Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 27

But We’re the Greatest, Aren’t We?

Just read the following AP article which rightly points out that the U.S. healthcare system is “not prepared” for an Ebola outbreak, or a SARS outbreak, or really any outbreak in particular. But the news is of course riding the Ebola fear wagon, so the title is:

U.S. Health Care unprepared for Ebola

If you actually read the article, some of the concerns simply point out how terrible health care is for the average American:

The emergency care system is already overextended, without the extra stress of a new infectious disease. In its 2014 national report card, the American College of Emergency Physicians gives the country a D-plus grade in emergency care, asserting the system is in “near-crisis.”

Federal data shows patients spend an average of 4 1/2 hours in emergency rooms at U.S. hospitals before being admitted, and 2 percent of patients leave before being seen.

14 percent of isolation care doctors and nurses and one in four emergency and critical care staff said they’d call in sick if Ebola patients were admitted to their hospitals.

Since 2002, CDC has given states and territories more than $10 billion to help public health care systems ramp up when facing a disease outbreak. The program has been cut by 30 percent since fiscal year 2007, which led to thousands of layoffs by state and local health departments, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

A recent survey of 2,500 members of the same association found that only one in three local health departments had participated in full-scale emergency preparedness drills.

The only person in America to die of Ebola and transmit it, Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, died after he went to the ER with fever symptoms, said he had traveled from Liberia, and was sent home with $40 worth of antibiotics, because he didn’t have health insurance. Our system of triage is broken, because it is two tiered. If you have insurance, you head into treatment. If you don’t, well, nice knowing you. We have to treat you, but don’t expect the same care the paying customer gets. I know people who’ve had to use charity care; a painful dental abscess that swells your face like a chipmunk who swallowed a grapefruit, an infection? Not life threatening, so go home with these pills. Painkillers cost extra. Painlessness is a privilege.

We’re the only so-called first world country that does this to its citizens. The Affordable Care Act was a compromise, when single payer was the inevitable way to save this. No, it is not perfect. You can find horror stories from Canada or the UK or anywhere; but their hospitals don’t kill 48,000 people a year with infections, or kill 98,000 through mistakes in care (a low estimate, some studies put it over 200,000). As someone who watched his grandmother die of post-operation infections, I am all for France’s system of moving you home for care where you can’t get or spread infections.

So while we’re all paranoid about a nurse in Maine who has no systems, whose blood tested negative for Ebola, and whether she should be jailed for not wanting to be homebound when she is safe unless she has a fever- and I trust her to know when she has a fever- maybe we should be more concerned about how terrible our healthcare infrastructure is. And another reason we might be afraid of Ebola spreading is because we all know people who go to work sick and spread their plague germs because we only get a few sick days (IF ANY!) and besides, showing up to work sick shows you really want this job! Your co-workers can suck it.

I say this as my whole office starts coughing, including me. So maybe we’ve all got Ebola. I’ll self-quarantine, and medicate with a bottle of Talisker’s.

Tagged: Ebola

The Fear Index

I’ve written before about how crime is down but reporting is at an all time high. The news media, primarily television, has taken “if it bleeds it leads” to a whole new level in the United States. There was a comparison about how Canadian news handled the Ottawa Parliament shooting vs. the sensationalistic so-called reporting we got here in the States. This picture sums it up:

This constant baseline of fear is not good for us. The stress will certainly affect our health, but it clearly affects our judgment . Take for example this terrifying 40 truck convoy on the Virginia highway, and how it was immediately spun into a conspiracy involving FEMA camps, forced flu vaccines (the horror!) Ebola and martial law – (from Snopes):

I can tell you one thing. These trucks are transporting more than you think ? It’s all starting. Some will know what I’m talking about and other’s will just keep believing what FOX news tells them and vote for the candidate who lies the best ! We are SOOO screwed !

Well, we who are paying attention, know something big is going to happen for sure and really soon ! So many things and all of them are so close together…….. I see a dictatorship being announced, military hitting the streets, jets overhead, forced Ebola/flu immunizations (rather true or not) Martial Law, food/water shortages, etc……. We’ll see ?

What was this obvious chicanery, this plot against our liberty, this sure sign of the coming Obamapocalypse?

A charity event for the Special Olympics.

From the World’s Largest Truck Convoy website:

The truck convoy is a unique one-day celebration where police escort a convoy of trucks through cities and towns in 38 states and Canada. The event helps raise funds and awareness for Special Olympics athletes. About 110 vehicles participated in the ride.

