Author: Aaron Weber

How to apply to business school

Alternate essay my brother and I came up with while editing his b-school application: My name is J-Dub, and this… is my career. [Insert video of rioting Bolivian prostitutes.] I want to become a successful businessman, but I can’t do it with just a background in gas-canister dodging and government contracting. So please, MBA, pimp my career!

While searching for an appropriate image to go with that, I discovered that “Pimp My Ride” has been doing a UK version for the past two years. It seems only fair, after the US has imported remakes of all these UK shows like “The Office” and “Viva Blackpool,” to export something to them. Something like a Morris Minor with spinning rims. No, really: The first car they did was a Morris Minor.

I Never Get Out Of Somerville

I moved to the Boston area in 2000, but I am ashamed to admit that even after all this time there are parts of the city I just don’t know. These days, if it’s not in Cambridge or Somerville, I can hardly be bothered. Across the river? Only occasionally. All the way over in Jamaica Plain? You’re kidding. If you move from Somerville to Jamaica Plain, I’ll throw a going away party.

But this weekend I went two new places. Saturday morning I went to Quincy (thats Kwin-zee, for those of you from out of town) for a wedding. How have I been here for nearly eight years, but never been to Quincy? The reception was held in a banquet hall that also held an Elks Lodge, which was advertising at 1:00 PM Meat Raffle. I didn’t get to attend that. What kind of meat? Meat like the bride and groom? Elk meat?

Then today I went to visit some goats in a small town just over the border into Rhode Island, right near Purgatory Chasm (access via Purgatory Road), a state park which contains a rock formation known as Fat Man’s Misery. I learned how to milk goats. There was a llama, but it was shy if I was nearby. When I retreated enough, it came to the fence and ate carrots from its owner’s mouth.

I also found out that one of my favorite journalists, Rob Walker, links to me from his blog. TO ME. I am so honored it hurts. I am in the sidebar in a category labeled “Hard To Categorize,” along with “Ask A Mexican.”

Why The U.S. Health Care System Is Broken

I got a new insurance company in June. It has taken them until this week to figure out how much they are charging me for my shrink. Some time in July they said they wouldn’t pay anything at all, because me being crazy is a previously existing condition. I sent in the appropriate forms proving prior coverage of the previously existing crazy, and they conceded that they would bear some of the cost. The cost they are willing to bear is significantly less than my previous insurer, though. My doctor and I argued with them about that, but they wouldn’t budge. Apparently my doctor is too in-network or not in-network enough, depending on whom I ask. Anyway, it’s now October and I have consumed months of medical services without ever knowing the price. Now I’m going to have to pay a bill that’s double what I was expecting.

How can health consumers be expected to negotiate on price or shop around when it takes four months to get a price quote?

At this point the only thing that makes me want to get any medical care at all is the fact that it’s costing my insurer more than it’s costing me. I’m tempted to go over to my Primary Care Physician’s office and tell him I’ve been experiencing nonspecific bone and organ pain and ask for some expensive tests, just to bleed them a little more.

Did you hear the one about the doctor, the hospital administrator, and the HMO exec who were trying to get into heaven? They let the doctor in because doctors save lives. They let the hospital administrator in because hospital administrators help doctors save lives. The HMO exec says “hey, I help people save lives too!” and St. Peter says “Let’s do it like you do on earth with people trying to get into a hospital: We’ll admit you for three days, but after that you can go to hell.”

Nothing Is More Exciting Than A Hunger Strike

Hunger-strikes always struck me as kind of passive-aggressive, you know? Like, “I’m going to slowly and painfully kill myself, while you go on doing whatever horrible shit you like.” But that’s not how it works. Hunger striking is effective because the single most powerful force in the world is shame.

But what happens when you have two groups trying to achieve contradictory aims, and both of them start in on hunger strikes?

Yeah, this is a Bolivia update: Prostitutes in El Alto, the poor suburb outside La Paz, have sewn their lips shut in protest over last week’s protests that shuttered their (legal) brothels.

Yeah, it’s legal there. You have to have a license, though. And after violent protests, the city government revoked some licenses. But that’s people’s livelihood, you know. So, the hookers are on hunger strike. So are some bar-owners and karaoke operators. And also some of the student groups who want the bars and brothels shut down. And finally some people from the truckers union are on a hunger strike, over some kind of blockade being carried out by a rival union. It’s a giant clusterfuck of starvation.

The NYT has an English summary, but there’s more detail in Spanish in La Razón.

History notes that this is not the first hunger strike by prostitutes in El Alto. Last year, there was one over corrupt police and city officials who demanded bribes and sexual favors in exchange for licensing permission.

Economism

Great line about the tax-and-spend Republicans from the New Yorker this week: “Saying today that tax cuts will increase tax revenues is not like saying that bombing Iran constitutes a sensible foreign policy, or that education vouchers will wreck the public schools. It’s more like saying that the best way to treat sick people is to bleed them to let out the evil spirits.”

And yet… and yet… people still believe. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. There are also people who think Saddam (or possibly the Jews, or possibly the CIA, or possibly Saddam in collusion with the Jews in the CIA) caused 9/11. These are people who believe that God truly has it in for the New York Yankees. I mean, sure, the Yankees are not my team. But I don’t think there is a divine force rooting for the Colorado Rockies because they prohibit Maxim and swearing in the clubhouse. Whoever wins the World Series will win through the normal, everyday non-miraculous combination of hard work, training, luck, and as-yet-undetected steroids.

A Conversation On World Events In The Roman Style

bolivia-riotiing.jpg Let’s have a dialogue about world news, but between… oh, let’s say Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. That makes it kind of fun.

Vorenus: Today, troops seized control of a major port, after a dispute over docking fees in which managers demanded that foreign shipping lines pay all fees in cash directly to them, rather than depositing the money with the central government. People are rioting in the streets around the port in protest and counter-protest. It boils down to the province wanting more autonomy than the central government will allow. The citizens are probably right that the central government can’t be trusted with the money, but I don’t think the local port managers are any better. And that’s just in one city. To make things more complicated, in the poorer sections of the capital, people have begun sacking bars and brothels to protest drunkenness and whoring, and are blocking the streets with the flaming wreckage.

Pullo: That’s completely insane.

Vorenus: Seems more like a return to normalcy to me. October is a big month for violent protests here.

Pullo: If it’s any consolation, the people in charge here are also completely nuts. They’ve just refused to provide medicine to poor, sick children, and they also renewed “Big Bang Theory.”

Vorenus: I read the reports from your country. I know it’s going down the tubes. What surprises me is that nobody’s rioting in the streets or taking over the ports. At least here, people know how to express their righteous indignation.

Pullo: It’s true. Here, people are just hoping the new consul will fix everything in two years. But the problems we face aren’t entirely the current consul’s fault. Many of them are systemic, and he just exposed them and twisted them to his advantage. I fear what will happen when people begin to see that a new consul can’t immediately undo all the damage of the past eight years.

Waiting For “Milf” To Be Added To The OED

“Ginormous” is the latest addition, at least the latest one I care about or use. But I’m really waiting for “milf” to end up. And not just as an all-caps acronym. I want them to accept “milfy,” as an adjective. And I want to know whether the plural should be “milfs” or “milves.”

Seriously, these things plague me. I need to know!