Author: Anne Orsi

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Because Raped Women are a Series of Tubes

One of the pleasures of living in a world where anti-intellectualism rules a major political party is that it’s fairly easy to spot the political leanings of the shockingly ignorant.

Image courtesy of Matt Katzenberger (source)

These are the people who consistently vote against their best interest, and are completely immune to the cognitive dissonance that rational people encounter when they attempt to hold diametrically opposed opinions in the same brain.  They want to repeal Obamacare because socialized medicine is bad, while protecting Medicare because socialized medicine is good. They want the incredibly rich to get ever larger tax breaks, even though the very rich pay proportionately less than they – the working and middle class – do. They actually believe the obvious bullshit of the ultra-rich Romneys and Koch brothers of the world, who promise they would be creating oodles of jobs (Really!) if not for the unduly burdensome 13% or less that they now pay in taxes. They are the same people who are completely in favor of the death penalty, but anti-abortion no matter what the reason.

They support defunding government grants for poor students since only snobs want their kids to be educated. The budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan, the new star of Mitt Romney’s presidential ticket, would not only reduce the size of Pell grants and even eliminate access to them for tens of thousands of students but would have cut the Head Start program to ribbons, too. Education? Our kids don’t need no stinkin’ education! We can compete with the educated workforce of countries like Sweden, Japan, and Germany without all that schooling. It doesn’t take education to know stuff.

It isn't legitimate rape if she gets pregnant.
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Just ask U.S. Senate candidate, and current U.S. Congressman, Todd Akin (R-Mo).  He knows stuff. Akin is the guy who has been all over the news in the last couple of days because of his cocksure knowledge that “legitimate rape” doesn’t result in pregnancy. He knows this because “doctors” told him. In his interview with Charles Jaco on a St. Louis television broadcast, Akin said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole [conception] thing down.” (If you want the full context, watch the full interview. The abortion comments are in the second video, and start at 1:54.)

There are about 32,000 women in America who are now relieved to know that the rape by which they were impregnated last year wasn’t “legitimate” rape. They can now conclude that despite the non-consensual nature of that sexual congress, they actually enjoyed it. And that’s good news for this year’s approximately 32,000 impregnated victims of non-consensual sex, too. Thank you, Congressman Akin, for your words of comfort. All those women can stop going to therapy now that they realize that they weren’t really traumatized at all. That’ll save a bundle on their health care costs, seeing as how your party would prefer not to insure these women’s health, either.

To be fair, Akin did say that he misspoke. He meant to say “forcible” rape, not “legitimate” rape.  Because non-consensual sex with a drunk college student isn’t really rape, whether or not she’s cognizant of what’s happening. And it’s totally not rape if the parties are married, even if they happen to be going through a divorce. It’s not rape if one partner is under the age of consent, because children who have sex know what they are getting into and are making intelligent, informed decisions about it. Especially children who have had abstinence-only sex education.

A woman's body can totally tell if this is rape or not.
Roulette determines the lucky winner. (Source)

 

Life starts at conception, according to Akin. (It’s right there on his website, so it must be true.) Or maybe it starts two weeks before conception, like Arizona recently legislated, which means that women are in a perpetual state of “pregnancy” because conception could happen two weeks in the future at any time. Akin must be right, because he knows this stuff. He sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and pregnancy is sciencey, right?

Oops. No. I’m wrong. It’s God stuff, not science stuff. Totally my bad. Sorry.

 

Where better to look than to God for guidance on, well, everything? Now, God doesn’t speak out loud, or even very clearly, but fortunately he wrote his completely unclear directions down for us. Reading the Bible for instruction on life is tantamount to reading the instructions from Ikea, except that once you’re done with the Ikea instructions you have a piece of furniture that either wobbles, or doesn’t.  Reading the Bible is tougher, so fortunately we have crowds of really, really smart preachers to tell us exactly what God actually meant when he dictated those mystifying instructions. Now, a disturbing number of those really, really smart preachers, especially the fundamentalist ones, haven’t been to college, much less seminary, but they can read Elizabethan English and understand it just fine because they’re touched by God. Yes, we’re back to the refrain of “We don’t need no education.” Thank you, Pink Floyd.

Yes, I said they are touched. Touched in their various God Spots.  (image source)
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The Bible is crystal clear about when life begins, if by “crystal” you mean “obsidian.” If you don’t believe me, check out the Open Bible site, which has all the references its author deems relevant gathered carefully in one place. You can even vote for which verses make things clearest for you. Of the 40 or so verses excerpted from various English translations of the Bible (we know God meant the Bible to be in English), I found two that were absolutely on point and helpful. Oddly, they were the same verse, just in slightly different translation: Exodus 21:22-24, which says that if a bunch of men get together and hit a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage, then they either get fined as the husband sees fit, or they get punished to the same extent that the woman was injured. Go ahead and click the link on that verse. Read it in multiple English translations. If you know other languages, read the translation in other languages, too. Now you tell me which one is the best translation, given your expertise in ancient Hebrew.

Now, just for funsies, look at the rest of Chapter 21 of Exodus. It’s all relevant and pertinent to life today, isn’t it? So it makes perfect sense to use it as our go-by.

The homepage of Akin’s campaign website opens with a religious statement that puts the cart before the horse:

First, I want to give thanks to God our Creator who has blessed this campaign, heard your prayers, and answered them with victory. Through the months we have seen frequent instances of His blessing and are reminded that with Him all things are possible!

