Medicare is a 20,000+ page government program that is full of medical and political jargon which can be very overwhelming. I was charged with the task of creatively and concisely breaking it down in 400 words. Not an easy feat.
Medicare: A Good Senior Moment
So, you’ve reached the golden age of cheaper movie tickets and discounts at Applebee’s that is Senior Citizenship. You’re also now eligible for Medicare. Medicare is a National Healthcare Program for people over the age of 65 and younger people with certain disabilities. As with most government programs it has a lot of moving parts so go to a quiet area with no distractions and read this carefully because it can get a little confusing.
Here’s how it breaks down, Medicare is divided into four parts which all cover different expenses. Parts A and B are run by the US Government while Parts C and D are run by Private Insurers. Part A is hospital insurance. You’re automatically eligible if you’ve paid Social Security taxes for 10 years. It covers inpatient care, skilled nursing/home care, and hospice. You will have co-pays and deductibles for treatment but won’t pay monthly premiums.
Part B covers necessary services like ambulance rides, doctor visits, medical equipment, mental healthcare, and some prescription drugs. It also covers preventive medical tests and getting a second opinion before you go under the knife. You will have co-pays and a deductible but because Part B provides more coverage there is a monthly premium. Luckily it can be deducted from your Social Security so you can skip those fun conversations with government employees.
Hooray, Drugs!!! To understand Part C clearly you should first learn about Part D because it could be a large factor in which plan you choose. Part D is prescription drug coverage. It’s optional but may be a wise addition to your plan as it can lower medication costs.
Here’s where it gets complicated. Part C, a.k.a. “Medicare Advantage Plan,” fills in the gaps. In other words, it lets you choose additional coverage. Costs can vary because it’s run by Private Insurers. The same plan with the same carrier may cost more in Maine than in would Iowa.
If you choose a plan that’s excessive or inadequate don’t stress out because it can be altered annually. For advice on selecting a plan that’s right for you, call the Medicare help line and/or insurance agencies. So pick a plan, get it over with, and then start living it up. Go traveling, read books you’ve always wanted to, shoplift and blame it on dementia, and enjoy those twilight years.
An article I wrote explaining why humans were the real villains in the 1979 Ridley Scott classic, Alien.
Space’s Most Dangerous Creature:
The Alien movie series is one of the best horror movie series ever made. All of the Alien movies, with the exception of Alien: Resurrection (which was an absolute train wreck abortion) are all great films. They all had great directors with Alien directed by Ridley Scott in 1979, Aliens, directed by James Cameron in 1986, and Alien 3 directed by David Lynch in 1992. These movies all deal with a similar plot involving humans having to survive against a race of Aliens (or Xenomorphs) which are much smarter than humans give them credit for. They grow from babies to adults in what seems like a matter of hours. They are very tall, run fast, can climb remarkably well, have very good vision in low-light conditions, have a good reach, can impale people with their tail, and they have a set of jaws inside of their mouth which extends so they can bite stuff that’s further away (I guess). Oh yeah, they have acid for blood so if you shoot or stab one when they are too close you’ll have a severe allergic reaction…while the acid is burning holes in your skin.
Against seemingly insurmountable odds, the humans come out victorious, but before we get all “We beat the bad guys! Hell yeah!!!” why don’t we take a look at these situations from another angle. Let me preface this by saying that I’m not a tree-hugging, save the whales, let me go out and buy a Prius self-righteous douche bags. This is just something I noticed while watching these movies for the 679th time. Get this, the aliens aren’t the bad guys, the humans are. Say what? Hold on, let me break it down for you. For These movies are long and have intricate plots so I’m going to break them down into somewhat simplistic reviews for time’s sake.
Let’s focus on the first movie of the series, Alien. This movie is about a group of what can only be described as space truckers. They are a small crew are hauling a load of space minerals back to port so they can get paid a lot of…space money. Along the way, their cryosleep is interrupted when they receive an emergency distress beacon from a planet simply known as LV-426. The company they work for sends them instructions to go down and investigate the signal and report back about any survivors. When they get down there they find a ship which seems to be some kind of strange nursery. There are weird, egg-like things all over the floor. When one of the crew members, Kane, leans over to take a closer look something jumps out and attaches itself to his face and he is knocked unconscious.
Kane is then brought back on the ship for medical observation. They try to remove the organism from his face but when they try to remove it surgically they find that the face-hugging creature has some kind of molecular acid for blood and it will kill Kane if they try to remove it any further. Several hours later the face-hugger comes off and dies and Kane wakes up. The crew is all back to normal now and decide to have one last meal before going to beddy-bye. During the last supper, Kane goes into some kind of convulsion and screams in agony. Then all of a sudden a small creature rips through his chest and kills him instantly. The creature looks around and quickly runs away.
For obvious reasons, the alien is obviously seen as a threat. The crew decides to capture and dispose of the creature. Because this is not any kind of military vessel they do not have any real weapons. The only defensive tools they have at their disposal are nets, a cattle prod-like device, a homemade flamethrower, and a mediocre motion detector.
