the next part. Do bear in mind, however, that the ACA is a very new law and that there are several controversies over it above and beyond the partisan politics. The next installment will deal with those as well as the history behind the expansions of power that let the current administration think and believe the way it does regarding law and legislative process.

 

— G.K. Masterson

 


1 Childbirth in Early America. Additionally, many midwives of this era left the mother alone after the baby was out of the birth canal. The mothers were forced to bear their own placentas and dispose of them without any assistance (Lying In: A History of Childbirth in America).

 

2 Consumption, the great killer

 

3 Cholera

 

4 Dissection — History

 

5 Epidemiology — History

 

6 Epidemiology

 

7 Germ Theory of Disease: Louis Pasteur

 

8 History of Penicillin

 

9 >World War I Casualties

 

10 Anti-Vaccination Movement

 

11 Vaccine Opt-Outs Causing Breaks in “Herd Immunity”LA Times

 

12 Autism and Andrew Wakefield

 

13 Why the ACA Won’t Do Squat: Part I — Learning the Players

 

14 Why the ACA Won’t Do Squat: Part I — Learning the Players

 

15 HMOs vs. PPOs – What Are the Differences Between HMOs and PPOs?

 

16 Why the ACA Won’t Do Squat: Part I — Learning the Players

 

17 Oklahoma City hospital posts surgery prices online; creates bidding war

Why the ACA Won’t Do Squat: Part I — Learning the Players

Why the ACA Won't Do Squat: Part I -- Learning the Players

My Twitter buddy Denis Fitzpatrick author of the brilliant This Mirror In Me (seriously, get it. You won’t regret it) asked me what I thought of the Obamacare Act (the Affordable Care Act). Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to work and I do think it’s going to make things worse in the long run. But then, the Republicans’ plan will do the same, just breaking and worsening different things. That’s because both sides think that with just a few tweaks, the entire system can be made to work perfectly according to their ideology. Libertarian, Communist, Socialist, Green — whatever — everyone thinks they know the one or two things that Must Be Done To Fix The US Healthcare system.

 

And they are all dead wrong. At this point, the only way to fix the system is to tear it completely down and start over. Why? Because it’s shoddy and rotten from the foundation up. If the American healthcare system were a building, it would have toppled right over years ago. And no, adopting a Universal or Single Payer System like in France, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or whatever Health Care Mecca you favor won’t fix it because of the fundamental differences in American governmental structure and in American social culture. Not to mention that adopting those systems will lead to a significant draw-down in the development of new treatments, more effective treatments, new devices, and the advancing of medical science in general (read on and you’ll see why).

 

But, before you can start to fix anything, you have to know the players and most people — even most Americans — don’t know the players which is why I think their view of the game or the rules that need to be changed is simplistic and unlikely to work at best, harmful and likely to cause a lot of unintended consequences at worst.

 

So, who are these players? Well, there are a lot of them so go get a cup of tea/coffee/beer/whiskey and then get settled in because we’re going to be a while.

 

Player One: Health Insurance Industry — The insurance industry is currently the second largest actor in the American healthcare market. This wasn’t always the case — prior to the Second World War, the health care industry was rather small and most people didn’t bother with insurance. Visiting your local doctor and getting the few, primitive antibiotics (Sulfa drugs, Quinine, etc) that were cutting edge was an out-of-pocket expense for most people. If you couldn’t afford to pay everything at once, the local doctor would work out a payment system with you. Some doctors would even accept barter-goods (chickens, milk, eggs, etc) in lieu of legal tender (cash) from their local patients. Of course, back then, options such as surgery did not exist for rich or the poor. During the Second World War when most American men of working age were drafted and sent overseas to fight, women picked up the slack in the war machine by working in the factories. Every factory wanted the best workers but could not raise wages to compete1 — so they had to offer other benefits and health insurance was a major one. After the war, companies continued to offer these benefits instead of discontinuing them and raising wages. Thus, the industry exploded over the next several decades as insurance became more common and medical technology began to really take off.