Evidently he credits prayer and divine intervention with his success in the Republican primary rather than the hard work of his supporters. I suppose that makes sense, seeing as how his list of endorsers lean heavily toward leaders of conservative Christian religious institutions. (Surely there’s no impermissible politicking going on in the churches those endorsers represent. Surely. Because that would jeopardize the tax-exempt status of those churches.)

This situation with Rep. Akin demonstrates exactly why I have a huge problem with politicians using an inconsistently translated collection of  Bronze Age “wisdom” to guide modern government policy. This situation, among others, is why I advocate, agitate, and get politically active – not to mention write passionate blog posts – when elected officials decide it’s okay to blur the lines between church and state. It’s also why I get cheesed off when people want to base their lives on a book of superstitious tales and ancient customs we no longer observe.

When we allow our leaders to cherry-pick verses of this collection of ancient manuscripts, we set ourselves up to go back to that time. Me, I’d rather live in a world of universal health care than a world of leper colonies and plagues. And if that makes me a socialist, then I am a proud socialist.

Furthermore, when a page of platitudes masquerades as “clearly the Bible says life starts at conception,” then I think it’s way beyond time our elementary schools taught critical thinking and logic to children – because if their parents buy the crap on that page as “proof” of anything, they won’t teach their kids to think at home or anywhere else.

Apparently what makes a human different from other living creatures is that we have a soul. How religious people can tell whether we have a soul, and how they know animals do not, remains an insurmountable mystery. Science cannot say when the soul comes into existence, since there is no evidence that such a thing as a “soul” even exists. But ignoramuses like Todd Akin want to legislate matters pertaining to women’s health based on their Bronze Age “wisdom” without any proof whatsoever. If we permit this to happen, we will get the same draconian laws as places like the Dominican Republic, where pregnant teenagers are denied chemotherapy because the life-saving treatment might harm a 13-week old fetus. Yeah, that happened.

The problem is ignorance,  lack of education, and reliance on “facts” gleaned from questionable translations of Bronze Age texts.

The problem is that people with no more background in science that this Akin clown sit on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Presumably he would know something about science if he’s sitting on a major legislative committee devoted to it. Of course, his Bible-based philosophies are contravened by science, so he cannot possibly wrap his head around them. Like that other ignorant politician who attempted to speak about a subject he knew nothing about, Akin apparently believes that women are a series of tubes, tubes that can easily be rerouted just by the nature of forced intercourse, to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

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What complete jackassery.

 

 

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Atheists Banned

According to Article 19, Section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution of 1874 – which my third-great-grandfather helped write – I am ineligible to hold any office in the civil departments of the state government, nor may I testify as a witness in any court.

Why? Because I don’t believe in a divine being.

It will take over 70,000 signatures of registered voters (from Arkansas’s total population of about 3 million) to get the repeal of the constitutional provision on the ballot. Since we are in the buckle of the Bible Belt, the effort to find that many signatures would be Herculean. I seriously doubt many churches would do anything to support the initiative, and most would actively work against it.

That being said, put me down as a scofflaw. I’m a Notary Public and worked for years as a state employee. I’ve testified multiple times and served as a Special Circuit Judge.

Federal law prohibits enforcement of this provision, but its presence still rankles.

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Out of Zombies, Egypt

A few years ago, the Archaeological Institute of America published an article hypothesizing that the formation of ancient Egypt was linked to recurrent Predynastic zombie attacks due to outbreaks of Solanum virus. Further study has proven the early hypothesis to be true. In matters of archaeology, history, and development of civilizations, this finding is every bit as significant as learning that the Higgs boson, theorized since the early 1960’s, does, in fact, exist.

Solanum, as you may know, was isolated in 2003 by famous zombie researcher Max Brooks, who immediately published his findings in the scholarly Zombie Survival Guide. Solanum is the insidious virus that feasts on the frontal lobe, killing its human host’s ability to maintain basic bodily functions. (The virus has absolutely no relation to the plant genus of the same name, despite the fatal characteristics of the nightshades. The tastier, less deadly members of this plant genus include tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants.)

The virus keeps the victim’s brain alive, though, and actually mutates it so that it is no longer oxygen-dependent.  As the Urban Dictionary correctly points out, “By removing the need for this all-important resource, the undead brain can utilize, but is in no way dependent upon, the complex support mechanism of the human body.” The mutated brain eventually controls the body of the host, but in a very different way than the original, uninfected brain.

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The most recent outbreak of Solanum happened just three years ago but was apparently confined to the jackalope population. This outbreak was particularly disturbing because for the first time Solanum was proven to have infected a non-human host. However, in examining the historical documents, it appears likely that the Rabbit of Caerbannog, encountered by the British King Arthur and his loyal Knights of the Round Table in their quest for the Holy Grail, may well have suffered the undeadly effects the Solanum virus, too.

They’d better not risk another frontal assault. That rabbit’s dynamite.  (source)

Headless skeletons found at Egypt’s historic city of Hierakonpolis are what gave the ancient zombie plague away. According to archaeologists studying the site, “[t]he number and the standard position of the cut marks (usually on the second-fourth cervical vertebrae; always from the front) indicate an effort far greater than that needed simply to cause the death of a normal (uninfected) person. The standard position also indicates these are not injuries sustained during normal warfare.”

