Greed

Some CEO type has decided that she needs a whole lot of money. Her company manufactures life-saving epinephrine injectors...something people with intense allergies use on emergency basis. Now, she seems to have a problem.

She wants more money. She already makes millions, but she wants more. What to do? What to do?

 

Simple.

Raise the price of the medicine 400

or 500%.

There.

Her problem solved.

 

But wait! There's more!

 

Lots of people depend on this medicine. It has saved countless lives because it stops the affected person's throat from sealing, stopping their breathing, all sorts of other hell before they die. They used this medicine for years. It worked.

Now, it is priced out of their range. It has gone from quite expensive to outrageously expensive.

 

I sincerely doubt this person cares.

But the public uproar was loud.

Somebody threatened to take this CEO person and the  company to court to have the government order them to lower the price.

Only...there is no real law that would allow it, other then common decency, that is.

 

A couple of months ago, some swine raised the price of a particular AIDS drug about 700% or thereabouts. Public outrage embarrassed the company, but not the young snot who stood to make gazillions out of this price increase.

Heh heh, seems that there was another company manufacturing the same drug. Theirs cost very little to make and they sold it for a reasonable price.

 

He got nailed for some other crime...out on bail I believe, but still facing a trial.

Public outrage works.

 

Voting against big business' greed, voting for people who are not in anything for the money, that works, too.

 

Go for it.

Signing my life away

Did you ever wonder how good your credit rating was?

There are all those ads on TV for free credit scores...or not free credit scores and I must admit, I did wonder a little.

I used to pay all the bills around here. Then husband retired from his real job and he took over the finances with a much bolder stroke than I ever would. I used to pay bills in full except sometimes for the credit cards. I always paid more than the minimum amount, but I had to guarantee I'd have some money left in the kitty to be able to, oh, I dunno, buy food.

 

So I involuntarily gave up my position as bill payer. I thought my credit score would then become non-existent.

 

I was wrong.

 

So, today whilst signing some 40 papers put in front of me, I saw my credit score. Mine! Mine alone!

 

And it was very good.

Sort of.

I think it's pretty much bunk.

When I got sick, I couldn't be depended upon to do math of any kind, so I didn't play with the check book. There was a time when I couldn't sign my name legibly.

Now that I'm sort of better, my hands still do not always cooperate when it comes to my signature. I don't use credit cards. I pay for groceries from a debit thing and sign on that little machine thing.

That's about it.

 

Haven't written a check in a long time. So how can I have a credit score?

 

Ah, sweet mysteries of life!

 

Vacation review

So, we drove down to NC. Took us two days because we're getting too old to drive nine hours straight.
The back ache started then.
It continued throughout the whole week. Excruciating pain that I tried my best to hide.

There were times that I just climbed into the bed and lay there, waiting for the fake Advil to work. It didn't help too much.

All the work I intended to do on my story didn't get done. My gmail refused to accept my passwords, stating that someone was hacking into my account.
It was me.
So much for that.

I did work on two other people's stuff, getting it done in time to have them post their stories on Amazon.

And, probably because I was suffering in silence and not including anyone else in my misery, I was rewarded with a dream that I managed to write down--a complete story, beginning to end. I will write it right after I finish Mermaid.

Life is bizarre.

Lipstick Hyperbole

Someone on FB posted the question: lipstick or not?

I had to reply to this one.

Red lips are amazing. They catch the eye, center focus on the lips, brighten one's face, yadda yadda yadda. But, alas, red lips are not for everyone.

When I was in 8th grade, back in 1962-3, all the girls started wearing stockings (with those awkward garter belts) and lipstick. They already had their bras, because--I lived in a well-developed town. So, it was off to the nearest 5 and 10 for lipstick.

I can't remember the name or the brand, but after the Tangee phase passed by, it was on to Cotton Candy Pink or something along those lines with a pink plastic tip coming out of the top of the tube. It was the only one light enough that mothers would allow. We all applied it liberally and pouted into toilet paper to blot it as we had seen our mothers do.

We had arrived.

We were women now.

As the real reason for coloring one's lips is to bring attention to the fact that our lips were now kissable and luscious, I seem to remember that none of the 8th grade boys gave a damn. Oh, there were some who knew what was happening, but most of them didn't understand. Some actually laughed when a particularly backward female donned lip paint.  But it had to be either the Tangee or the lightest pink of pinks.

I did want to wear lipstick. I even found a light light caramel color that had taste and scent that was light enough since the pink fad was gradually on the fade. I put it on right. Blotted it, wiggled my lips in the mirror, saw that it was good. 