 

Player Two: The Government — The government is the largest player in the healthcare market. Through the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the US government decides exactly how much a doctor or hospital can charge for any given service. They do this not by paying what the actual good or service costs but by saying they will reimburse X% of the charged cost2. Wonder why a single aspirin in a hospital can cost $100 a pill (or more)? It’s because the government only reimburses a percentage of the charged cost and because insurance companies, working with the government, have legally ensured that everyone has to be charged the same — even patients who are willing to pay out of pocket. If the doctors charge at the actual cost, then they’ll only get a fraction of it back from government or insurance companies. So, if they want to stay in the green, they have to inflate the costs. Welcome to Economics 101.

 

The government, in the form of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office), also plays another large role by determining what treatments and regimens and surgical procedures will be available for use in the US. The FDA approval process is a very long and very expensive process designed to protect the American public from snake oil treatments. However, patent law in the US forces the drug company or tech company to apply for a patent at the beginning of the FDA approval process to keep from being scooped by a competitor later in the game. Patents only last for twenty years and the approval process generally takes between seven and twelve years, leaving a decade, on average, for the drug or tech company to recoup the R&D (Research and Development) and the approval fees on not only that drug or device but also on all the ones that didn’t get approved.

 

Player Three: The American Medical Association — Just about every country has an association like the AMA. The AMA provides the credentials that allow physicians to practice medicine in the US. The AMA also decides how many teaching hospitals there will be, how many students will be accepted into medical schools, what the standards for admission and graduation are, how long residents must serve, and many other things. Basically, one of the AMA’s functions is to determine how many doctors will be allowed to practice medicine in the US at any given time.

 

Player Four: American Trial Lawyer Association, Malpractice Insurance, and Stupid Jurors — You wouldn’t think that lawyers would be a major player in the healthcare field, but they are. Specifically, malpractice lawyers are a major player. It used to be that malpractice meant the doctor had performed the wrong surgery (ex: instead of a tonsillectomy, he did a hysterectomy), had left a surgical instrument inside the patient after surgery, or had prescribed a medicine or treatment that he knew would be ineffective or otherwise done something that he should have known would cause harm (such as suggesting a patient take arsenic). Today, thanks to trial lawyers and the general effectiveness of the medical system, malpractice generally means the patient or his estate isn’t happy with the results. The doctor doesn’t have to actually have done anything wrong. He could have done everything right and he will still get sued for a bad outcome.3

 

Player Five: Doctors, hospitals, labs, and other healthcare providers — These are the actual people who do the work in medicine. Training to be a doctor takes nearly a decade (and in some fields, longer) because medicine is as much an art as it is a science. The training is not only fantastically expensive here in the US since doctors are trained on state-of-the-art machinery, the latest treatments, the latest in pharmacology, etc — but these men and women also willingly forgo almost a decade’s worth of potential earnings in order to receive this training. So, once they finally graduate and enter the field, most of them are in at least six-figures worth of debt that they have to pay off but they’re also practicing a very demanding, highly-skilled bit of work which means that they are not going to work for free. Nor should they anymore than a plumber, a carpenter, an architect, or a lawyer would work for free. However, not only are these institutions and people working in a field that has a high barrier to entry (and thus less competition), they are also constrained to charge a certain amount based off what the government is willing to reimburse them for seeing Medicaid and Medicare patients.

 

Player Six: Pharmaceutical companies and Medical tech companies — Yes, they do spend a lot on marketing directly to doctors trying to get doctors to prescribe the latest and greatest (and most expensive) treatment to their patients. However, they also develop those wonder drugs that we’re all so fond of that have extended our useful lives from beyond 50 to nearly 80 years of age these days. For every “me too” clone drug on the market, these companies are investing in research in five different drugs to treat diseases or conditions that we once thought were impossible to treat, cure, or reverse (think about the recent development in better prosthetic limbs that can now be tied into the nervous system or the recent discovery of a possible cure for AIDS, not to mention things like targeted nanobots being used to treat cancer).