The archaeologists’ findings mirror what we know to be true about modern zombies. In multiple documentaries about the zombie plague, George A. Romero taught us that the best way to stop a zombie is by decapitating or braining it. Deprive the Solanum of its host, destroy the tissue in which it lives, and it cannot animate that which ought not to be animated in the first place. And if you think for a moment that these films are not important, think again: in 1999, the first of the documentaries was one of 25 selected by the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress as one of the most “historically… important” films ever made.

Bless your googlie-eyed wisdom and your dedication to raising social awareness, Professor Romero. (source)

Recent studies of the Narmer palette, discovered at Hierakonpolis, served as the interpretive breakthrough the scientists needed to piece together the clues at the dig site. We don’t have to tell you that the Narmer Palette was named for the famous Egyptian King of Dynasty 0. That’s a zero, not a letter, and it stands for the dynasty that begat all future Egyptian dynasties, back when begetting was still a new thing. (The people of the Levant would jump on the begetting bandwagon about fifteen hundred years later. They would maintain the trend until 70 C.E. That’s when the Romans sent them out on a diaspora, which is the Aramaic term for “schlepping your kids all over creation.”)

About 5100 years ago, Narmer ruled Upper Egypt (the south part, closer to the source of the Nile). He was known among his people as “Raging Catfish,” which, as a mascot and spirit animal, does not exactly seem terribly fearsome, but nevertheless, that’s what “Narmer” means in ancient Egyptian. The Catfish moniker may have come from his propensity to dam up the Nile to increase the tillable acres in his kingdom. Dams make for still water, where catfish like to scavenge, but when they want to go farther and butt their whiskered heads against the wall of the dam, well, they rage.

But as history would happen, the Solanum virus outbreak in the Nile Delta, to the north, got out of hand and the northern king ruling the area couldn’t keep things under control. The hordes started to move south, toward Narmer’s kingdom. Narmer would have none of that.

As soon as Narmer finished putting down the zombie hordes, the grateful citizens of the upper and lower Nile Deltas held themselves an election and declared Narmer King of Everything. It seems that the old king of Lower Egypt had lost his head, and thus his crown, in the zombie wars, the grateful inhabitants of the delta decided to give that crown to Narmer, to wear in conjunction with his own crown. Fortunately, the adoration of so many Egyptians of every stripe made Narmer’s head big enough to hold two crowns, and thus Upper and Lower Egypt united under a single ruler and the First Dynasty began.

The ancient stonecutters of the Nile were especially delighted that they could go around carving things without jumping and running for their lives every time they heard a moan. In grateful appreciation, they got together and designed the Narmer Palette, a big stone carved on both sides chronicling events of the zombie uprising.

Detail of the obverse side of the Narmer Palette, showing the decapitated zombies being presented to a doubly-crowned king.

As Egyptian rulers would frequently do upon the resolution of some momentous event, Narmer decided to change his royal sobriquet. Besides, folks in the north thought “Catfish” was too endearingly redneck for the ruler of two magnificent kingdoms. He became “Menes” and founded the northern city of Men Nefer, which means “enduring and beautiful.” In modern language, Men Nefer’s name is pronounced “Memphis.”

While “enduring” might suit the victor of the Great Zombie War who had saved humanity, Narmer/Menes probably had enough battle wounds to disqualify himself as “beautiful.”  His southern subjects recognized the need for a name change but did not like the one he chose for himself. Some people wanted him to take the title of Zombie King, but others suggested that name was probably culturally insensitive given the circumstances. So, they came up with the next most deadly creature they could think of, and they called him the Scorpion King.

Catfish the Scorpion King (source)
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Another Day Gone

This is My Brain on Migraine
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I wake up; the pounding in my head forces me to. I drag my sandy eyelids up and try to focus on the clock. 4:45 a.m. My mouth tastes like dirty socks and my stomach wants to heave. I make myself sit up and the room reels. The telltale rush of saliva into my dry mouth warns me that I don’t have much time. When the room stops moving I put my legs over the side of the bed. Somehow I’m vertical and staggering toward the bathroom.

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I keep the shots of Imitrex ready to go. Finding the injector in the dark is not a problem. The container is on the bottom shelf of the bathroom cabinet, right where it’s supposed to be. My fingers fumble and pry up the lid on one of the twin ampules. The only reason I can do this now is years of practice. When my doctor first gave me the shots I was slower. The novelty meant I sometimes couldn’t prime the injection device properly and a spray of precious triptan would shoot across the room instead of into my flesh. When the headaches are really bad, sometimes that still happens. Migraines steal fine motor coordination. Gross motor skills are pretty much out the window, too, but it’s the fine motor I need now. And the dismay of seeing an injection that costs over a hundred dollars wasted into thin air has no equal. This morning I manage to load the syringe and press it to my flesh. My thumb hits the button on the end of the device and I can’t help but hiss as the sting of the medication hits my intramuscular tissue. It takes a couple of tries, but I manage to cram the injector into its holder and prime it for the next shot. Then I stagger a couple of steps to the sink.

Surely I will feel better if I get those nasty gym socks off my teeth. My hands tremble as I load my toothbrush. Applying toothpaste to my toothbrush takes extra time and effort. It’s hard. I turn the water on and wet the brush, then bring it to my objecting mouth. No sensation is good, because every sensation is amplified with a migraine. The sharp taste of minty-fresh explodes in my mouth and I rinse the brush again. I just want to peel off the cotton that coats my mouth, not breathe on anyone. I don’t want to sanitize myself yet. I just need to get rid of the grimness of first waking up.

