Hot and not

Now, I cannot claim ownership of the Hot and Not gimmick. This is done by Jane Taber in her weekly column in the Globe and Mail that outlines the ins and outs of the current Ottawa political scene. I will use it as a way to highlight some random musings.

NOT: Terror-free Oil
This is a concept foreign to me until I read the paper this weekend. Apparently, a company has been started in the US (where else?) called Terror-Free Oil. It bills itself as the only supplier of gasoline that comes from nations other than those that support terrorism (obviously they aren’t buying oil from American companies then). The hilarious graphic on the actual pump at the first gas station opened by this company is a flow-chart outlining the following:

When your money goes to non-Terror Free Oil gas, it then goes to an oil company, upon which it arrives in an “Unfriendly Country”, and then on to “Islamic Terrorism”. However, if you buy from TFO, your money goes to an oil company in a Friendly Country or the US, upon which it is funneled into the “War on Terror”. OH….MY….GOSH….

Of course, the main source of their oil is Canada, which many gun-totin’, freedom-lovin’, terrorist-hatin’ Americans would not consider a Friendly Country, as we did not support the war in Iraq (at least Chrétien got one thing right). As well, another source is Venezuela, led by Hugo Chavez, who crazed Republican Pat Buchanan said should be assassinated by the CIA because he was akin to a terrorist and who trades oil, in exchange for doctors, with Fidel Castro, THE first modern object of American state hatred. But I guess because Canada and Venezuela aren’t run by Islamics, we are okay.

There are so many things wrong with that flow chart. First off, the company bills itself as being concerned for American energy security. And rightfully so. When you get the majority of your oil from OPEC nations with unstable political bases, you risk having that supply cut off at very short notice. But a more sensical way to reduce dependence on foreign oil would be to reduce consumption. But apparently it is easier to send 100s of 1000s of troops to the Middle East in a futile effort to exert influence on oil-rich nations than it is to tighten fuel efficiency standards for domestic auto manufacturers. Second, just because money goes to Middle Eastern oil companies and even states, it is the fact that those oil riches do not flow down to the people on the streets of these nations that bred terrorism in the first place, as well as the unjust and inequitable trade practices imposed upon other nations by the rich Western world. Maybe if Middle Easterners actually realized more of the wealth inherent in their nations rather than it all going to friends of Dubya in the House of Saud, there would not be so many disgruntled individuals. Besides any root cause theory, it is just plain ignorant to presuppose that all oil-producing Middle Eastern nations are hotbeds of terrorism or that terrorism is in anyway a legitimate offshoot of Islam. There are so many xenophobic and racist assumptions in the flow-chart it is sickening. Can you imagine the uproar if a company started up in the US whose sole marketing pitch was that the proceeds from the sales of their products were guaranteed not to end up in the pockets of African-Americans? or Jews? or fundamentalist Christians? or even worse….Catholics? (PS-If you want a good but mildly disturbing laugh, check out www.terrorfreeoil.org and watch some of the videos and take a good close look at some of the logos on the sides. Sick.)

HOT: Canada. In a related story, Peter Schiff, a financial analyst dubbed Dr. Doom, predicts the American economy will crash soon, and that American days as “the dominant economic power are numbered”. His reason: the US is in $8.5-trillion of debt (most of which went to financing the war on terrorism), the annual trade deficit is $800-billion, and the average American saves $0 annually. Awesome. On a positive side note, in his call to get all of your investments out of America, he recommends putting them into Canada. And he is American

HOT: “Mindless Eating” by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. This is the most fascinating book I’ve read in awhile. It is basically a collection of facts about the hidden cues that lead us to overeat. If you are health-conscious, weight-conscious, or you find the application of psychology to marketing strangely interesting, pick up this book.

NOT: Graveyard shifts. I just finished two 10pm-8am shifts at the new Shoppers Drug Mart in town. I have still not recovered after two full days. I don’t care if they were paying me $63/hr. It wasn’t worth it. Never again.

HOT: Cool websites. Two of my favorite of late are www.pandora.com and www.facebook.com. Pandora is a fancy internet radio that allows you to plug in bands or songs you like and then creates “stations” for you that are programmed to play music with similar features to those artists or songs. Facebook is a strangely enjoyable social networking site. You have to experience it. It is the modern version of the Six Degrees of Separation notion.

