Chick Flicks Issue 4

Issue 4 of Chick Flicks is now online. Lots of great fiction and nonfiction.

This,That and the Other

Well, I'm really ticked about this Associated Content thing. No matter how I try to post my articles, they, along with my sources, disappear after I hit save. In the famous words of Nancy Kerrigan, "Why me?" Damn, I really need the money, and if everything had worked like it was supposed to, I would have had two of my articles reviewed by now and received their monetary offers. Then, the editor writes me yesterday and asks me to email her one of my articles and she'll try loading it on her end. Then, a developer writes me to inquire further about my problem. I've not heard back from him, but I have from the same editor, who tells me my article has been declined, but would I email it to her so she can see if she can load it from her end. WTF? I swear, I'm about to stroke out!

Doctors suck! Yep, I'll say it. As someone who has dealt with them for twenty-six years, I'm pretty fed up. First, the GI doc refuses me pain medicine until he finds out a little more about my case, but says he'll give me a prescription for Pentasa, a drug usually taken for Crohn's that is supposed to whip it into shape. Pentasa has never really worked for me, but what the hell. So he says he wants to set me up for an abdominal CT (contrast here I come...yummy). Of course, he told the nurse he wanted to see me in four weeks. So I guess I'm just supposed to deal with the pain until then. Plus, when I went to see him, I was on my last dose of Prednisone, and had just finished the Leviquin and was doing pretty good as far as trips to the bathroom. Now a week later, I'm right back to where I fucking was a month ago when I first started this process. Anyhow, my CT is tomorrow morning, and the stupid contrast just goes right through me. Not only will I be lucky to make it home, but I'll be spending several hours in my bathroom.

Over a month ago, when I started all this with my new primary care physician, thanks to my new supplemental insurance, he did a chest x-ray that showed a good amount of fluid in my lungs. He never said anything more about it. Just this week, I get a notice from them that they've made an appointment for me to have a chest CT. That is scheduled for Monday. Yay (that's sarcasm, folks). At least I won't have to take contrast for that. Thank God, because it's a different radiology place that is thirty minutes from my home.

Now a short rant about my supplemental insurance. I have a drug card, for all it's worth, which is barely the paper it's printed on. Because I'm on Medicare, they have a "hot list" of the 100 most common drugs the elderly take(I love how they lump us disabled in with the elderly, like we have the same needs). The one medicine, Levequin, is on that list, so I'm thinking I'll either only have to pay the $15 copay, or get a nice big discount. Guess what folks? With my discount, the pills are still $10 a tablet. $10 a tablet? You have got to be kidding me. That means two weeks worth, one pill a day, was a little over $146. Oh my God! That's two week's worth of groceries for me. The pharmacutical companies are nothing but thieves. They claim their prices support research and development. Well, if that's the case, they should have a drug by now that cured Crohn's (not to mention cancer, heart disease, AIDs, etc) What they really do is make the American public pay these high prices so they can then sale them cheaply in other countries. Basically, other than the better regular medical coverage than Medicare gives, that drug card is worthless to me.

One last thing, and then I'm outta here. Some might wonder why I'm praising Ibriham for his success in his school. I mean, I'm sure most of us think, how friggin hard could it be. Obviously, half his class failed so it can't be that easy. But let's add in his extra handicap.

He's been in this country for about six or seven years. When he first stepped foot in New York City, he knew two words of English...Yes and No. That's it. English is not his first language, or even his second, it's his third or forth. While he has a really good grasp of the language now, speaking it better than a lot of Americans I know, he does have some trouble, especially with colloquialisms. But with this school, he's had to learn many technical terms that don't show up in everyday English.

Meanwhile, most Mexicans live here many years and can barely speak three complete sentences of English. Their kids learn it in school, yet they still refuse to learn it. Instead, they just take their children with them places and make them translate. And one might ask, how do we teach those kids English when they live in strictly Spanish speaking homes? It's called total emersion. We just throw them in a strictly english speaking class and within no time, the kids pick it up. But our government, instead of making them speak English in order to get government documents, coddles them and make tests and signs in Spanish.

I wonder, do you think Mexico, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Russia and those other countries would do that for us?

Of course not.

Nowadays, in America, you're better off being an immigrant than a natural born citizen.

ok, enough ranting...see ya!

Apologies and HeavyGlow

My Apologies for misspellings in my last post. Funny thing happened. I had typed it all out in here and hit post. As sometimes happens with my computer, the "connection" didn't go all the way through and I got one of those stupid "cannot find server" pages. When I hit the back button, my entire post was gone. I used the "recover post" feature in here, but unfortunately, it only recovered half of it. So I typed in the rest of it all over again. Only when I hit "publish" the original post showed up, except with a few sentences in another font and size. So I had to go back and fix that. By the time I'd done all that crap, I just didn't care about reading over it to make sure everything was hunky dorie, so just deal with it.

Ok, on to bigger and better things. Our ezine Chick Flicks is growing nicely. We've got a nice little issue coming out June 15. For a complete table of contents, check out the Chick Flicks Blog(link off on the side bar over there, cuz I'm just too damn lazy to mess with it in here.).

And of course, as if Stacy and I aren't busy enough, we're launching a new ezine called HeavyGlow(again, check the sidebar, the link should be there). This little green jewel will feature strictly flash fiction, no more than 750 words, but we'd really prefer 500 words or less. We have quite a fondness for short pieces that pack a whollup. Although it's not in its permanent home(we'll be getting it it's own domain soon) submissions are open and guidelines are posted. Also, to go along with the ezine, there's a forum. All though all types of flash fiction may be workshopped in there, we have a special place for flash fiction workshopping for pieces intended to be submitted to HeavyGlow. The forum is also featuring our famous furiously fast Flash and Dash exercises that any member may partipate in. Membership is free.

Ok, that's it for me. My dogs are sitting in front of the back door waiting for a chance to go pee in the rain, that is if they can stand to get their gigantic paws wet, the babies.