More Than Once Upon a Time

Disney buys Marvel.

…with sore knees from hiking and canoeing. Would overdo it again in a minute if given the opportunity.

From Dave Leonhardt at the NY Times.

What he explains is why there is no competition in the Health Insurance industry, something I’ve been been asserting without explaining very well. (Because I’ve been too lazy to really study the situation.)

He also explains why we’re unlikely to get any real competition, ie real reform, anytime soon.

I’d forgotten how much I like a good tomato. It’s been so long since I had one. Ten years ago you could buy New Jersey tomatoes in the city with great flavor, but now what’s called a Jersey tomato is only marginally better than the too red, too watery, too tasteless things you get in the grocery store all year round.

So I decided to go to the greenmarket today and try some of those $4.50 a pound jobs that come in orange and yellow and purple. And you know what?

It was worth every penny.

I’m hooked. If I ever have a garden, I’m growing nothing but White Beauties and Azoychkas. And I will die happy.

And why shouldn’t I? After all, I am Sam-Who-Likes-Nothing.

I especially dislike seven hour drives. Though Montreal is always a good destination, especially when I could make up for only lasting one day at Worldcon. But this time it was mostly just stressful as my ex and I dropped our youngest off at college. Sending them away is bad enough, but sending them outside the country is even worse. Even if it is the perfect school for her.

On the drive home I drank two bottles of Spicy V-8, ate a bage of Cheetohs, and had a three scoop sundae at Friendly’s. This is another reason I hate traveling. Normally I’m a very healthy gourmand.

Burp.

I just heard about this. Apparently some folks are up in arms about an Op-Ed piece in the Wall St. Journal by the CEO of Whole Foods. Here’s the piece: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

I’m not quite sure what everyone’s so up in arms about. Perhaps it’s this paragraph:

“Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America.”

Otherwise I think most of what Mr. Mackey says makes sense. I don’t agree with all his proposals, and think some should be added (the flip side of tort reform is the AMA doing a much better job of denying licenses to incompetent doctors), but I can’t imagine what’s in this op-ed piece that’s irritated so many folks. Certainly getting the states out of the health insurance regulating business would be a huge step in the right direction.

The current system is a gigantic disaster, not least because of the number of people who are uninsured. I’m for whatever proposal can get through Congress, as long as it cuts the number of uninsured by as large an amount as possible. Do I think any of the bills currently being floated are any good? Not particularly. But at least they’re a start. To paraphrase LBJ when he was answering liberal complaints in the ’50s about the inadequacy of the civil rights bills he was pushing through Congress, “You have to start somewhere.”

Here’s the link: SFNovelists.

(A diatribe.)

Forty years ago one of my best friends said he was driving up to this festival north of the city and did I want to come. We were fifteen. I said no, though I would have liked to have seen the bands. But the last thing I wanted to do was hang out with fifty or sixty thousand potheads. I still don’t regret it, even though they were half a million strong.

I was just flipping the dial and caught some remembrance show on VH1. Woodstock 40 years later. And all the talking heads were wearing sweaters and looking prosperous and I thought to myself, what a bunch of crap. The kind of folks who think rock and roll is about paying $150 to go see the Stones in the Meadowlands. I mean, come on. There have been some great bands that formed after 1971, but I got the feeling the people to whom this documentary is geared never really noticed. Hendrix, man. We changed the world.

Right. And so much for the better, too.

Couldn’t read it. Tried three times. Never made it past page 60. Trying to read this book was like getting a bucket of wet concrete poured over my head and feeling it harden.

This book is hugely popular. Could someone out there please tell me why?

Which means there isn’t much to talk about except

DUCK IN A CAN!!!!

Yes, it truly exists. Inside are duck, duck fat, foie gras, some cabbage, and some spices. All totaling about 50,000 calories. I mean, how can I not order

DUCK IN A CAN!!!

if it’s on the the menu? They actually bring the can out to the table, open it up, then dump it out on your plate. Can you imagine anything more wonderful?

The restaurant is called Au Pied du Cochon and we went Thursday night. I was Ian Tregillis for the evening, because Ian, imposiible though it may seem, doesn’t like

DUCK IN A CAN!!!

So I took his place in the dinner party. We were not by any stretch the only conventioneers at the rstaurant, either. I think half the place’s business that night was Worldcon attendees chowing down on

DUCK IN A CAN!!!

It was that good.

Now, If I’d only been able to stay long enough to get some smoked meat, my caloric intake would have been good through Canadian Thanksgiving.