 

Player Seven: Other non-US governments — “You should just re-import drugs from Canada/Mexico/the UK/France. It’d save you so much money.” Every time someone suggests this, I think of the old AT&T ad about reaching out to touch someone only change “touch” to “throttle.” Look, the fact here is that countries with nationalized health care systems like France, the UK, Canada, et al pretty much tell drug makers and medical tech companies what they can charge (often well below the cost, not to mention the R&D re-coup) and give the companies the choice of either not selling within their borders at all or even possibly having those governments get the pill or device and reverse engineer it and flood the market with a generic version (nations in South East Asia and all of China are famous for this). Back

 

A big part of the reason prescription costs on new drugs and devices are insane in the US is because so many other countries refuse to pay the full development cost for those drugs or devices, let alone pay enough to keep those companies able to continue R&D into to future treatments or to recover losses from treatments that didn’t make it to market. Frankly, I can understand a poor nation like Chad or Afghanistan refusing to pay full price but I have a hard time feeling a whole lot of sympathy for other First World nations free-riding and forcing me to pay more so they can stay on the gravy train.

 

Player Eight: Patients — You might think they should be a bigger player than they are but patients, by and large, are the smallest cogs in the wheel here. Every other player in the medical field is pretty much a single-issue voter and campaign contributor. Us patients, us rubes don’t tend to vote for someone solely on their medical stances. Also, if the medical industry had to decide between keeping us happy or the government happy…well, they know who butters their bread and it sure as hell ain’t us.

 

So, those are the players in the game. Notice I haven’t really endorsed any specific changes. While I have given some outlines on certain ways the players work together and against each other, I haven’t gone into detail on how they all interact to make the pre-ACA system work the way it does. My next post will be on the medical “industry” as it functioned in pre-Industrial America, Industrial America, and then post-WWII America. It’s going to be a while before I get into specific changes to “fix” the system so if you’re looking for that, just bookmark this site and check back every few days. There’s a lot of ground to cover over who the players are, how they work, what they do, and whether they’re good or bad or both (and in which cases).

 

And, before you start making assumptions about my political stance: I’m currently registered member of the Penguins Are Awesome party. I mistrust the Democrats and the Republicans, think that Libertarians are overly idealistic, that Communists must have slept through the twentieth century, and that penguins are fuckin’ awesome, man. Because they are. There’s a city in Scotland that agrees with me ’cause more people voted for a guy in a penguin suit than voted for the Liberal Democrats4. I’m not conservative. I’m not liberal. I’m a pragmatist who loves penguins5.

 

— G.K.


1 The major reason the factories couldn’t raise wages was because the US went to a “war footing” economy. No consumer goods were being produced at a high rate so raising wages would have resulted in horrific inflation of the money supply. Since the government didn’t want this to happen, they began to sell “War Bonds” to remove excess money from the economy and offered companies a tax break on benefits like health insurance to keep them from raising wages and starting a vicious spiral of inflation that would have exploded even worse once the GIs came home with their wartime earnings. So, in short, there weren’t many consumer goods on the market like cars, refrigerators, etc to soak up the excess currency so workers were offered something of high-cash value (for the time) that wasn’t cash in order to attract better workers while keeping the economy from going tits up. Wikipedia — Health Insurance In the United States: The Rise of Employer Sponsored Coverage. Also, a good history of Medical Practices in the US can be found in My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the De-institutionalization of the Mentally Ill.

 

2 Granted, this is a vast over-simplification. Reimbursement is decided on a variety of schedules, charts, and tables that have little to nothing to do with what the procedure actually costs. However, for further reading, you can start with Uwe E. Reinhardt’s How Do Hospitals Get Paid? A Primer from the New York Times and Megan McArdle’s Who Should Set Medicare Prices? from Bloomberg News. Going into depth on this with just Medicaid and Medicare alone would take years because those programs and their reimbursement methods are as labyrinthine, chaotic, and subject to random changes as the US tax system.