In 2013, over $20,000 was raised with 49 trucks participating in Virginia’s nearly 50-mile round-trip convoy along Interstate 95 from Caroline County to Henrico County, according to a press release sent by Virginia State police.

Now that’s pretty damn cool. Makes me wish I was a truck driver. I’ve volunteered with special young adults since high school, and I respect those who give their time to help them and their families. But it goes to show you that if you’re afraid all the time, everything you see is a potential threat. I am a firm believer in Situational Awareness, but that doesn’t mean being paranoid. It means being aware. Our response to threats is beyond all proportion. Look for example how we are responding to the Ebola crisis in Africa. By trying to close our borders and penalize anyone who is actually doing anything to stop it at its source.

Part of this is because our science education is lacking. Ebola is not a threat to a country with a strong healthcare infrastructure, who follow scientific protocols and do not fall victim to superstition. Well no wonder America is scared, we’ve strayed from those principles for a long time. We like calling our health care system the best, but th only Ebola patient who died in America was sent home with an antibiotic because he didn’t have health insurance. Yeah, really.

So maybe we should be scared, just a little. I wouldn’t want to go to a hospital where there was an Ebola patient, because 48,000 Americans die each year from infections contracted while in the hospital. Whether it’s pneumonia or Legionnaire’s Disease, we have a bad track record. Probably because for-profit hospitals don’t have to follow strict protocols or suffer consequences for not fixing endemic problems. I’m not a fan of having to pay $5,000 a year my health care and then pay co-pays and deductibles. Those “crazy” tax rates in countries with universal health care and college education start looking mighty sweet. But then we’d never get over having to pay for a fellow citizen’s health without judging them. Because we’ve never learned to judge not, lest we be judged. Our own mistakes are unavoidable, forgivable; the mishaps of others are moral failures that must be punished, with redemption denied for eternity.

Andrew Vachss’s latest work, a graphic novel adaptation of UNDERGROUND, with Chet Williamson, focuses on what happens when media becomes marketing mind-control:

“This myth-shattering graphic novel challenges readers to re-examine how the media “governs” their lives, whether in print, over the airwaves, or online. A chilling account of willingly-embraced oppression and abandonment of individual autonomy in exchange for the predictability and comfort of fascism, Underground is a new genre: the Graphic Novel presented as Visual Cinema. Adapted from the original screenplay of Andrew Vachss by Mike Richardson (47 Ronin, Crimson Empire, The Secret) and noted author Chet Williamson, with art by Dominic Reardon best known for his work on 2000 A.D.”

It is available in comic book shops now, but by purchasing or pre-ordering the book through the AMAZON SMILE program, a percentage of the sale will be donated to PROTECT, at no cost to you. You can sign up for Amazon Smile, and learn more about the program here:

http://protect.org/amazon-smile-program

Tagged: Andrew Vachss, Chet Williamson, conspiracies, snopes

Your Daily Sunlight: Meet Detective Jack Mook, Jessee and Joshua.

I am a volunteer with PROTECT, and I post some of their social media material. It’s a group of people I’m proud to work with. But when fighting predators, it’s important to remember there are PROTECTORS out there, too. Here’s a story I was glad to share.

Jack Mook is an Army veteran and Pittsburgh police detective who works at Steel City boxing gym, a nonprofit that mentors children. Two of his young students, Jessee and Joshua, stopped showing up for training one day, and he learned how they were living: in foster care with relatives, without beds, suffering from fleas and rotting teeth because they didn’t even have toothbrushes.

In the boys’ own words:

“Coach, we have to sleep on the floor and there’s nothing but dog feces on the floor. I’m trying to sleep my life away. I go to sleep as early as possible so I can sleep until I have to go back to school.”

When their guardian had a run-in with police, Mook applied for an emergency order making him their foster parent, and later adopted them.

From the article: “The boys are thankful for their new life.

“I feel safe,” a quiet Jessee says.

“He gave us a childhood,” Joshua said. “I know we’re going to grow up to be good now.

“He’s still Coach, but we know he’s Dad, too. Most of all, he’s a savior. He’s my role model.”

“It means everything,” Mook, 45, told TODAY a week after cheers went up in court as a judge finalized the adoption. “I got two kids off the streets. It’s awesome.

“It’s a commitment for the rest of their life,” Mook added, “and it’s a good one.”

Read the full article here.

Tagged: fathers

Deserve’s Got Nothing to Do With It

“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” –William Munny, Unforgiven

There is a lot of rage over people getting what they don’t deserve, and others not getting what they feel they do. Some writers continually grouse about those undeserving bestsellers, or get huge advances, like there’s only so much success out there, and it must be hoarded, like pie (or they didn’t deserve a bad review, so they go stalk the reviewer and call her at work and ask her how her children are doing.) But it’s not just writers. There are haters everywhere.