HOTTEST: Rugby. This is my current fix. I have recently rediscovered all the reasons I love this sport so much. Unfortunately, I live in the wrong country so I have to keep up on current games at bbc.co.uk/rugbyunion and then download them from aussietorrents.com and watch them on my computer. But it is worth every painstakingly slow downloading second. If you have never watched rugby or don’t even know what it is, the Rugby World Cup 2007 starts September 7. Give it a watch. Canada plays against Wales in their first match on September 9. It is the third most watched sporting event in the world after the soccer world cup and summer Olympics. So if pure curiosity cannot convince you to watch it, maybe peer pressure will.

PS-I have been informed that for my own good I’d better say that Sarah is in fact the hottest.

Happy daddy

I have really started to get into the groove of daddyhood. Part of that is because this provides me a balance for the chaos that is my work week. It tips the scales toward sanity. It is also due in part to the prevailing cuteness that is a 5-month old boy. Sacha has become so much fun, I cannot help but love every minute I spend with him. In the spirit of education, I shall now attempt to educate future and present fathers on the joys of fatherhood, and what can be done about some of the not so joyful aspects.

If you truly want to be wealthy in life, forgot about material and economic wealth. Consider instead the achievement of emotional, spiritual, and mental wealth to be your true calling. Take it from me that not only is this much easier to attain, but it is infinitely more rewarding. Furthermore, it is eternal, unlike material wealth which ceases to exist when you do. However, I have discussed this before in my blog “Paternal ambition”. So I shall discuss the more practical aspects of such aspirations.

I hear often from other men, and also repeated in the lay press, in popular media, and in film, numerous complaints about fatherhood. “My kid doesn’t like me. My wife doesn’t pay attention to me anymore. She never cooks for me anymore. My wife and I never make love anymore. I work all day and then when I come home my wife wants me to just take the baby. Doesn’t she know how tired I am?” Let me offer some solutions to these problems one at a time.

1. My kid doesn’t like me.

This is a common problem experienced by the absentee father and is related to another complaint (I’m tired when I get home). It is little surprise that if you come home everyday and sit on your ass and watch the football game that your child wants nothing to do with you. You never spend any quality time with him. He doesn’t even know who you are. Now if you spend as much time with your child as I do and he still doesn’t like you, then maybe you should try some deodorant. After that, I can’t help you.

2. My wife doesn’t pay attention to me anymore/cook for me anymore/make love to me anymore.

Well, this may have numerous explanations. For one, if you are not helping out around the house and with the child, your wife is so incredibly exhausted as to be incapable of paying attention to anything but staying awake and mobile. Furthermore, lovemaking is for women a very emotional thing (unlike men, for who it is predominantly physical, evidenced by the fact that we could be openly weeping and sick as all hell but still willing to have sex). So if you are never helping out and leaving your wife to fend for herself, she will rarely be in the mood. As well, she is unlikely to want to positively reinforce your laziness. Unfortunately for her though, punishment does not work either as it just creates resentfulness. So the solution lies with you. And it will also solve the cooking problem. Learn how to cook, man! Seriously. There are numerous benefits to this. First of all, you have no idea how rewarding it can be to see your family wolf down one of your culinary creations to the point where they are sick from overeating. It brings a new meaning to putting food on the table. If all you do is “bring home the bacon” in the money sense, your wife still has to fry it in the pan. So get your hands dirty and start cookin’. Although I cannot guarantee this will lead to more sex, it will certainly lead to more appreciation by your wife and general peace in your home. Besides, if you don’t get more lovemaking out of the situation, you will be able to satisfy part of your needs by watching the likes of Nigella Lawson, Anna Olson, and Giada de Laurentiis on the food network for culinary inspiration. It’s a start anyways. One word of warning though: once you start eating again, try not to let your physique go as I see happening to so many new fathers. While your wife will still love you for who you are, you cannot expect her to retain her youthful physique while you let yourself morph into beer belly daddy. Women appreciate beauty too.