 

3 Former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards once took a case to trial where a girl had been born with cerebral palsy. The mother had refused an Emergency Cesarean which meant that the OBGYN could not force it on her. However, Edwards argued that the OBGYN’s failure to break the law and force the Cesarean on a non-consenting patient who claimed ignorance of the risk factors in a natural birth in her case meant that the OBGYN was guilty of medical malpractice. Playing on the sympathies of jurors who had no clue about how such medical decisions were made, Edwards won the case and the doctor (or his malpractice insurance company, rather) had to pay the family $4,250,000. (Details at Wikipedia — John Edwards: Legal Career). However, the fact is that cases like this happen daily throughout the US.

 

In some places it is difficult to find a practicing OBGYN and, for some women who have high-risk pregnancies, no OBGYN will take them on as patients. Cases like that one are why. Still, all doctors must carry malpractice insurance and, statistically, any healthcare worker (doctor, nurse, paramedic, orderly) who has practiced for more than three years has been named a defendant in a malpractice trial. My late brother, an EMT Basic, was named in a case and all he did was drive the damned ambulance! I got that three years’ statistic from a paper I read back in 2006 after my brother contacted me in a tizzy of worry because he didn’t know what to do after being told he was named in a malpractice suit. I’m trying to see if I can find it online or in my rather messy apartment. But, ask any doctor, EMT, or nurse in the US and chances are they have been named in a malpractice suit even if all they did was a routine temperature check on the patient.

 

Also, even if the doctor/EMT/nurse/whatever is cleared of malpractice, they and their insurance still have to bear the cost of the case. That’s part of why so many settle out-of-court. It’s cheaper to do that than it is to risk losing the case because of Stupid Jurors or to pay the lawyers for the cost of going to trial. Things like this are why so many people bandy about “tort reform” or “malpractice reform” as a Silver Bullet to Fix the American Medical System. Those things might help but they are not the only thing needed!

 

4 Man Dressed As Penguin Receives More Votes Than The Liberal Democrats (image taken from 25 Reasons Why We Love Scotland.

 

5 Seriously, what’s not to love about penguins? They’re flightless birds who have an adorable waddle-walk and they look like they’re wearing little tuxedos! Penguins. Are. Awesome.

What Were The Moments That Changed Your Life?

What Were The Moments That Changed Your Life?

So, what were they? I mean, what were they really? A lot of people will say “oh, it was when I met my Better Half,” or “when my children were born,” or “when someone close to me died.” I’m not denying that those are life-altering events. I’ve been married to my best friend (and even if we’re not married anymore, we’re still best friends). I don’t have any children but I do have a niece who looks just like me and who, for reasons I can’t fathom, adores me. I’ve lost friends and close relatives. So yeah, I know that those things are major life events. But none of them were life-altering. At least not for me.

 

Simmons: D’you ever wonder why we’re here?

 

Grif: It’s one of life’s great mysteries, isn’t it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some… cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything, you know, with a plan for us and stuff? I don’t know, man, but it keeps me up at night.

 

Red vs Blue Season 1: Episode 1

 

For me, right now, the moments that changed my life stand out in stark contrast to everything else. At the time, they weren’t anything major — or so I would have thought. But, looking back, they were significant. There were only three of them but they significantly altered the trajectory my life was on. Without them…I wouldn’t be where I am today and I wouldn’t be who I am today.

 

The first moment that forever changed my life happened when I was seven years old. Set the Wayback Machine for 1987. For Christmas 1986, my parents had gotten my brother and I a Nintendo Entertainment System and a TV to play it on. It came with the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo game, two controllers, and the light gun. We were told that once we beat that game, we could get another game.

 

I can’t remember if I’d beaten Super Mario Bros. or not but I had gotten bored with it. The levels were repetitive. The goals were trite. It wasn’t really that challenging and it couldn’t hold my attention for very long when I was seven. My little brother was only five and didn’t quite have the skills necessary to play through the game (and we didn’t know about all of the warp points so it did get pretty frustrating to get set back pretty far after making our way through five or six worlds) and I didn’t have a lot of patience with him whinging and throwing the controllers around when he lost. Hey, cut me some slack. I was seven and I wasn’t Mother Teresa.