Afterward, I grip the sink with both hands. The Imitrex still isn’t working, and even the slightest head movement is agony. Maybe if I lean here for a moment the drug will kick in. But not yet. The jack hammer in my skull subsides with stillness. When I think I can bear it, I move tentatively toward the toilet. Whether or not I really need to go, I need to sit down, and, at a distance of twenty feet, my bed is too far away. I miss the three-foot-tall stacked cube shelf that I used to have in my bathroom. I could sit on the toilet, pull it close, and rest on it, my head lying on my folded arms. Sometimes I would drift into unconsciousness that way and my husband would call to me, asking me if I was all right. If I had assumed that position, I was never all right. Now, though, the shelf lives at his house and the twelve-inch distance to the tiled wall is to far to lean, no matter how good the cold tiles might feel on my skin. I sway as I sit there.

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My eyes are closed. I lose track of the minutes. I beg the drug to start working. I wait for the sensation at the back of my neck that signals its effectiveness. Nothing happens.

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Eventually, I think I can make it back to bed. The nausea is a reminder that the meds aren’t working, and I know that on my way I need to get the Phenergan. Dr. Archer has prescribed it in a cream. Philip at the Drug Store compounds it and puts one dose into a syringe without a needle. A plastic cap at the tip of the syringe keeps the cream from drying out. It’s hard to get those caps off. I dread the effort, but I know it is necessary. If I start throwing up, I won’t stop. Vomiting with a migraine doesn’t make anything better.

I stand before the door of the medicine cabinet again, reach into the Ziplock bag that contains the Phenergan cream syringes, pull out a syringe, and start wrestling with the cap. Not only do I lose coordination with migraines, I lose strength. It takes me more than a minute to pry the cap off. With a grateful sigh I push the plunger and spread the cool cream on my wrists. I aim the syringe at the trash can and let it go. Of course I miss. I’ll pick it up later. Now it’s time to stagger back to bed and hope that the combination of drugs will stave off the nausea.

Too late, I forget that I have a bead of blood on my skin from the Imitrex injection. I know I smear the sheets with red as I lie down. I hope it has dried and I can brush off the crumbs of blood easily. I washed and changed the sheets just yesterday, using strong spot remover on the blood stains from last week’s migraines. They never seem to come out completely unless I use bleach. I care, but not enough to do anything but pull myself into a fetal position. My pillow is too hard. There’s nothing I can do about it except keep very, very still. My body is covered in a sheen of sweat from the nausea. I don’t want under covers yet. Warmth amplifies the pain. When the Phenergan kicks in, the sweat turns clammy, then evaporates, leaving a salty residue. Once my skin is dry, I find the coolest spot on the smooth sheets. I tug the top sheet over me, and a few minutes later pull up the quilt, too. The Imitrex still isn’t working. I am grateful for Phenergan’s fortunate side effect of drowsiness. I lie there, waiting for the Imitrex, and waiting for sleep.

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Sleep evidently came. I am wake again. It’s 7:40 now, and the Imitrex has only dented the migraine pain. The nausea is mercifully gone, but even though every shift of my head doesn’t bring waves of agony, a full-blown migraine still actively assaults my head. I try to sleep again, lying still and letting my mind drift hypnotically. It’s no use. I’m awake and alert, pain and all.

I can dose myself with Imitrex again. After two hours, if I don’t have relief I can take one of the tablets. I carefully leave my bed and make for the bathroom. The blackout curtains in my bedroom don’t close completely, and the shaft of daylight stabs my eyes as I pass through it. I need a ladder to reattach the last drapery hook to the rod.  Not now, though. I can barely walk steadily. Climbing a ladder is out of the question.

Imitrex’s packaging is intended to be impossible to open. Insurance only pays for nine pills a month, and they come in paper and foil-backed blister packs. Normally I take all the pills out of the blister packs and transfer them to a pill case as soon as I get home from the pharmacy. Stupidly, I neglected to do so this time. It’s a new box of pills, and I fumble even to tear away the box top to get at the blister pack. I still have no fine motor coordination, and tearing away the paper and foil backing is beyond me. Finally I stab the back of the pack with tweezers to get it open. The pill breaks as I extract it. It will leave a horrible taste in my mouth because of that. I swallow it anyway, and take a long drink of water to wash away as much of the residue as I can. Now for the other weapon in my migraine arsenal.

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Hydrocodone. I hate it. I love it. I hoard it. Dr. Archer allows me twenty pills a month, but I rarely use them all. It scares me. The last thing I need is an opiate addiction. My tolerance to it is high. For all I know, I’m already addicted. I don’t know. What I do know is that hydrocodone is an extra lifeline for when the triptans don’t work. Today, I need it. Maybe I can go back to sleep. It will be an hour before either it or the Imitrex tablet will take effect. I shake the fat tablet into my palm and wash it down with water. I go back to bed.

I doze, but I don’t go back to sleep completely. After an hour, there is no change. I am tired of my bed. The cats have been anxiously head-butting the door and crying. They’re hungry. Their water dish is probably empty, too. I debate taking another hydrocodone tablet, but decide to wait. I want to see how the effort of climbing the stairs affects me, and if I take one now it will make me itch. Of course, I can always take Benedryl with it. The antihistamine will help with the itching and make me drowsy again. No, I’ll wait.