A world where we get what we deserve would be terrifying. Who gets to decide what you deserve? Here’s a hint, it’s not you. And that lack of control galls us. It is frightening, and we hate being afraid, so it becomes hate, and we project it. Who is making us feel this way? (It’s ourselves, but we project it upon convenient targets). For a detailed example of how this turns into a campaign of threats and terroristic threats, you can read The Kool-Aid Point by Kathy Sierra, a techie driven off the internet by vile trolls who decided she was getting too much attention because she’s a woman and must’ve used her wiles to get it, and thus didn’t deserve it.

It’s a harrowing read. And it’s unsurprising that the guy behind it came out as a full-on white supremacist in prison, because hate groups are the ultimate outcome of an obsession with an other denying you your just desserts. The ultimate projection of your own failures onto a convenient target. Why are we afraid? Why aren’t we as rich as those people on TV? It must be those people over there who are different than us.

Now, every entitled angry twit isn’t going to become the next Hitler, but feeding on that anger, that you don’t have what you deserve, and all those people out there do, is certainly not healthy. Healthy people concentrate on what they can change. We can’t change what the masses will decide (or marketers decide) will be popular. We can only persevere and improve, and count our blessings. Anyone who has the time to write, for example, or spend all this time talking on the internet, is a lot better off than most. There will always be haters who become enraged at someone else’s success, and a smaller few who decide to take them down a peg. Sometimes, like in Tom Perrotta’s ELECTION, it can be somewhat funny. But in reality, it’s pretty sad. All that energy wasted, tearing someone else down instead of … well, anything else.

Tagged: Internet, trolls

Good Reads and Goodbyes

I left GoodReads recently. And I also deleted my 15 year old IMDb account. One reason was that these ratings are monetized, but another is that stars don’t tell the whole story. It was a personal decision, not a matter of principle. I am a reader and a writer, but not so much a reviewer. I found both sites useful, but not enough to share my stars with them. As you may have read, authors sometimes behave badly on Goodreads. I am reasonably sure I wouldn’t, but now that’s a certainty.

So here are a few books and films I’ve enjoyed recently, and why. It’s the month of Halloween, so some of these are creepy.

I just started WEIRDO by Cathi Unsworth, and I’m enjoying it very much. Some of that is ’80s nostalgia and old punk camaraderie, but she has a fine voice, a sneaky and subtle one that stands back and lets the story tell itself. The story is about a young woman who was institutionalized for the ritual murder of a fellow schoolmate, and a PI and activist who want to shed light on her trial, because she may not have acted alone. It has echoes of the “Paradise Lost” murders of Robin Hood Hills, the Satanic Panic of the early ’80s, and how anyone who was a “weirdo” felt back then, when having rocks thrown at you was commonplace.

PHANTASM, the infamous 1979 horror film by Don Coscarelli, who went on to direct Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies at the End, was a blast. Yes, it’s cheap and cheesy and low-budget, but they managed great creepiness and well-spent gore with what they had. The Tall Man certainly is memorable, and what he’s doing with those corpses… well, it reminds me of another book I just finished, which was excellent:

THE CRONING by Laird Barron is a modern Lovecraftian masterpiece, without the sickly xenophobia beneath the surface, and a paranoid touch of Pynchon as well. The story is a slow burn but is well worth the wait, I kept expecting it to become twee and quaint like James Blaylock’s The Last Coin (a personal favorite) but the adorable ineptitude of its protagonist has an all too chilling reason, and I wouldn’t rob you of that revelation. Simply one of the best books I’ve read this year and one of my favorite horror novels in a long time.

And not as creepy, I enjoyed COME HERE OFTEN? 53 Writers Raise a Glass to Their Favorite Bar. Edited by Sean Manning, it includes entries by Laura Lippmann, Frank Bill, Alissa Nutting, Andrew WK, Duffy McKagan, Malachy McCourt, Tom Franklin, and a host of journalists, writers, musicians, and more, giving us a tour of bars from McMurdo Station to the ’70s Lower East Side, sneak-drinking in Tehran, literary bars from Oxford Mississippi to remote islands in the Pacific, James Crumley’s favorite watering holes, and more. A handsome little volume full of interesting reading.

But if you want some good scary reading, you can do worse than Flavorwire’s 50 scariest stories. I’m reading my way through the list. In daytime. With the lights on….