 

Well, my mother went to Wal-Mart and asked around about a game that might keep me occupied and get me to stop complaining. She and my dad had obviously blown a fair bit of cash on the NES and it was supposed to be The Thing for kids back in 1987. I don’t know who the clerk at the Electronics section was that day but if I ever find him or her, I am going to buy them dinner and kiss them thoroughly and offer to help pay for their kids and grandkids to go to college. Because, that fateful day in 1987, the clerk at Wal-Mart handed my mother the gold cartridge edition of The Legend of Zelda. Mama brought it home and handed it to me. At first, I was just dazzled by the pretty case and the fact that the game was gold and shiny. Mama then told me I had to read the manual and I couldn’t play it until after I had eaten all of my supper. I opened the box, pulled out the manual, and that was it. I was done for. I’m pretty sure I probably inhaled supper at a record-setting rate that evening and then raced to put that game in the console and fire it up.

 

Oh…that intro screen. It was spiff. It was magic. I can still close my eyes and see it and hear the music. Even now, over twenty years later, it’s clear as day to me. Shigeru Miyamoto, the guy who conceived and developed The Legend of Zelda (among his many other titles) is a genius.

 

 

A simple game with a simple story. The bad guy had captured the princess. You were the hero who had to save her by solving eight dungeons and the puzzles therein to get the treasures and the Triforce that would let you enter the ninth dungeon and fight Ganon. But there were no time limits. Every time you died, you could save your progress. You could do the dungeons in just about any order (provided you had the objects necessary to reach the dungeons). You could explore the entire world map. It was completely open. No real rails or anything (other than needing all of the Triforce pieces to get into the last dungeon).

 

It captured my imagination immediately and it never. ever. let. go.

 

I don’t know how long it took me to finally beat the game. My Aunt Elaine (whom I called “Aunt ‘Laine”) was into The Legend of Zelda and my friend-across-the-street’s dad was into it. Between them, I eventually did beat the game. Zelda II came out and I still haven’t beaten it (it’s hard). My friend Taylor got a Super Nintendo and we played A Link to the Past whenever she was down visiting her dad. But from the time I was seven until this very day, I have been obsessed with The Legend of Zelda. It’s a great game with a great story that lets you explore. It lets you imagine. It’s the purest form of joy and magic. And, if my mother had not brought it home that day, I wouldn’t have gotten into gaming like I have. My life would have been completely different.

 

The second life-altering event was a trip to K-Mart for Back to School. I was thirteen. I was surly. I hated shopping. I especially hated shopping for clothes or for shoes. Having to go shopping for clothes and shoes and school supplies? That was my Ninth Circle of Hell. I’d have rather been captured by Communists. Luckily, by then, my mother had twigged on to the fact that I hated shopping and could be placated into submission by a promise that, once she was done with me, I could go look at books. I loved to read. I’d read a lot of Shakespeare’s plays. I’d read most of The Canterbury Tales. Bulfinch’s Mythology. History books. Biographies. Goosebumps. So, the deal was that if I would be good while doing the necessary shopping, I could go look at the books until it was time to check out and go home. I played along and dutifully tried on shoes and pants and dresses and shirts without too much complaining and whinging. Eventually, I was done and allowed to go look at the books. So I did (with a promise I would either be at the book section or in the electronics section when my mom needed to find me).

 

Whilst perusing the limited selection of books at K-Mart, I found this one book that caught my attention immediately. The title was intriguing and the cover art told enough of what to expect while leaving the rest to imagination that I was instantly transported.

 

I remember reading through the Prologue while I stood waiting for Mama. It told the story of four voyages. Haplo, the main character, a Patryn who’d escaped the Labyrinth, had traveled to Arianus, to Pyran, to Abbarach, and then to Chelestra. He’d learned and grown. There were elves and humans and dwarves. There were mages. There was love and loss and mystery. I was hooked. This was the kind of book I’d been searching for. It was the kind of story I wanted to tell. At thirteen, I hadn’t heard of Dragonlance or Tolkien. My parents didn’t read those kinds of things. And so I stood there, in K-Mart, reading and falling in love. Finally, there was a genre I could enjoy. A genre I could immerse myself in. These were not only the kinds of stories I wanted to read — they were the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. When my mother found me, I asked her to let me get that book. She checked it over once to make certain it wasn’t some kind of Harlequin romance and then let me get it.