Nobody noticed it was so close to natural.

Then I tried red. 

Disaster! Yes. Lipstick made my lips kissable!

I couldn't go anywhere without people wanting to kiss me!

The guys queued up.

Aunties, uncles, grandparents, not brothers (good thing, that) but people on the street, babies! Everybody wanted to kiss those lips of mine.

I couldn't walk down the street without being accosted.

It was as if I were wearing a sign that said KISS ME.

It was so wrong. Red lips spelled trouble. On me.

Other women could wear red, just not me.

It was magnetic to every male anywhere.

There is a line from the song "Love Potion Number Nine" where the guy takes a sip of the potion and goes crazy wanting to make love to someone.

It goes, paraphrased, "I didn't know if it was day or night! I started kissing every thing in sight, but when I kissed a cop down on 34th and Vine, he broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number Nine".

Well, it wasn't me who did the kissing, it was everybody else.

What did Mr. Tangee or Mr. Cutex put in that lipstick?

That's when I learned how to run and hide. Picture me running around corners, hiding behind brick walls until the horde passed by...actually, picturing me running is difficult enough. Attention can be good, but it can be really really bad if it isn't wanted!

Took me awhile to realize that I wasn't popular, I had these inviting red lips.

Red cape in front of a bull and red lips on me...danger danger danger.

So, I stopped wearing the red. I tossed out the caramel colored/scented tube, too. Got rid of the pink with the little colored plastic tip sticking out of the top of the cylinder.

My love affair with lipstick ended.

It has continued to this day.

It just ain't fun any more

Let me start out by saying that I have a terrible temper. Keeping it under control is difficult, but most of the time, I can manage. But repeated attacks on my control wear me down and eventually, I will let it loose. The tiger gets out of the cage, King Kong breaks his chains, Godzilla rises from the depths and I blow up.

 

If there are other people who suffer from this same affliction, and it must be an affliction as it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem natural, it seems more like something Jesus wouldn't do.

 

Oh, wait!

Jesus lost his temper with the guys selling stuff outside the temple and went around wrecking their tables and throwing a hissy fit! It says that in the BIBLE somewhere. So...while most of the time, Jesus was going around barefoot, being kind to dead guys, blind guys, lepers, his mother...his buddies, even the people who set Him up to be crucified.

Hey...He could have zapped them and walked away. He could then have zapped every other person who got in His way and been King of Kings.

 

But, for some reason I still have trouble figuring out, He didn't. He kept His cool and allowed Himself to suffer a horrible death.

 

Well, I can't be like Jesus.

 

I have been pushed to the brink and my temper is simmering, no-- maybe it's boiling by now.

I feel the burn in my gut.

The lava of fury is rising.

 

When I break, it's gonna be explosive as all hell.

Sorry, Jesus.

No Klondike bars for me.

A mineral is not a gem, necessarily

A program about what we've forgotten about history had a short story about how American forces did battle with nazi ( I do not capitalize that word) soldiers six months before we entered the war with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  It seems that we had men stationed in Greenland protecting the cryolite mine there after the nazis invaded Denmark. Since Greenland would have made a delicious place for the bad guys to settle and eventually get into Canada and the US, the same people who refused to have a blackout along the East Coast to prevent U-boats from blowing up freighters there were brilliant enough to try to protect the cryolite mines.

Cryolite is essential in breaking down Bauxite, from which Aluminum is made, or something like that.

So...story goes that we (US) sent Coast Guard ships to find these Germans supposedly hiding away at a new weather station in Greenland. Only they were not to be found. As luck would have it, the soldiers and Coast Guardsmen managed to find a Norwegian fishing boat, boarded it and found the seamen were nazis in disguise who immediately ratted out the location of the weather station. It was Hitler's idea, and probably rightly so, that if they caught the weather in Greenland that would eventually arrive in Europe, they could plot their air strikes and battles better. Makes sense...armies still depend on weather forecasts so they don't end up trying to, oh, invade Russia in winter, stuff like that.

Anyway, cool. They get the fake fishermen who rat out the German guys who are sent packing and we have access to the cryolite mines all to ourselves and our allies.

Only, the supply is limited. It runs out eventually and they have to make fake cryolite to deal with the Bauxite problem. The mines closed down entirely by 1990.

Why I write this is because it is something I never heard about and thought was pretty cool. Next time you grab your Reynolds Wrap, think about Greenland and give them a nod of respect.

Fathers' Day

My Dad with my niece Cara...this must have been in 1975 or so. That smile was magnetic!

I miss him.