I should have taken the second pill. In my kitchen, I sink onto a stool at the breakfast bar and lay by head on my arms. The cool granite of the counter feels wonderful. The pounding in my skull does not. When it subsides, I reach for the bottle of hydrocodone I keep on my lazy Susan. The cats are sitting next to their empty food bowls, expectant. “Just a minute, guys,” I whisper. I run water into a dirty glass sitting in the sink and swallow the pill. I stand at the sink for a moment, waiting for the pounding to start again because of the movement. Thankfully, it does not.

The cats’ food dishes are on the floor. I squat slowly, not wanting to bend or even tilt my head for fear that blood will rush into it and the throbbing will begin again in earnest. I nearly lose my balance, but I’ve thought to hold the edge of the counter to ease myself down, so I have a lifeline. I’m shaky as I rise. The three steps to the bin of cat food in the pantry go well. I scoop food into one of the bowls. No wet food this morning, kitties. Sorry. I can’t bend over to get the can, and the smell of it would destroy me. I can smell the litter box across the room, and I know it needs attention, too. There’s no way. Not now. Not yet. Please understand and don’t do your business in the house plants, I beg them silently.

I sit on the stool again to recover from this round of activity. I need to eat something. Lack of food will only make things worse in the long run. I keep coffee in the fridge. Caffeine sometimes helps, sometimes hurts. As bad as this headache is, I decide to give it a try. Iced coffee with a bit of hazelnut-flavored sweetener and a dollop of milk. It isn’t as sweet as Starbucks, but then nothing really needs to be. My sister says those sweet coffee drinks from Starbucks are “a candy bar in a cup.” She’s not far wrong. I sit and drink. It tastes good. I feel stronger after sustenance. I mix myself another iced coffee, and munch on a few strawberries. The carbs will give me strength and energy.

It’s 8:25 now. I move to my computer, which sits in an alcove off the kitchen. I bring my coffee with me. I can sit relatively still, reading blogs and news, and wait for the hydrocodone to do its magic. Eventually, the itching starts. I keep a back scratcher next to the computer because my perpetually dry skin always itches. Itching from too much opioid  is not satisfied as easily. I read. I sit. When I get up to forage for more food, my head reminds me that I need to stay still. I return to my computer chair with a small chunk of Havarti cheese and rice crackers.

A little after eleven, my phone rings. It’s Jan, wanting to go to The Full Monty at the Weekend Theater. She’s not sure we can get tickets. Tonight is the last night. Even though I tell her I am not up for it, she is determined to go. She will have to drive in from Hot Springs, so if the show is sold out then she’ll have a wasted trip and an hour’s drive home. I turn down the volume on the phone, because the conversation is unnaturally loud. I tell her I’m not feeling well, but that she is welcome to come by if she can’t get a ticket. I hope the show is not sold out. I hope she can go. I realize I need to go back to my bed. We hang up, and I take a deep, slow breath to steady myself. The phone call has brought back the raging throb.

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I get a glass of ice water before descending the stairs to my bedroom again. I climb into bed. The sheets are smooth and cool, and I think again that I need to rehang that drapery hook so the curtains close completely. The shaft of midday sun coming through the opening stabs my eyes. My head hurts too much for me to turn my back to the windows. Besides, the light bounces off the wall; it doesn’t really go away if my back is to it. I close my eyes and hope for sleep.

I haven’t yet started to doze when I hear the garage door open. Jack is home. Lora is with him. They’re going to hang out in the basement. He brings me an icepack. I’m glad he’s come home, because I can really use that icepack. I drape it over my forehead, pressing its ends to my temples. The kids go to the basement. They know to be quiet when I have a migraine. Poor Jack. His whole life, his mother has been sick. Sometimes, she’s sicker. Like today. He has told me that by the time he was eight, he could read the labels on my meds and even spell hydrocodone. I don’t doubt it. I sent him to get them from the cabinet often enough.

I doze, and finally I sleep. It’s almost 5:00. The migraine has receded to the back of my brain. It’s still there, but right now it’s not attacking me. It doesn’t hurt. I go upstairs again. If I don’t eat a meal, I’ll suffer for it. I need protein, vegetables. I make a sandwich and chew it slowly. I don’t really want it. I’m not hungry. The consequences of not eating will be worse than forcing myself to eat now. I sit at the kitchen counter and read a  magazine while I take unenthusiastic bites. I hear the kids come upstairs. They’re leaving. They chat cheerfully. Their good moods and the sandwich have combined to lift me up. Lora tells me she’s reading The Princess Bride, and I am delighted. It has been my favorite book since I was sixteen. I refused for years to see the movie, because I was so afraid that Hollywood would ruin it. I shouldn’t have worried. William Goldman wrote the screenplay for his own great book, so everything was as it should have been. Miracle Max and Valerie. Fezzik and Inigo Montoya. The Man in Black. Buttercup. Prince Humperdink. The Six-Fingered Count. Talking about it with Lora, I feel animated for the first time today.

