Headlines Mislead, Say Experts

So, the CBO estimate of the health care bill is out, and the headlines are all screaming about it. The AP headline, carried on CNBC and elsewhere, reads “CBO: Health bill would cut $138 billion from deficit in 10 years.”

The Wall Street Journal gives a big shocking number: Health Overhaul to Cost $940 Billion Over Decade. In the online version, that’s the page title, but in the print version, it’s the headline, which is then followed by three paragraphs before the article explains that, despite the big number, it’s actually a savings.

Maybe it’s not just a WSJ thing, but it sure seems like it to me.

Questions that keep coming up

What chain of circumstances lead one to open a joint bank account with a spouse, and then set up direct deposit, and then ask whether it’s possible to hide their paycheck amounts? Isn’t asking that question the equivalent of saying “I’m a terrible person?”

What obligations do we have to art that makes us uncomfortable, or is difficult? Are we morally obligated to seek out, say, headache-inducing exhibitions at the ICA, or watch Oscar-nominated dramas, or listen to music that gets good ratings on Pitchfork? If so, how much? I mean, is there a ratio of serious to unserious entertainment that you have to maintain? Do you have to watch one “Precious” for every “Must Love Dogs?” One blog post about third-world poverty for every ten pictures of kittens? If you fall below that ill-defined ratio of highbrow to everything else, what are the consequences? Do you get exiled from the good dinner parties in Cambridge?

Also, what’s with the sudden proliferation of ballet flats that show women’s toe-cracks? A couple years ago it was about showing the toenails, and now it’s the other end of the toe. Is it the foot-fetish version of low-rise jeans?

This one is going to make me seem like a particularly unwholesome human being

Insomnia
Not yet sunrise, and in an upstairs window
a silhouette puts up her hair, leans forward
to set her breasts in place before an early shift.

I’m crosseyed and lonely and
waiting for sleep wakes mute and stupid hopes
so I just lean against the sill and let the focus fade.
In the upstairs window the light goes out;
When dawn begins, my head is hot against the glass.

Bioengineers of Tomorrow

When I see things like a registry of plasmids available by mail-order to help the enterprising young bioengineer assemble a novel life-form, I wonder how I can get in on the action, what my role in the awesome future this portends is going to be. Maybe I could build my own awesome new life-form with a second-hand PCR machine I find on Craigslist – liobam chops, anyone?

Then I remember I can’t even figure out the right way to assemble the toe-kicks on my Ikea kitchen cabinets.

Maybe they need someone to write their marketing brochures.

Poetry Update: Covering

Covering
“… worm-farming, that thankless trade no one wrote back about, the quiet work for which you were born.”
— Mary Karr, “Worm-Farmer’s Lament,” The Devil’s Tour

Detached complit types will note the Fritz Lang feel
of grey commuters streaming underground
toward squalling trains and toil;
raise a brow at useless regs
– in case of riot, stay indoors –
resent the dowdy mode of dress.

They know.
But every creature has its shell.

Reviews and resumes elide the truth,
disclose no measure of the heart’s desire.
But grime does not make drudgery
nor practiced weekday face a lie.

Poetry Update: Companionate Marriage

Companionate Marriage
“The marital ghetto is the human equivalent of a balanced aquarium, where the fish and the plants manage to live indefinitely off each other’s waste products.”
Michael Vincent Miller, Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion

Romance, that tired old nag, died years ago.
We visit graveside when we can,
bring offerings of flowers, candles, scented oils,
and books on intimate massage
to conjure up its almost-present ghost.

I last felt its unbidden presence this past spring
after the ambulance and before the second surgery,
crouched in a hospital bathroom
holding a screwtop jar for my wife to piss in.

And cleaning off my hands I knew I was in love.
It’s no soft-focus 30-second TV spot,
and “be my symbiont” will never grace a greeting card
but it’s our way, and for ourselves it’s true.

A Very Simple Voter’s Guide for the MA Special Election

On Tuesday, 1/19, there will be a special election in Massachusetts to determine who gets Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. It looks like it will be close, and it will definitely be important, because every vote counts in the Senate right now.

Fortunately, it’s an easy decision. There are only things you need to know:

  • Martha Coakley (D) is in favor of sick people getting health care, and has been known to put child molesters in jail.
  • Scott Brown is opposed to helping sick people get health care if they are poor, and has never put a child molester in jail.

Do you wish poor people would just get sick and die? Do you love child molesters? Then vote for Scott Brown. Are you a decent human being? Then vote for Martha Coakley.