Saturday, March 24, 2012

Work until hell freezes over

I have no intention of retiring.
Health care in this country is a cruel joke. Medicare is a cruel joke. Health insurance is a cruel joke.
Every health insurance plan will tell purchasers that the larger the pool, the lower the cost. Stands to reason that if everyone were in the same pool (National Health Care – same for all) would be the least expensive way to go. Same health care for me, you and all of our dearly beloved elected representatives including the President.
As things now stand, if at all possible, I intend to work until I drop dead so that the health insurance I do have and pay for at my workplace continues and I can keep just part A of Medicare because all the other parts cost too much and aren't worth a darn.
If you want to complain about being forced to buy health insurance under ObamaCare, well that just doesn't work because you are already forced to buy insurance if you own a car.
Now if you want to say that requirement is unconstitutional and needs to be scraped, I might agree with you about health insurance.
But forget about health insurance for just a minute. I don't really care. I avoid going to the doctor as much as possible and take only two inexpensive prescription drugs, one for blood pressure and one for cholesterol, costing less the $20 per month.
My plan, such as it is, is to work until I die. If for some reason I should should come down with some horrible disease such as cancer, my plan remains the same. I have no intention of conducting a courageous battle that costs a fortune. Just give me some good pain killers so I can work until I drop dead on the job.
Life is for living and that includes sex. As long as I can smoke, have sex and work, that is all that really matters.
Retirement is for sissies. My grandfather who worked six days a week and smoked, did that until he died in his 80's. What a way to go.

Friday, March 23, 2012

The Best of Times

I was reading an editorial in a local weekly paper that got me to thinking. The editorial was bemoaning the current state of affairs in this country, looking back to better times when people weren't so greedy, so selfish, so sexually promiscuous, etc.,etc.
Obviously a Tea Party person who wanted his country back.
But is this true?
I know. Gas costs too much. Everything costs too much. Anyone remember "Bye, Bye Birdie"?
If I'm remembering correctly, there was the lament in the movie that ran, "What's wrong with kids today?"
The play and movie go back to 1960. Get what I'm driving at? It's the same old same old complaint. Always complaining things are horrible now and if we could only go back to an earlier time when people were morally straight and hard working?
Really? Like maybe prohibition? Or maybe the Wild West? How about slavery and the Civil War?
Sure we have problems today. Always have and always will. But I'll take this time over any of the "good old days" because they weren't all that good.
But I guess there are some who really do want to return to the "good old days" when women were expected to stay barefoot and pregnant, and submit to a beating when "their man" thought she needed it. Maybe go back to the time when kids didn't get beyond grade school if that far and worked in dangerous jobs.
Sorry but we have made progress even though it seems to be mostly of the two steps forward and one step backward variety. Maybe the glass will always remain half empty. But that's no reason to go backward to a time that wasn't as good as some would have us believe.
I don't want my country back. I want my country to go forward.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Britannica goes digital

The New York Times is reporting that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.
“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” said Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”
So what do you think?
As one who works for a weekly local newspaper, I say I learned to appreciate ebooks last year when I moved. Print books are nice, a real treasure. But if you collect books, over time they add up in pounds and you hate giving them or throwing them away. Then when you move, you quickly learn they way a ton.
Speaking of print, I had a thought just yesterday as to why daily news papers are having such a problem.
When most if not all of the daily state and national news is readily available online, on TV and the radio, the dailies continue to include this "news" in a printed form at the expense of deep local coverage. They pay good money for reports from AP and other sources and this is where I think they are making a mistake.
They need to concentrate more on local news, what you can't get from watching TV.
The ivory towers are crumbling, and not just in academia. They are also crumbling in government, religion and all forms of publishing and the entertainment media in general.
The leaders in all fields have been found to be naked.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Pete Klein talks about vampires

I have a web page at http://www.petekleinvampires.com where you can find links to all of my books.
Why do I write about vampires? For the fun of it.
Now let's be honest. Most vampire stories out there now a days have wimpy vampires who wish they weren't vampires. They fell so guilty about it. Poor dears!
My vampires love being vampires and why not when they consider themselves creatures destined by God to be vampires.
And look at all the perks my vampires have.
They can eat real food in addition to the blood they need. They can be out and about both day and night. And maybe most importantly, they can engage in real sex with both humans and other vampires!
They love sex at least as much as they love taking blood and in fact do it more often than they take blood. And they don't have any qualms about having sex with the same sex.
Did I mention they don't age?
There are really only a couple of ways they can die. Getting blown up will kill them. Having their head cut off will kill them. It is also possible for another vampire to kill them if their blood is violently pulled by another vampire intent on killing them. That's about it. No dumb Buffy can kill them.