Merry Christmas

With the help of some online assosciates, I've compiled a list of non-traditional Christmas movies for the non-traditional in my readership.

Here goes:

A Nightmare Before Christmas
Edward Scissorhands
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Die Hard I and II
Red
Bad Santa
Gremlins
The Star Wars Holiday Special
The Blue Carbuncle
Lethal Weapon
Boondock Saints
Life of Brian (it starts with a Christmas scene, at least)
[further suggestions welcome]

Alternately, you can blow all the red-and-green off and choose to watch the X-men movies, thereby keeping the X in Xmas

Why I'm a Lousy Artist

I have appreciated some good art in my time. The Pieta, the Mona Lisa, the David, Hamlet, The Final Problem, Citizen Kane, the Ode to Joy*, the Coliseum, Faust...I have seen** all of these. I've even tried to make my own small contributions to the field.

I failed miserably.***

Being the analytical sort, I wondered why. I came up with a few reasons. First of all, I asked, what is needed to make art? Alternately, what IS art?

Art, for lack of a better definition, is communication of strong emotion. When you hear The Ride of the Valkyries, you're ready to go kick some ass. When you read anything by Ibsen, you're ready to commit suicide. And so on. Good art reaches past our rational minds, grabs our heartstrings, and yanks. The artist makes us feel what he feels, and sometimes we thank him for it.

It follows that, in order to make art, one must first experience strong emotion. I have spent most of my adult life trying to dull my emotions with alcohol, goal-directed activity, and bitter rage. I have been moderately successful. Thus, the lack of strong emotions to communicate.

Which leads me to my next point...one must be able to communicate. The artist must bare his soul and reveal what lies within. The artist must strive to reach out and touch his fellow human being.

Eww.

I'm a very private person. In fact, there's a fair chance I won't post this.**** I lie to everyone I know about something. So how the hell would I expose my strongest emotions to the world at large? I'm not a great communicator. Ask anybody.


*Beethoven's 9th to you Philistines

**or heard, or whatever

***No, you can't see it.

****If I do, it's probably because I'm drunk.

Public Service Announcement

Anyone who recommends that you Google "blue waffle" is not your friend.

Don't do it.

On Poverty

A little while ago, I saw a documentary called "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices". This show talked about the evils of Wal-Mart, their predatory business practices, etc etc. One of the points they made got me thinking:

A full-time entry-level Wal-Mart employee does not make enough money to support a family of four above the federally determined poverty line. According to the filmmakers, this is a bad thing.

This raises the question: How many people is an unskilled laborer SUPPOSED to be able to support? Retail sucks. I get it. It's hard, boring, aggravating work. It's not rewarding, but it also doesn't take much to do. If you're working floor retail it is because there's plenty of people who can do your job and you are eminently replaceable. It's also not a career. If you're making it a career, then you should be moving up into the managerial positions. If you can't do that, maybe you should think about working somewhere else. If you want to be able to support a bunch of people, or buy diamond-encrusted underwear, go out and get some more marketable skills. Learn to weld, or sell (I mean really sell, not just remembering where the toothpaste aisle is), or whatever.

Just sayin'.

On Medico-Legal Issues

I'm kind of worried about the recent Murray/Jackson verdict. Don't get me wrong, Murray is clearly an idiot. Propofol is not a drug that should be used outside the operating room, emergency room, or intensive care unit. We're talking about a drug that should only be used in specialized parts of the hospital, certainly not in someone's bedroom*. You absolutely shouldn't leave a patient alone after dosing them with this med (which he did).

I agree Murray was negligent, stupid, and needs to lose his medical license. I do not agree that he was/is a criminal. Here's why: He did not set out to break any laws. His good-faith intent was to provide medical care to a patient with (apparently) some very complex medical, psychiatric, and toxicologic issues. He did not attempt to perform a physician-assisted suicide. He did not attempt to provide an abortion in a state where that is illegal. He tried to treat a patient, and his patient died. This is what is commonly known as a "bad outcome".

Bad outcomes happen, well, not OFTEN, but more frequently than we'd like. Some are really bad (death, vegetative state**). Some are less bad (loss of a limb, extended recovery time). Some are not even noticeable except to an expert (had to put in an extra stitch to close the wound). Bad outcomes happen. They don't mean the practitioner involved did something wrong, or isn't (overall) beneficial as a member of the medical profession. They are the medical equivalent of not closing the sale, or the part getting lost in shipping, etc.

Now there is legal precedent for the criminalization of the bad outcome. If the patient dies, the doctor can now go to jail. That's kind of terrifying.


*If you are a multi-millionaire rock star, you might be able to set up an ICU in your bedroom. Based on the publicity from the trial, Jackson had not done this.

**I will leave it to the reader to decide which of these is worse.