 

I devoured it. Then, I had to read the four books before it. Dragon Wing, Elven Star, Fire Sea, Serpent Mage. I read them. I wound up joining the Waldenbook’s club. I would call them every week to ask when the next book in the series, Into the Labyrinth would come out. After reading The Death Gate Cycle and following it faithfully, my friends in junior high and high school introduced me to Dragonlance and to the Wheel of Time. From there, I discovered Tolkien and Goodkind and Pratchett and Bradbury and Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein. With my appetite whet, I began writing fantasy stories. I aspired to become a writer. My family tried to tell me that I would have to write “normal” things to make money but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to build worlds and populate them with peoples unimagined as of yet. I wanted to copy the styles of the great writers before me: Jordan and Tolkien and Weis and Hickman.

 

If I had never read The Hand of Chaos, I might not be where and who I am today. That book…that day in K-Mart, changed my life. It showed me a world and a path that I hadn’t even imagined existed.

 

The third major event that changed my life was meeting my good friend Chris Holland. I was in college studying history. I had a full-ride scholarship because I was a nerd. And, I was completely hooked on Final Fantasy. MSN had just started up their Communities and anyone with a Hotmail.com account could create an MSN community. I started one based around Final Fantasy VIII and dealing with the real-world historical and linguistic links between the games. I translated Liberi Fatali and One Winged Angel (I’d taken three years of Latin in high school). Chris, or Coach as we knew him then, was running a community called World of FF Music. He and I started talking and we decided to go in on a new website on EZBoard. Eventually, we launched Final Fantasy Legend (now defunct) and I was one of his moderators and content providers. I was more into the theoreticals and the parallels. But, because of him, I started getting into web programming and coding. He was the first person to let me play around as a system administrator. I started to learn about Linux and Unix and web hosting. I learned about MySQL and PHP and setting up accounts and permissions and ownership. I learned what chmod -R 755 did. I met up with some guys in Jackson who were doing an IT start-up and learned more from them. But, if I’d never met Chris, I wouldn’t have known a thing.

 

Because of him, I wound up meeting and talking to the guy who would eventually become my husband. Because of that and because of helping Coach out with his start-up, I got to know the man I was going to marry and had no qualms about up and moving to France after I graduated from college. Once I was in France and married, I stumbled on a job at Blizzard. In time, my tech background and ability to deal with HTML got me on the web team. And now, I’m seriously thinking about getting some official Linux certifications and finding a job in that area because I’ve just about had it with marketing.

 

I wouldn’t be where I am and who I am without Chris, though. Without him, I’d have never met my (now ex) husband. I’d never have spent almost a decade in France. I wouldn’t have come to appreciate the US from the outside and the inside. I wouldn’t have come to adore and appreciate Europe. I wouldn’t have learned as much about history and culture and cultural evolution as I have. And it all started with a stupid MSN Community based around Final Fantasy VIII.

 

At the time they happened, those events were nothing major to me. It was a simple video game or a pleasurable read or a nerdy community. But those three moments altered the course of my life and hurled me on the path I’m on now. I wonder what might happen in the future that will alter my course and put me on a path I’d never imagined existing.

 

So, what were the moments that changed your life forever?

 

— G.K.

Yes, Virginia, I Do Hate Christmas

Yes, Virginia, I Do Hate Christmas

I actually don’t have a huge beef with the holiday itself, mind. I don’t mind going to Mass or Liturgy. I don’t mind the Biblical teachings or the religious songs at all. I think that Nativities are charming and that there’s not much cuter in this world than a bunch of kids in terry-cloth robes trying to remember their lines as they re-enact the First Noel. I don’t mind the Christmas trees and the candles and lights so much — after all, I’m damned proud of my Scottish heritage. We were Nordic, once. The holdovers from the feast of Frey are charming. The holly. The mistletoe. The wreaths hanging on the doors.