3. My wife wants me to take the baby as soon as I get home. Doesn’t she know how tired I am?

Never verbalize this to your wife. Ever. You will pass from this life very quickly. But for your sake I can help you solve this problem. Live with it. Being a 24-hour-a-day mother is infinitely more exhausting than working 40 hours a week at ANY job. What’s that? Oh, your job is harder than most? No, it’s not. It can’t even compare. If you wish to keep your testicles, I suggest you seal your lips and take that baby with open arms upon return home. Not only will this lead to quality time with your child which will be endlessly rewarding and important for him, but also extremely good for you. You will realize all the wonders and magic of being a father, and your wife will reward you handsomely with appreciation and love. I still can’t promise you’ll get sex out of it though. But at least she won’t hit you anymore. Oh, another tip. When mom and baby are sleeping during the day, no matter how tempting it may be to relax and do nothing, find SOMETHING to do in the house. If your wife wakes up after a 2 hour nap and the kitchen floor and living room are still as disastrous as when she fell asleep, you will pay. Maybe not now, but later. That I can promise.

So there it is: my plan for a more harmonious and rewarding life at home. I’ve implemented it and I can tell you it works. I get a huge paycheque every day in the form of a smiling son that reaches out for me when I walk through the door. And every few weeks I even get a bonus from the boss.

He's not overweight, he's just undertall!

So Sarah took Sacha to the doctor this week as his persistent jaundice had not diminished in the 2 weeks the doctor had initially mentioned. When he got there, his doctor looked him over and was still a little bit concerned and so referred him on to one of the 2 local pediatricians in Timmins. We could get him in that night, so I was able to go as well.

It just so happens that not only is he one of 2 pediatricians in Timmins, he is also 1 of 3 Dutchmen in Timmins (myself and his son, the other pediatrician, included). (Not sure if that 3 is accurate or not, but pretty close.) Johannes Herbertus Verbeek graduated in 1969, so he is certainly no spring chicken. I had heard some funny stories about him, namely that he showed up to a continuing education seminar in rubber boots. I also heard he did not have the most stellar bedside manner. Typical Dutchman.

We got to his office, which is actually an old house used as a doctors office. Quite cool actually. I noticed that he had orange chairs in his waiting room, which I interpreted as his attempt to maintain a connection with his native land. As you may or may not know, orange is essentially the official color of the Netherlands, as the Royal Family is the House of Orange, descendant of William of Orange, liberator of the Dutch people way back when. Sarah thinks that I’m full of crap and that the chairs are just orange.

He certainly was an abrupt man, but seemed very competent. He was extremely thorough in his questioning and even more thorough in his physical examination of Sacha. Sacha thought he was playing with him and was smiling the whole time. He thought it was hilarious. Then came the event that would lead to a night full of grief and concern. Dr. Verbeek measured his length, weight, and…dun, dun, dun…head circumference. Apparently babies heads have a thick layer of fat around their skull impeding appropriate measuring of circumference and thus necessitating the creation of a measuring tape tourniquet to ensure accuracy. His head came in at a miniscule 14.75 inches.

When I got home I was interested in his percentile ranking, as apparently physicians in Timmins do not share such information. He is short (10th percentile). No surprise there. He is light (25th). Bit of a surprise there. However, he is 75th in weight for length. Therefore, he is either overweight for his length, or underlong for his weight.

Then came the real shocker. He was off the charts for head circumference. He was so far below the lower limit, I could barely determine what to classify him as. This would normally be an indicator of developmental delay, but he is clearly not suffering from that. So I panicked for about an hour. How could my child’s head be so small when they do not even make hats large enough to fit mine? Furthermore, how could he be developmentally delayed when there is no other indication as such? Maybe he is a little person, but only in his head.

Then I asked Sarah, “How big was his head when he was measured 3 weeks ago?” She said it was 15.25 inches. Well, now I was really concerned because apparently his head was not only small, it was actually shrinking. I knew we kept it warm in our house, but not that warm. I always make sure to lay him flat to dry.

Finally Sarah ended my angst when she brought out the measuring tape and determined that he was in fact a respectable 15.5 inches. All that worry for nothing.

Some day I will find all the growth charts in the world and burn them. Or at least we could make them password protected and only allow access to parents on their second child.

Typical day in a pharmacy

This is the e-mail that I received awhile ago that made me wet my pants. (If you have chronic problems with that, there is a pill you can take.)

