In light of Sicko and all that

From this article:

What could be changed about the health-care system to better help patients?

Dr. Baby: Universal health care.

Dr. Heart1: But you’re talking from a public-health perspective. If you are an individual … if your dad is sick and he has access to insurance and money, do you want him to live in the country with universal health care or our kind of health care? Our kind of health care.

Dr. Virus: The only place I’d defend American care is for the catastrophically ill, where there are miraculous outcomes still.

Dr. Heart2: If you’re talking about separating Siamese twins, yes, I’d want to do it in the United States rather than anywhere else in the world. When money is not an issue, I would still contend that we have the worst, because we get overtested. We chase incidental diagnoses that might not affect the patient’s health.

Dr. Virus: With universal, you’d get the same kind of mediocre shittiness that you’d get in all other kinds of standardized approaches. But for millions of people, that would be a big upgrade.

That last statement really spun me out. It's so...true! It's rather obvious, and yet hasn't been stated as well as that. I really recommend reading that entire article; it's good reading. New York Magazine (not to be confused with the New Yorker, also a very good publication) is really quite good. Here's another nice thing to read, along the lines of Freakonomics.

So yeah

Amongst my very, very staggered bouts of inadequate studying for things, I am surrounded by sucktitude. I forgot about the nature and sheer quantity of this sucktitude, being surrounded mostly by non-sucktitude: listening to live sets of Regina, really digging Patrick Wolf (he's coming to Aus!) and *cough* playing Heroes III waaaaay too much *cough*.

Man I have a bad cough.

Anyway, inbetween the my mothers' attempt to seek attention/lamely joke about suicide, I chanced upon the Sunday Herald. Lo and behold, the sucktitude begins.

Now, I understand that corporate media as such are indecent, self-serving piles of shit, but ye gods the front page story was trash (In fact, it's making me so goddamn angry that I'm barely managing to stay coherent; i'm put some water to boil for ramen, as it accurately reflects my situation: it's fucking making me boil). It was about there was sooo much violence and murder and mayhem on prime-time television on the free-to-air channels in Australia. This is below propatainment; it's not something I expect the even the Telegraph to publish.

And the story itself! Oh my god. They hired media students to catalogue violence that occurs in the primetime block of television (6-10.30pm), note that there is a lot of violence and then make some fucking platitudes about 'being desensitised to violence' and the Premier not letting his kids watch Spiderman or some other bogus crap. I can't even begin to start.

First, off, media students?! What, doing your own goddamn work is too fucking much now? Is watching television so much work you have to delegate it!!? Are you admitting this to me openly?! Fuck, atleast lie to me, so I feel like you went to some trouble to decieve me. Instead, like a shitty lover, you just went and crapped all over my face, and want me to be grateful and pay you. My god.

The worst part? That i'm only just about to come to the worst part.

The worst part was when you looked at the catalogue of violence that they mention. The leader was SBS (big surprise there) and why you might ask? Because of their news coverage. Because it actually goes out of the country (shock! horror!) to cover atrocities being committed, it ends up scoring high. Are you fucking high or something? You're a goddamn news publication, you assholes! They're actually covering news! What, you want all the news to be goddamn kittens and newborns? Jesus Christ.

SBS also scores high on the sex meter, because again they show foreign films. And yes, obviously, this indicates that SBS is a den of craven lust. Gee, you never consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, Australians are conservative prigs? No, it must be those foreigners, they must be the evil, corrupted perverts.

One last thing: One of the media students mentioned how awful it was to watch images of torture victims. During an ABC documentary about torture. Lord forbid, with cases of extraordinary rendition and cases of torture occuring due to major Western powers, why should we ever want to talk about torture? Back to the kittens and newborns.

In retrospect, the trivial bullshit and fluffy airheads of 60 Minutes seem like they're overflowing with integrity. Though they don't, and it contributes to the sucktitude mentioned above.

To cap this off with some humour, bash quotes about Wikipedia. My favourite:

<@ZoFreX> goddammit
<@ZoFreX> I forgot the definition of irony
<@ZoFreX> so I went to look it up on Wikipedia
<@ZoFreX> but Wikipedia is down
<@ZoFreX> AND I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THAT'S IRONIC OR NOT

Oh, the irony! Ramen awaits.

And fresh off their landmark tour

Do you see this?

No you can't. Because i'm on the other side. If you can see me, stop. Wrong side.

But if you can see this, you can see that i'm quivering. What am I quivering from? The cold partially yes. But more importantly, I just finished the watching the game demo of Starcraft II. All I can say is: Oh-em-gee. It looks awesome. I think the cutest part was the Banelings writing GG. It was adowable. So watch it now! Go go go.

Also finished my essay on time! I don't know whether it'll do well. Sometimes, I just amaze myself. Or astonish. Or unpredict.

Oh what's a Baneling? Why don't you just watch it then!? Going to watch Naruto and warm self up. I don't read enough.

"A clean house is a sign of a wasted life."