While searching for the alien one of the crew members, Brett, becomes separated from the group. Unarmed and alone he encounters the creature which has now grown to into an massive, eight-foot-tall, drooling monster. The alien then grabs Brett and kills him without mercy. The fact that the creature kills when approached shows that it is truly a primal creature.
After killing Brett, the alien tries to hide in the ventilation system. Fearing that the creature might come and attack them, the crew continues to try to kill it. They build some makeshift flamethrowers and go hunting. The captain of the ship, Dallas, goes looking for him in the air vents. Shooting flames down every corridor before moving forward he tries to corner and kill it. The other crew members use the motion detector to try to track it while Dallas is in the ventilation system. The alien tries to move away from the flamethrower-toting human but is eventually backed into a corner and kills Dallas.
The alien continues to be hunted and every time it is in fear for its life it kills whomever is near it. Eventually there is only one human left on the ship, Ellen Ripley. She decides to activate the self-destruct sequence on the ship and escape in the emergency shuttle. When she abandons ship and departs in the shuttle she finds that the creature has stowed away with her, hiding in a large conduit of pipes. Ripley then takes it upon herself to provoke the alien to coming into the open, shoot it with some kind of spear gun and then open the airlock and blow it into space. Once she kills the alien she breathes easy and takes a space sleep in her cryotube to await rescue from a passing ship.
What a happy ending...but let’s look at it from the alien’s perspective. A group of humans disturb an alien nursery. The face-hugging alien does what it has evolved to do, attach itself to a host organism and lay eggs in the foreign body and then like many parasite-like animals, after implantation of eggs into a host it comes off and dies. Then, the alien embryo does what that species does naturally. Finally, it hatches by bursting out of the chest of whatever host organism they have been growing inside of.
After “hatching”, this baby alien is immediately greeted by a group of much larger, incredibly different-looking creatures who immediately attack and try to kill it. So, like nearly every creature that has ever lived, it runs for its life. The alien rapidly grows to full size and the option of fight is added to its initial option of flight.
Not wanting to start any trouble, the alien tries to hide from the humans, but they just keep coming after it. It only kills when it feels threatened, it never really hunts the humans. It eventually kills all but one of the crew members and then tries to flee again by taking refuge in the emergency shuttle where there are no humans. Then, like so many times before, a human ends up in the same place as the alien. Then, like so many times before, it is attacked and brutally killed by the last surviving human. What a tragic end to such a short life.
I mean, all this dude wanted is to be left alone. It was born in a place that it was not biologically prepared for. It is the only one of its kind in this strange location. So, like most every frightened baby animal, it does what it appears to do best, hide from danger and defend itself when provoked. It’s not the alien’s fault that it was born on a ship of vicious humans, hell-bent on murdering it. What would you do if every time you turned around there were a group of creatures, wholly unlike yourself, trying to kill you with fire and cattle prods? By looking at this series of events objectively, it is completely unfair to blame the alien for killing most of the crew. It was just doing what nature had intended it to do.
Just sit there and think about this for a minute and you’ll see that I’m right.
Blog excerpt from my time living abroad
Alright, I really need to get a job but unfortunately there are only a few kinds of only occupations for gringos in Central America. I can either try working at a hotel/hostel or teaching English. There weren’t any teaching jobs in the town but there were some hotels and hostels. I went to an internet café, printed out ten copies of my resume’ and hit pretty much all of the places that might be hiring. Some of the proprietors looked at me as if I just lit their mailbox on fire but others were kind enough to act like they might consider hiring me and actually looked at my resume’.
The next day I found myself lucky enough to get an interview with the manager of a really nice hotel. Unfortunately she barely spoke English and since I don’t speak Spanish fluently the meeting didn’t go as well as it could have. The job seemed easy enough but the salary was laughable. Even though I’m staying at a place for $5/night and only spending a few more Córdobas for food I wouldn’t have been able to make it work. Sadly, I think that the only way that the way many people are able to live there is by scamming and/or collectively living in the same house, which is very common.
Later that afternoon, I went back to the internet café to make more copies of my resume’ to hand out at other hotels and hostels. There I met a woman in her 60’s by the name of BJ (seriously, that was her name) and she seemed to have the town wired pretty well. She brought me to a very nice hotel where I met with the managers and they said they really liked my resume but they would be looking for help in about three weeks because they were going on a cruise and weren’t going to be able to have a proper interview until then. I knew that was going to be too long with my current financial status so I thanked them for their time and left with BJ.
On the walk back to BJ’s apartment we went to the market (always a very interesting experience in Central America). In the grocery store I heard people call her “Monkey Mujer” (Monkey Lady). It turns out that she has a full-grown rescue monkey. I don’t remember what kind but it was quite a large primate. I wanted to pet it but she told me that it wasn’t a good idea because the monkey didn’t really like new people so I let it be.
We chilled on her front porch, drank beer and chatted for a while. The monkey periodically interrupted our conversations by knocking on the screen door or knocking something over in the house. It turned out that she had led quite a unique life and had a very interesting career as a limousine driver of the stars, or so she claimed. She seemed like the sort that may have imbibed in spirits and mind-altering substances at one point or another in her lifetime. We swapped war stories and then I went back to my lovely hostel for a siesta.
To be continued…