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The kids leave and I return to the computer. I need to sit still. If Jan comes tonight, I need to be functional. I’m functional now, but I don’t know how long it will last. I start writing this blog post. I feel myself tiring, but Jan calls at 7:30 to say she could not get a ticket to the play. For the last hour I have been checking the clock, wondering if she will call. About fifteen minutes ago I had decided that she must have gotten in, or I would have heard from her. “No, no, it’s fine,” I tell her. “Come on by.” I go downstairs to get the skirts I need to alter for my niece’s school uniform. They are hand-me-downs from her sister, who is shaped differently. As Jan and I visit, I rip out the hems. By 9:30, she says she’s tired and is going to get back on the road. I’m glad, because I’m fading, too. The headache isn’t back, but it’s skulking in the recesses of my skull, waiting to strike. And all those meds exhaust me. I’m happy to have seen Jan, though.

After Jan leaves, I rip the hem out of the last skirt, and I head downstairs with a fresh glass of ice water.

I read a little in Sacré Bleu, the newest book by Christopher Moore. I’ve had it since its greatly anticipated release, and I keep getting distracted from it. I love Chris Moore’s books. I wish I had his wild imagination. I want to keep reading, but my brain won’t let me. I’m too tired.

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Another day sacrificed to migraine. Another day, gone.

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Book Review – This Dark Earth

 

 

John Hornor Jacobs has written a powerful novel of the Zombie Apocalypse. In his just-published second novel, the zombie virus is a biological weapon that is accidentally released from the installation in Whitehall, Arkansas. The opening scenes take place at a Little Rock hospital. After the government drops nuclear bombs intended to eradicate the outbreak, a doctor and a truck driver join forces with a military unit to set up a local government and defend against the hungry hordes of undead. They soon find themselves in conflict with a megalomaniac who wants to take over what remains of the still-living world.

Well written and fast-paced, the first-person voices of survivors shape this novel into an exposition of how some people survive and many others die when society falls completely apart. This Dark Earth is more robust than an ordinary zombie novel. It deserves classification with the exceptional novels of catastrophic social change, including Steven King’s The Stand, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon.

 

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Hot Coffee and Tort Reform

Over the weekend, I hosted a movie night for a group I belong to. Usually our movie nights are casual, frivolous affairs. We watch a comedy or something. Monty Python and Kevin Smith are perennial favorites. Not this time, though. On occasion, our movie nights are used to educate ourselves. Our group is composed of politically-minded, intellectual, highly intelligent people, most of whom have humanist tendencies, and all of whom have strong opinions.

Last year at the Sundance Film Festival, Hot Coffee, a documentary about tort reform and its effects on ordinary people premiered to very positive reviews. I decided to show it to my politically-minded friends. The rhetoric spewing from the tort reformers, whose voices seem to be the only ones I ever hear, doesn’t even begin to treat the problem with any sense of even-handedness.

Because of the way it’s being pushed on an unsuspecting public, tort reform makes my heart pound. Its wrongness takes my breath away. The idea of capping the amount someone can recover for wrongs done to them simply cannot be set at an arbitrary amount. An amount of damages that is fair in one case is not fair in another. Putting an arbitrary amount on how much someone should be compensated for serious injuries flies in the face of the very purpose of our civil justice system. The way the current reform movement wants to change how people are compensated makes no sense at all.

Each state’s tort reform law is different, but the idea behind them tend to be the same. Most famously, these reform laws want to limit punitive damages. They also want to put limits on who can file suit, and when.

I should make a disclosure here. I am a lawyer. I’ve had a civil practice for 24 years. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a tort lawyer. Oh, sure, I’ve handled a minor car accident here and there over the years, but never when much money was involved and never when I thought the case would not settle.

 

What about all those frivolous lawsuits?

No one likes the notion that there are people out there working “the system” and being rewarded financially for filing frivolous lawsuits. The truth is, though, that frivolous lawsuits rarely get off the ground. There are several reasons why.

One reason is that tort lawyers tend to finance tort claims. Unless there is a very good chance of a pay day at the end of the line, no lawyer is going to invest his own money into someone else’s case. That’s just simply a bad business decision. The discovery process, through which the lawyer prepares for trial, costs thousands of dollars. Expert witnesses cost thousands of dollars. Court reporters cost hundreds, if not thousands, depending on how many depositions are taken. Unless the case has a good chance of being won, no lawyer is going to accept it. Furthermore, the case has to be worth enough money that the settlement or judgment will cover the plaintiff’s actual damages, the costs of litigation, and an attorney’s fee. If it won’t compensate the lawyer for his time and expenses, the lawyer won’t take the case.

Another reason is that sanctions against an attorney who files frivolous suits are harsh. Fines, disciplinary actions, public censure by the courts, and damage to the lawyer’s reputation deter frivolous filings. I have heard the objections to this line of reasoning. Within the last month a young lawyer reported to me that he was told that the way to earn good money was to file frivolous suits and settle for “nuisance money,” or any amount of money that the insurance company will pay just to make the case go away. While I was appalled at the thought that there are people in my profession who operate this way as a matter of course, I won’t say that suits are never resolved this way. At times, they are. But if they are completely frivolous, I’ve never known an insurance company yet that would pay a single dime to a litigant.  Defense attorneys do not hesitate to file motions for sanctions when they believe sanctions are warranted.

 

What is a tort, anyway?

Many Americans do not even know what a tort is.

My torts professor in law school told us that a tort is a civil wrong. Very simply put, people commit torts when they injure someone else. Automobile accidents and medical malpractice are the  torts that most quickly come to mind. We suffer torts when the neighbor’s dog bites us or when the guy at the bar takes a drunken swing at us. The defamatory conduct that makes up libel and slander is tortious. Poorly designed products that hurt us are the subject of tort actions, including drugs, toys, tires, and automobiles.  Interfering with someone’s business is a tort.