 

 

Tagged: Cathi Unsworth, drinks, Halloween, Horror, Laird Barron

Gone Girl

I saw the adaptation of Gone Girl last night, and thought it captured the book well. Gillian Flynn and Fincher did an excellent job bringing it to the screen. I loved the book. I thought it was a fantastic, dark satire of our culture’s image of gender roles and especially how the media views marriage and relationships vs. how they actually are. I feel it has to be viewed through that lens, the same way Silence of the Lambs is grand guignol and not realism. If you have not read the book, it depends on twists, so you may want to stop reading now.

Amy Dunne functions as a modern femme fatale, threatening men with something worse than death: a woman controlling their life.

She is a fascinating creation, an entitled psychopath. Part of me wants her to be as popular as Hannibal Lecter, so we can see prequels of just how messed up her childhood was, having her parents write books with the Improved Version of her! (The parents were perfect in the movie, those smiling shitbags.) It’s too bad Amy didn’t move on to another victim, like Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, or Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, but she’s a different. She doesn’t inspire fear by punishing sexual desire with the death penalty, her weapon is worse: Life Without Parole. Or at least 18 years of it. The perfect night terror for cads.

That’s the great fear among Men’s Rights Advocates. That a woman, or “Crazy Bitch,” will poke holes in the condom and lock them down for paternity when all they wanted was a one-night stand. Their other bugaboo is the woman who cries rape during consensual sex. Amy does both of these: She fakes rape twice, and fakes pregnancy once (or twice, depending). This could be held against the story; are you saying women are like that? No, not any more than Thomas Harris was saying “men are cannibals, or want to wear your skin.” But it’s our nature to want a hero, and this story has none. Neither spouse was innocent; Nick is more sympathetic in the film than the book, though part of that is the nature of film and using a ubiquitous actor like Ben Affleck. And I am not a fan. He was well cast because it’s easy to see him as the puppy-faced douchebag that Nick most certainly is.

If the story is lacking, it is in identifying exactly what’s wrong with Nick, other than being a cheater. If I missed it, it’s my own myopia. He’s been raised to want to please women; he’s the typical Nice Guy who isn’t, and that may be all we need to know. He wants the Cool Girl (one of the best soliloquys of the novel and film) but she also wants the Good Guy. We never get a clear view of their marriage, though she does accuse him of putting a false version of himself forward, “the Best Nick,” the one he will now have to be for the rest of his life, or she’ll come up with an even more twisted punishment for him. I wish this was explored further, but it wouldn’t have been so taut a thriller if it had been. There are other books for that. I expected Nick to be more passive-aggressive. He has no friends except his sister; that is telling in itself, in the same way Amy’s lack of friends is a warning flag. (While it’s not always an issue, I’ve noticed that when someone only has friends of the opposite sex, there is often a good reason).

In the movie, Amy’s murder of Desi is much bloodier and I felt that was a bad choice. She’s dangerous enough without going Basic Instinct on us for shock. The ending was also drawn out a little too much for me, but other than that, the film hit every note the book did. The Nancy Grace-alike was incredible, and the story’s depiction of how the media plays on our perceptions, and expects a fantasy perfection of relationships and criminalizes the reality, was spot-on. Take for example when Mr. Affleck said that his relationship with Mrs. Garner was “work.” Relationships do take work, but we’re not allowed to say so. No no. We must only show effortless grace, like Amazing Amy.

 

Tagged: Ben Assfleck, David Fincher, Gillian Flynn, Sexism

Sending Off a Soldier

My great-uncle Dominic, one of the inspirations for “Grandpa Butch” in Blade of Dishonor, and one of the men to whom I dedicated the book, passed away this month in his sleep. His son Richie, a Vietnam veteran, held a memorial to his departed father this Sunday. Family and friends filled the VFW hall in Nutley, where Uncle Butch sang karaoke, just a few weeks prior.

Uncle Butchie, as we called him, was an unforgettable character. Six feet tall, sporting a Stetson and a handlebar mustache that would make him the envy of every hipster this side of Portlandia, he also possessed a booming voice and a bottomless collection of jokes and yarns, usually just slightly off color. His favorite involved adultery, a refrigerator, and a Volkswagen.

He was a man of great heart. I still remember his New Year’s Eve parties. Dancing with Aunt Josie to Hank Williams. At his memorial this Sunday, two mellifluously voiced bikers sang “Your Cheatin’ Heart” in his honor. And shortly after, “Taps” was played, to send off the old soldier. Dominic served in World War II. Some of his training was done in the South. Maybe that’s where he picked up the hat he wore for years, and his manner of speech. He didn’t have a New Jersey accent. He was full-blood Italian, but always looked and sounded like he walked out of a John Wayne picture. Though he did roofing and plumbing, and drove a white Town Car a mile long, you wouldn’t have doubted it, if someone said he had a cattle ranch and had just roped a steer.

