I have discovered/learned a couple of things this week:
1. You can’t count on anything where health insurance is concerned. I went to the pharmacy, as I do the first of every month to pick up my prescription (that I take and have taken for a number of years every day), only to find that something apparently changed as the year changed from 2012 to 2013 and my insurance no longer covered my medication. They brought the pills up to the counter and told me it would be (approximately) $281.00! I was used to paying the co-pay price of $1.10. That was rather startling! I had to phone my insurance company and for the next 2 ½ days I spent hours trying to get through to them and being either cut-off, or stuck on “Terminal Hold.” It was absolutely dreadful. The worst part was the awful music that played while on Hold; it was like a music box that had gotten stuck and it played over and over and over again until I thought I was going to lose my mind!
I did finally manage eventually to talk to a human being, who was most kind and very helpful, and the matter then got resolved rather quickly. It was simply a matter of a computer somewhere not updating correctly.
I have read a lot of science fiction novels, and seen my fair share of SciFi movies in my life, and a common theme is one of machines taking over and making humans slaves to the very machines that humankind created. Sometimes I feel that we are actually slaves to our machines in many ways. How many times are we inconvenienced or compromised by something having to do with a computer? And we all know how hard it is to ever be able to talk to a human being when calling companies on the telephone. And who likes talking to a machine? Not I.
SciFi is often amazingly prophetic. Sometimes that is a wonderful thing. But sometimes it can be a little scary!
2. “Christian Rock” = Heavy Metal. And this was a curious discovery to me: I was driving and looking for a radio station when I came across something on the dial that sounded somewhat interesting, I liked the song that was playing and so I listened to see what station it was. It appeared to be some kind of “Christian Rock” station. I was curious so I kept listening. The music that then followed was obviously “heavy metal” and a little too “hard core” for me; the lyrics were full of “darkness” and talk of “evil” and such. It was kind of strange. It really got me thinking.
I find it so strange that these days how Religion seems to be tied to Guns, Intolerance, Bigotry, Greed, and Hate. It is astonishing to me and extremely disturbing. I simply do not understand it. Although I am not now religious, I was brought up to consider religion as being about love and compassion and generosity. What has happened?
But then, when I consider History, and as I am reading “The Historian,” I am reminded of all the depictions of monsters and gargoyles which adorn all the old cathedrals and ancient monuments. And we can’t forget the horrible violence of the early Christian church with its persecutions and its inquisitions. So in light of that, I guess it isn’t so very strange to see what is happening now. But it is scary. And one would think that by the 21st Century, people would have become wiser. But at least some of us have, and hopefully the majority of us. (This can partly be proven by our recent choice of electing Obama for President.)
I am no longer watching the news daily like I was doing during the election process. It gets too frustrating watching our representatives fighting like children. Unfortunately it seems we still have some of those evolutionary rejects in office. Republicans were not always so crazy. But they sure seem to be now. It’s infuriating to see how much time is wasted on such total nonsense. I cannot stomach it for the most part. I can always find better things to do.