 

But I hate Santa Claus. Oh, when I was younger I adored Saint Nick who brought presents to everyone. The magic of it all. I loved that. Still do. But what really has made me hate Christmas with a passion is the commercialization of it all. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Sale sale sale! Get the hottest new toy of the season! Get this! Buy that! Augment your winter wardrobe. Get this sexy lingerie for that special Santa in your life. Buy! On sale now! Savings! Just in time for the holidays…Ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching.

 

I work in marketing. I’ve worked in marketing for a lot of years now. At my old job, we did marketing right. At my current job, we don’t. There’s nothing sacred, nothing holy, nothing we won’t exploit in the chase for the Almighty Dollar. Frankly, most marketing departments would exploit and screw over a wet dream if there was money in it. I probably shouldn’t work in marketing — I’m tremendously bad at exploitation. Instead of writing gift-guides about how to get the hottest, greatest, and most expensive thing for your kids/SO/spouse/parents/friends/aliens from the Triangulum Galaxy whom you met while doing the pub crawl, I write gift guides about what might actually be useful and welcome by people in your life. I’ve always thought that if you were buying a gift for someone, you ought to put a little thought behind it. I generally avoid gift-cards unless I know it’s something the person would want. Me? I love getting gift cards for Amazon because I’ll use them. I go through books like most people go through underwear. And, I do tend to buy books for my loved ones because I want to share that magic with them. Books are like hand-held TARDISes. You can go anywhere in all of time and space just by opening one. And you can go back again and again. You can take an adventure and then imagine other ways it might have happened. Take characters and imagine other things they might have done.

 

Giving people books is my last, desperate, probably-in-vain attempt to re-infuse that lost magic in this exploited winter holiday. Giving people music is next on my list. Lastly, for the kids, I get them toys. Toys that they’ll keep for years. Things that they’ll play with and explore the world with. Last year, Mini-me got a bunch of dinosaurs, a book on dinosaurs, and a holding case for them. I like to imagine that she pulls them out and plays with them. Or that she matches the toys up to the pictures in the book. I like to imagine that she makes up stories about the dinosaurs. Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t. But she’s never going to get the Latest and Greatest in Toys from Aunt Kelly. No. I’m going to give her books. I’m going to give her toys that make her use her imagination. And, if I ever get a job where I can spend time with her, I’m going to do that and see just how her little brain works. I gave my nephew a book as well. It was from a game we both liked. I hope he enjoyed it. I gave his mother — my sister-in-law — a book. A book that helped me survive high school. I gave my quasi-sister a book. A book that made me want to become a writer. I gave my dad some books — books from a series that he and I both like.

 

I gave my mother an angel figurine because she collects those. That’s what she likes. But if she liked stories like I do, I’d give her a book. Books are magic. Books are my first love.

 

My most precious Christmas gift was a book. My late brother gave it to me. The Blood Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. I still have it. I still read it. Took me a while to get into it but I did. My brother knew what I liked. He liked to read — albeit not to the extent that I do — and he shared that with me. He found a series he liked and he shared it with me. The fact that it was the last Christmas present I ever got from him just makes it that much more precious.

 

It wasn’t anything “on sale.” It wasn’t the latest, hottest release. It was a story. It had dark parts. It had funny parts. It had sad parts. It took you on an adventure. And he shared that with me. For so many years, I’d been trying to get him to read. And now he was. And he was sharing that with me.

 

Shit, I read Twilight because he did. He enjoyed it. I critiqued it. But I read it because he did. That was something we could share. My dad reads A Song of Ice and Fire because I got him hooked on the HBO series. But he got tired of waiting to see what would happen next and so he asked for the books. And he got them. That’s something we can share. I’m hoping to get my dad into The Wheel of Time, into Dragonlance, into The Death Gate Cycle, into The Mistborn Trilogy. Because that’s something we can share. I’m hoping to get my family watching Doctor Who because that’s something we can share. Great stories. Great acting. Very, very sexy Doctors. Wonderful companions. Adventure. Love. Separations. Tears. Life. Loss. Something that can be shared.