Much of the family gathered for the memorial, including his brother Jimmy. The last of his brother and sisters. As they say, these events are for the living. To set in our minds the man who left us, and remind us of those we still have. I was honored when my cousin Corey, Uncle Dominic’s granddaughter, asked to use my dedication for part of the photo memorial, including the photos of uncles Dominic and Jimmy at the book premiere. Here it is. You can read the full dedication here.

He will not be forgotten. He touched so many lives, helped so many around him. He danced and sang until the week he died, well into his nineties. He was steadfast and loyal but always had time for a good laugh. A good example for all of us.

And here’s that joke. I wish I could tell it like he could.

Three men are in line at the Pearly Gates before St. Peter.

“Okay, I need to know how you died, to see if you can get into heaven.”

The first man says, “I was just taking my Volkswagen convertible out for a drive. I pull up to a stop sign, and boom! I woke up here. I don’t know what happened.”

The second man snaps, “He don’t belong here. Let me tell you how I died. I’m a hard working man. I work so hard, I forgot to bring my lunch bag today. So I go back home, and when I get to the door, I can hear my wife is in there with another man! By the time I get the door open, she’s pulling her clothes on, but I see his socks, by the open window! He’s out there in his convertible! I’m so enraged, I pick up the refrigerator, and throw it out the window on top of him!”

St. Peter goes “Hmm, well, stand over there, I need to think about you two.” He turns to the last guy. “What’s your story?”

The man shrugs. “Well, I was hiding in the refrigerator.”

Like I said… if Uncle Butchie told it, you’d be laughing.

I’ll miss you, Uncle Butchie. Thank you for being the man you were.

Here’s some of my family and me, at the memorial. Great Uncle Jimmy in front, my Uncle Paul to the right (he’s getting the next book dedicated to him!) and my cousins lined up behind. Richie, Butch’s son, is to the right of me.

Twitter Shenanigans

For those of you not on Twitter, an amusing exchange with one of my favorite authors.

I can’t pass up good wordplay (or a bad pun, as some might call it) and her answer is priceless.

(If you don’t know what “scarole” aka escarole, green, money is, please watch all seven seasons of the Sopranos and get back to me.)

Tagged: joyce carole oates

Touring a Restored B17 Bomber

My stepfather loves aircraft, so when I learned that a fully restored B17 would be landing at Essex airport, we spent the afternoon visiting and touring this living relic.

The Aluminum Overcast is one of a dozen remaining B17 bombers. It never flew in World War 2, it was built in 1945 and scrapped for $750 after the war. It was restored later, and is now toured by the Expeditionary Aircraft Association. A tour is ten bucks. A flight… well, that’s $475. A little steep for the both of us, especially since they want a full plane before taking off. They regaled us with a story of a rich woman who paid for a full flight for strangers just so she could go up, but none of us had five grand to spare.

The B17 isn’t as enormous as you might think; it’s very tight in there, especially getting through the bomb bays. I made it through twice, to the plane crew’s amusement! I’ve got the beer belly but I am a grappler. I’m used to tight squeezes and flexing into contorted shapes, like crabwalking beneath the fuselage to get photos of the ball turret.

My friend Peter joined us later, that’s him in the bomb bay. He’s a 30 waist or something. A human javelin. I was more at home manning the sidemounted M2 .50 caliber machine guns. They only had a minute’s worth of ammo, to reduce weight. I easily weigh twice as much as two of the crew members would. These were small, young guys.

Here’s the rest of the photos, including the dual .50’s on the tail gun pod, and some closeups of the propellers, and the infamous ball turret where if the hydraulic systems were down, the unlucky gunner was unlikely to be able to get out, and became the landing gear.

Tagged: Bomber Nose Art, Guns, Pita-San, World War 2

Denny the Dent is a Work of Art

Cover artist Conrad Teves has his work on exhibit in Minneapolis, and his cover art for Denny the Dent is on full display. Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann would definitely call Denny “a modern art masterpiece” if he met him in the flesh, so I figure it was bound to happen.

Coincidentally I am finishing up a new Denny the Dent story for Eric Beetner’s upcoming collection of crime fiction without guns. Denny is dangerous enough without one.

To read all 5 Denny the Dent stories, check out 5 Tales of Street Justice.