Why your pharmacist hates you so much…

For over a year and a half now, the first thing anyone visiting my little blog garden has seen under the headline at the top of the page is the promise that the question of “why does my prescription take so damn long to fill” will be answered. Tonight I looked over this blogs archives and realized it was a promise not kept. While many topics have been covered here, and you have been provided with ample evidence of how drugstore workday life does indeed warp the mind, the question of why it took 2 hours for you to get 20 Vicodin has remained unanswered. I can’t help but to think there may be someone out there who has been logging on every day for the last 18 months hoping in vain for this mystery to be solved. Should such a person exist, I offer my humble apologies. To everyone else, I offer the following prescription scenario: You come to the counter. I am on the phone with a drunk dude who wants the phone number to the grocery store next door. After I instruct him on the virtues of 411, you tell me your doctor was to phone in your prescription to me. Your doctor hasn’t, and you’re unwilling to wait until he does. Being in a generous mood, I call your doctor’s office and am put on hold for 5 minutes, then informed that your prescription was phoned into my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a clerk, who puts me back on hold to wait for the pharmacist. Your prescription is then transferred to me, and now I have to get the 2 phone calls that have been put on hold while this was being done. Now I return to the counter to ask if we’ve filled prescriptions for you before. For some reason, you think that “for you” means “for your cousin” and you answer my question with a “yes”, whereupon I go to the computer and see you are not on file. The phone rings. You have left to do something very important, such as browse through the monster truck magazines, and do not hear the three PA announcements requesting that you return to the pharmacy. You return eventually, expecting to pick up the finished prescription… …the phone rings… …only to find out that I need to ask your address, phone number, date of birth, if you have any allergies and insurance coverage. You tell me you’re allergic to codeine. Since the prescription is for Vicodin I ask you what exactly codeine did to you when you took it. You say it made your stomach hurt and I roll my eyes and write down “no known allergies” You tell me… …the phone rings… …you have insurance and spend the next 5 minutes looking for your card. You give up and expect me to be able to file your claim anyway. I call my competitor and am immediately put on hold. Upon reaching a human, I ask them what insurance they have on file for you. I get the information and file your claim, which is rejected because you changed jobs 6 months ago. An asshole barges his way to the counter to ask where the bread is… …the phone rings… …I inform you that the insurance the other pharmacy has on file for you isn’t working. You produce a card in under 10 seconds that you seemed to be unable to find before. What you were really doing was hoping your old insurance would still work because it had a lower copay. Your new card prominently displays the logo of Nebraska Blue Cross, and although Nebraska Blue Cross does in fact handle millions of prescription claims every day, for the group you belong to, the claim should go to a company called Caremark, whose log is nowhere on the card… …the phone rings… …A lady comes to the counter wanting to know why the cherry flavored antacid works better than the lemon cream flavored antacid. What probably happened is that she had a milder case of heartburn when she took the cherry flavored brand, as they both use the exact same ingredient in the same strength. She will not be satisfied though until I confirm her belief that the cherry flavored brand is the superior product. I file your claim with Caremark, who rejects it because you had a 30 day supply of Vidodin filled 15 days ago at another pharmacy. You swear to me on your mother’s… …the phone rings… …life that you did not have a Vicodin prescription filled recently. I call Caremark and am immediately placed on hold. The most beautiful woman on the planet walks by and notices not a thing. She has never talked to a pharmacist and never will. Upon reaching a human at Caremark, I am informed that the Vicodin prescription was indeed filled at another of my competitors. When I tell you this, you say you got hydrocodone there, not Vicodin. Another little part of me dies… …the phone rings… …It turns out that a few days after your doctor wrote your last prescription, he told you to take it more frequently, meaning that what Caremark thought was a 30-day supply is indeed a 15-day supply with the new instructions. I call your doctor’s office to confirm this and am immediately placed on hold. My laser printer has a paper jam. It’s time for my tech to go to lunch. Caremark issues the override and your claim goes through. Your insurance saves you 85 cents off the regular price of the prescription… …the phone rings… …At the cash register you sign… …the phone rings… …the acknowledgement that you received a copy of my HIPPA policy and that I offered the required OBRA counselling for new prescriptions. You remark that you’re glad that your last pharmacist told you you shouldn’t take over the counter Tylenol along with the Vicodin, and that the acetaminophen you’re taking instead seems to be working pretty well. I break the news to you that Tylenol is simply a brand name for acetaminophen and you don’t believe me. You fumble around for 2 minutes looking for your checkbook and spend another 2 minutes making out a check for four dollars and sixty seven cents. You ask why the tablets look different that those you got at the other pharmacy. I explain that they are from a different manufacturer. Tomorrow you’ll be back to tell me they don’t work as well. Now imagine this wasn’t you at all, but the person who dropped off their prescription three people ahead of you, and you’ll start to have an idea why your prescription takes so damn long to fill.

Genius.