Happy Boxing Day!

In England – the day after Christmas is a national holiday – the origins and the meaning of the name are a bit obscure – but the general consensus is that it came out of the habit of giving the servants the day off (cause they were busy Christmas) and with putting stuff in boxes to give to the poor (perhaps those self same servants). Not a day to whack each other with their fists.

Anyway it seems so civilized to have the day after off – I don’t but it does seem civilized.

Had a very lovely Christmas – received Help! On DVD – I don’t quite know what took so long for this to come out – but it’s out now thank goodness.

It’s not quite as good a film as A Hard Days Night – it’s more self consciously weird and the Beatles aren’t quite in the film as much and they really aren’t the focus come to think of it – but it still has the music and there are some wonderfully silly moments as well. (Where Leo McKern who is playing the head of a vaguely Indian death cult is sitting to tea with an English Vicar type lamenting that young people’s obsession with sex is cutting down attendance at the human sacrifices is priceless).

Spent more time playing City of Heroes that I should be – especially since my computer tends to freeze up just as the boss bad guy (or good guy) is about to smash me into bits. Still it’s great fun – trying to come up with different hero or villain types – and just in general wasting plenty of time that I could be doing other things. It’s crack for geeks I tell you.

Turns out the retail sales weren’t as good as everybody on the TV was saying or hoping they were. Which to someone in the real world isn’t that surprised at – with gas a 3 bucks a gallon and the housing market continuing to collapse (despite the talking heads) and just a sense of oh god what the hell is next that people would put people off of shopping like there is no tomorrow.

The Cigna story – Insurance company denies coverage for liver transplant to teen age girl, uproar ensues, Insurance company changes mind too late as girl dies, Insurance company now defending action since they are going to sued like nobody’s business – is pretty god damn horrible, made all the more so by the ugly fact that the talking heads will start weighing in screaming socialism and nanny state and everything else they can think of to obscure the fact that this company let this girl die because money was more important than anything else.

You if they just came out and said that it would be at least damn honest. But now the fog of weasel words has begun.

In a sane state an incident like this would result in major reforms to the health industry but here because too much money is being made of the current system they will try to stonewall the girl’s parents, try and settle out of court, or just out and out slime the parents suggesting they are trying to use their daughter’s death as a payday. (You know that one is coming).

Alas I think, judging by the flow of human history that we are not going to get universal health care (not insurance the parents whose kid just died had insurance) until after a severe pandemic kills enough people to make the powers that be take notice (it took the wreck of the Titanic to get the regulations changed so there are enough lifeboats for everybody, human nature hasn’t changed that much.)

Well that’s a depressing line of thought that I can’t follow up on because things got busy again.

Did discover the joys of downloading songs off of I-tunes – including Plastic Bertrand’s 1977 French Language punk hit Ca Plane pour Moi (loose translation ‘this life’s for me”) it was the biggest French language hit in the US beating out a hit from the 50’s by the Singing Nun of all things. I’m going to try and use that as my theme song for a bit – see what the hell happens.

Peace, Love, Ca Plane Pour Moi