 

I can recall one Christmas when I was a teenager. I got lots of nice clothes. I got lots of nice things. But I wasn’t happy. Not until I opened up the last present and saw the first three books of the Meetings Sextant from the Dragonlance series. Then I was overjoyed. Because, even back then, when I was a surly, sullen, sarcastic teenager who lived to sass off her parents, something inside me knew that the clothes, the gadgets, the games, the gizmos — they wouldn’t last. But those books? Those damned books about elves and dragons and magic and love and death and betrayal and hope? Those would last.

 

People constantly wonder about what to get me. After all, I have plenty of computers (I own two and a half). I have plenty of games and gaming consoles. I have a good smartphone (iPhone 5s). I don’t really need a tablet computer. I have a Kindle. So, what to get me? Especially at Christmas? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s not that difficult.

 

Get me a book. History. Science. Math. Religion. Philosophy. Myth. Legend. Ghost Stories. Get me a story. Something that will last. Or, give me a memory. Instead of stressing over whether the turkey is perfect or there are enough deviled eggs or if the icing on the cake is right, sit down and talk to me. Tell me funny stories from when I was a kid. Tell me embarrassing stories from when I was a teenager. Tell me things about your life. About your childhood. Your youth. Things that happened before I was born — good and bad. Tell me the truth. Tell me about girlfriends or boyfriends you’ve had. Things you did. Memories you have. Sit down and listen to music with me. Not that tinny pop modern shit. The old songs. The Old Ways. Go to Mass* or Liturgy* with me. Don’t bother getting dressed in the latest Approved Fashions. Wear something warm and comfortable. Laugh with me. Cry with me. Watch frickin’ Doctor Who with me. Listen to me ramble on about things that don’t matter to you at all but are so terribly, terribly important to me. Things like Legend of Zelda. Video games. A TV series I’m writing. My dreams of going freelance or pro-writer.

 

You want to give me something? Give me something that will last. Something that won’t rot in my closet because I already have enough clothes and shoes (seriously, I have three pairs of shoes. How many more could I need?) Give me a memory. Give me a story. Give me laughter and tears. Give me your time.

 

Because one day, none of us will be here. We’ll all just be memories living in our descendants’ minds. Because that’s what lasts. Not the latest fashion. Not make-up. Not the stupid hats you Protestants insist on wearing to your weekly “who’s better dressed than you and who can say ‘Amen’ and ‘Halleluiah’ the most” meetings.* Not the food. Not the decorations. The memories. Give me those. That’s all I want. Memories. Things that tie the past to the present and the present to the future. Keep the bows. Keep the fancy wrapping paper. Keep the frivolous. I want your time. I want your memories. I want your stories. And I want to share mine with you. Because they’ll last.

 

Presents and Santa are for kids. Give me my meat and my mead. Give me yourself. Because you’re not going to be here with me forever and I want something of you to wrap around myself when you’re gone and it’s just me here all by myself.

 

Don’t ask me what I want for Christmas. I hate that over-commercialized excuse for a holiday. Instead, just give me you.

 

— G.K. Masterson

 

*All right, I’ll fess up. I was raised Catholic and converted to Orthodoxy because Catholicism was too liberal in doctrine for me. I think that Protestants are cute and adorable like little toddlers. But I have a really hard time taking them seriously. I mean, c’mon. Every week there’s a new Protestant church opening up because Brother Billy Joe Bob had a Deee-vine Re-ul-a-shun after eating some bad fish. I’m sure that the Trinity is flattered but doesn’t take them too seriously. Yeah, they’re Christian but they haven’t figured out the whole “coloring inside the lines” thing. They’re adorable but…honestly, who can take them seriously? Sorry, Mom! It’s the truth and if you doubt that, go open a history book. Catholics and the Orthodox were 1000 years old before the Protestant Reformation even thought about getting started! Your church is adorable but…yeah, I’d rather go to Mass with Dad and Mamaw because that makes sense to me.

 

Still, love you!