Many crimes are also torts. While the state has an interest in prosecuting someone who physically injures another person, the injured person gets nothing from the criminal prosecution. To redress the wrong done to him, the injured person sues the perpetrator in a court of law. There, the court can award damages to compensate the injured person for his injuries.

 

What is the point of a jury?

 

The very same people who say they are behind tort reform make up the juries that award damages to injured people. They are the same people who, when they have been grievously injured, demand the right to sue so that the person responsible pays for the harm. And then they are shocked when they can’t be compensated fully, because, after all, theirs was not one of the “frivolous” lawsuits that caps on damages was supposed to guard against.

Why are there large awards? Because in a court of law, with both sides being represented by able counsel, the jury decides that proof demands such an award. That is the amount it takes to make someone whole after a grievous harm.

When we allow our legislatures to put arbitrary caps on damages, we are giving up a constitutionally-guaranteed right to be made whole. Furthermore, we are tying the hands of the jury system.

 

But what about those multimillion dollar awards?

Most people object to large awards of punitive damages. Punitive damages are meant to punish especially egregious conduct. They are not awarded in every tort case; they are the exceptions that make the headlines. Punitive damages don’t beggar the perpetrators of torts. They are, however, intended to be felt. Remember the “excessive” punitive damages award in the McDonald’s coffee case? McDonald’s offered the victim, who had undergone months of skin grafts because of the extent of her burns, $800 – not even a drop in the bucket toward her medical bills. The punitive damages award represented two days of McDonald’s coffee sales. Just two days of profits. Just on coffee.

 

So, what should we do?

It is shocking that we should be talking about depriving people of just compensation. If we don’t like that punitive damages “enrich” victims of torts, then the conversation should be about what else to do with the money – because especially egregious conduct deserves to be punished.

One suggestion: How about a fund to improve access to justice for people who can’t afford lawyers? Currently in Arkansas, our legal services agencies are spread so thin that poor people can only get divorce lawyers if they are also physically abused.

 

 

 

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Who are the Job Creators?

I had an interesting conversation with a pair of one-percenters last week. I specifically asked them whether lowering their taxes would result in them creating jobs. Neither one hesitated to answer.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said one.

“Nope,” said the other.

Why not? I wanted to know. The Republican party has been telling us for years that the way to create jobs is by lowering the taxes on the wealthy. Where’s the fault in the position?

Both of my one-percenters agreed that established companies don’t create new jobs unless they are also expanding, something they do when their business model and business plan indicate the time is right, not when the amount of taxes they pay changes. Tax savings amounts to larger profits remaining with the company, not expansion plans. Every corporation’s main priority is its bottom line. The large business interests and high-income individuals who will benefit from this tax deduction definitely want to improve their bottom line – who wouldn’t? – but they aren’t so altruistic that they are going to hire people they don’t need to do jobs that don’t need doing.

Payroll is the single largest expense of any company. It seems that people who own businesses want to get more done with fewer employees, not with more, because getting more done with a smaller payroll increases profits. That’s why outsourcing is so popular among the most profitable companies.

So who are the real job creators?

According to 2007 and 2008 economic census figures, “nonemployer” firms account for a vast number of businesses in the country – more than 78%. The Census Bureau defines nonemployer businesses as those that have no paid employees and are subject to federal income tax. Nonemployers include self-employed individuals operating unincorporated businesses, which may or may not be the owner’s principal source of income.


Of the remaining 22% of businesses, 89% are companies employing less than 20 people. That means more than 97% of the businesses in this country are small businesses, not large corporations.

Looking even more closely at the numbers, we see that businesses with more than 500 employees employ about half of all Americans who work for someone else. Even though they account for only 0.0036% of all firms, truly giant megacompanies with more than 10,000 employees put 27% of Americans to work.

More than 17% of people in America work for companies that employ between 20 and 100 employees. These are medium-sized companies, and constitute about 9% of the businesses out there. The next jump in statistical size is the large companies, which employ between 100 and 500 workers. These large companies put 14.5% of Americans to work.

So, although 97% of the companies in the US are small businesses, 82% of employed Americans work for large, very large, and mega-sized companies. Eighteen percent work for small businesses. Those figures add up to about 121 million people who earn income in the United States, not counting the 21 million whose self-employment provides them with some or all of their income.

If the big companies get the tax breaks, which apparently have no impact on whether or not they create jobs, who benefits? The big companies, of course.

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“It’s Your Mission on Earth”

This is the text of my first book club presentation this month on Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

When the protagonist of the book, a Spanish shepherd named Santiago, was sixteen, he told his father that he wanted to travel. His father objected, saying that all the travelers who pass through Andalusia, where they live, are the same as the Andalusians, and say that they want to come to live in Andalusia.  In his words, we hear the echo of what we ourselves have said on vacation: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live here?”

Obviously, Santiago’s father is proud of his home. He cannot imagine why anyone would ever want to leave. The only Andalusians who travel are shepherds because their job requires it. He gives Santiago three ancient Spanish coins as part of his inheritance, telling him to buy a flock of sheep. The older man thinks this an “acceptable” way to travel.

The boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world – a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life. (pp. 9-10)

Reading that passage, I had to wonder if Santiago was projecting a bit of himself onto his father. We do this to our parents, and for that matter, to other people we think we know – or even those we simply encounter. “If this makes me happy, it will make you happy, too,” we tell them.

My mom and sister, for example, tell me that a busy social schedule would make me happy. Frankly, the thought of being as busy as they are, without time to sit and write, would make me miserable. I get exhausted and need a nap after just glancing at their calendars. Then again, sitting and writing for the three to five hours a day (or longer when I’m on a roll) as I do would probably drive them nuts.

The impetus for the story happens when Santiago spends the night in the ruins of an old church and dreams a dream he has had once before. Both times he has awakened from the dream before he reaches what he thinks should be the end. In the dream, a child comes to play with his sheep. Suddenly, the dream child takes Santiago’s hands and transports him to the Egyptian pyramids. “If you come here, you will find a hidden treasure,” she tells him.

Once he begins his journey, Santiago encounters Melchizedek in the plaza of the first town he visits. Melchizedek tells him that the greatest lie is one everyone comes to believe:

[The greatest lie is] that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. pp. 17-18)

According to Melchizedek, someone’s Personal Legend is what they have always wanted to accomplish. When people are young, they know what their Personal Legend is and the path to it seems clear. Anything is possible because young people are not afraid to dream. “But as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it is impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.” Then he tells Santiago,

To realize one’s Personal Legend is one’s only real obligation.”  (pp. 21-22)

Coelho tells the story of Santiago’s journey to find his Personal Legend in the form of a fable or morality story. Perhaps because of my mood when I read it, I received the message. This book is one I will buy multiple copies of and insist that my friends read.

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I Write

I write.

I sit at a table and I reach for a pad of paper and a pen. I sit at a computer and automatically click to open the word processing program. My empty fingers itch for an good fountain pen or even an antique dip pen and a bottle of ink.

I write.

Sometimes I’m funny. Sometimes I’m serious. I may be disgusted, irreverent, playful, reflective, or melancholy. I can be imaginative or philosophical. I teach. I lecture. I question. I explain. I research. I investigate.

I write.

I have pretty leather-bound journals scattered all over my life, and all of them have writing in them. I write my dreams, my thoughts, my observations. I write my memories to save for my son. I write the news, to save for posterity – if there ever is posterity. I write love notes to whomever I feel love for at the moment. I write letters in those journals – letters to old high school teachers, to friends from the past and present, to family, to grandchildren not yet born. They will never be sent or read by anyone, but I write them anyway.

I write.

No subject is sacred. I have strong opinions. My opinions can be changed by compelling evidence and cogent arguments, but my positions are stated clearly and occasionally even with footnotes. I don’t reach my strong opinions in a vacuum. I want links, supporting evidence, and documentation to support a position.

I write.

The dreams I live at night are vivid. They form the basis for my short stories. I have lots of them. I doubt I will publish very many of them to this blog. They are beyond science fiction and fantasy, sometimes.

I love to write.

So, I write.

I have rules about my writing, and I trust when there is debate in the comments to my blog, others respect these guidelines.

I write to communicate ideas.

But, I can’t abide rudeness. Points can be made without resorting to name-calling, taunting, or other grade-school behaviors. Threats, harassment, and general nastiness never persuaded anyone of anything other than the rudeness of the person threatening, harassing, or being generally nasty. I am literally and figuratively unable to hear someone who uses these techniques to communicate.

I write to persuade.

Pundits, politicians, bloggers, and others who have an “Us vs. Them” mentality when it comes to making their points lose credibility with me in a hurry. I love politics and I love discussing politics. Good political arguments must be as well documented as scientific arguments. It must appeal to logic and reason, not emotion and fear.

I write for respect.

Name calling, stereotyping, finger-pointing, and blaming an opposing political party or some other person irritate me beyond reason. They are as irritating as a fly or mosquito. Their buzz and their whine are not words but an annoyance to be swatted away without much of a thought as to their purpose. I do not respect those who engage in such behavior. I will never do it myself. Respect is critical to real communication.

I write to make a point.

As a lawyer I have to make arguments that make sense to the judge and jury, opposing counsel, and my clients, so I strive to be careful in crafting my arguments. I encourage feisty, vigorous debate, but the arguments should always be backed up with facts and wherever possible with citations. I can be persuaded, but only with facts and a coherent argument.

I write as a craft.

Proper grammar, punctuation, spelling are essential. This is not to say I don’t make mistakes, but I correct them the moment I see them. It’s difficult to proofread one’s own work, and as hard as I try there will be things I don’t catch. Technically good writing is the bare minimum of what I expect of myself. I wish it was as important to others. I am fond of saying that my dream date would be with a guy who would drive me around and carry the bucket of red paint for me to dip my brush into so that I might correct the misplaced apostrophes on all the signs in public places. Does such a piratical Prince Charming exist? And will he carry a ladder tall enough for billboards?

I write to write well.

Style makes good writing great. I want to write with a style that stays with my reader. I want to write with a style that makes my point in a way that inspires reflection. I want to write with a style that inspires a belly-laugh. I want to write with a style that is readable and fun, readable and educational, readable and poignant.

I write because I have to write.

It’s me. My compulsion to write will never go away. It is as much a part of me as the knuckles on my fingers and the gray wisps in my hair. Even if I hide my compulsion to write it is still there, pushing me, moving my fingers unconsciously toward the pen, to pick it up.

I write.

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