Give me the old stuff any day, and you can stick all yer modern shit right back up yer ass.
Tag: Me Myself I
Personal stuff
Granite State Call-In
I may need a little personal help from my Readers in New Hampshire — it doesn’t involve me, but someone very dear to me, and it is not financial.
So if you live in New Hampshire, please drop me an email and I’ll supply the details.
Many thanks.
Transplanted
This story (ordinarily the type I’d ignore) really struck a chord with me:
I decided, four years ago, to leave London, selling the flat I owned in Dalston and moving to Somerset.
The life I’d been building in London evaporated and I felt broken. The country seemed to offer a gentle place where I could retreat, lick my wounds and start again. After all, the countryside is where I had always been happy. Or so I told myself.
Of course, the reality blew a ten-foot hole in that dream, because of course life in the country isn’t as idyllic as it’s often painted. Read the thing for the details.
Anyway, the reason why this silly woman’s article interested me is that I’m a little like her (minus the foolishness).
I’ve often thought about finding a small place out in the boonies — “small” in country terms, i.e. just large enough to where I could make a short .22 range where I could bang away for hours on end without disturbing the neighbors — but of course there are several factors which have always stopped me from doing just that.
The first is that I’m a city boy by inclination. I mean, most of my life has been spent in the ‘burbs, but the times when I’ve really enjoyed my life was when I lived in downtown Johannesburg and Chicago, and spent lengthy periods in places like London or Vienna. I liked having a dizzying choice of places to eat out and drink, the movie houses and auditoriums, the shops which sold pretty much anything I needed (outside the gun world, of course), and even art galleries: all within walking distance of my living room. For that, I was prepared to put up with the noise of the city, the proximity of neighbors and all the things which would drive other people away.
Likewise when I’ve traveled abroad, I’ve always preferred to stay in the great cities (London, Paris and so on) over the small countryside towns. Then again, it must be said that I really enjoyed living out in rural Hardy Country at Mr. Free Market’s country estate as well — probably the first time in my life that I’ve properly lived out in the sticks.
I have no illusions about living in the city, because I’ve been there and done that, on two continents. Also, having spent half a year out in the company of The Englishman and Mr. Free Market, I have no illusions there too — although it must also be said that the Brits do a good job of making their small towns very livable, as anyone who’s ever been to places like Marlborough or Devizes will attest.
So while I often ask myself the question: if you won the lottery, where would you spend most of your time? the answer is probably “close to or actually in a city” more than “out in a country retreat”.
If for some reason I did choose the country option, however, I know I’d make a better job of it than the stupid woman who wrote that article.
Big Fat Hairy Deal
…and I use the word “fat” advisedly.
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk officials have agreed to lower the cost of GLP-1 obesity drugs for Medicaid and Medicare recipients and those who pay directly and make treatments more accessible, President Donald Trump announced Thursday.
Medicare will begin to provide coverage for the obesity drugs for some people in mid-2026, which also might cause more private insurers to likewise add coverage for them.
The deal could lower the cost of the drugs to $150 per month for prescriptions that are available in pill form and that contain the lowest doses.
I remain skeptical, and here’s why.
I remember doing the math for Ozempic, and calculated that the cost per month (including the little single-use syringe) was about $5, for the .25ml shot. What you actually pay is about $150 per month.
As anyone who knows anything about this business knows, the .25ml (the “lowest” as quoted above) barely does anything to you, weight-wise: that’s the dose which prepares your system to handle the drug’s effects. The serious weight loss starts with the .5ml double dose — well, it did for me, anyway — and guess what happens to the cost. It increases exponentially with each increase in dosage.
I’ve had to quit taking Ozempic shots — as of last week, actually, because frankly, for someone trying to live on a fixed income amidst soaring inflation and prices of, well, everything except gasoline (which is still too expensive), I just can’t afford it. (New Wife, by the way, wants me to continue to take it because she thinks if it keeps me alive, that’s worth it. I remain unconvinced that it’s a lifesaver.)
My annual physical exam is late next week, and I’ll be discussing the matter with my GP.
Anyway, here’s the thing. Under Medicare, my BP meds, my gout meds and my statins and others cost me…$11 per month. Those drugs, I’m pretty sure, are actually saving my life; the weight-loss stuff? Who knows.
Maybe I’ll regain all the weight I lost (about 50lbs), or maybe I won’t. Maybe my diabetes has responded well to the weight loss, or maybe it hasn’t: the blood tests will tell. One thing Ozempic did do for me was change the way I thought about food, or at least the quantities I consumed thereof. I’m not sure that stopping the drug will make that attitude revert to its former self; I don’t think it will.
We’ll see. All I know is that as currently priced, the GLP-1 regime of drugs are unaffordable so I’ll just quit taking any of them until the cost comes down to what I can afford.
And if that decision ends my life, I don’t care. I’m 71 years old, next week, and as anyone who’s reached that Biblical age limit can attest, the prospect of death no longer frightens one as much as it may have done in earlier times — which is what I’m going to tell my doctor next week.
Let’s see what he has to say about it.
In the meantime, though, my reaction to Trump’s much-heralded “price reduction” of this stuff is pretty much encapsulated in the title of this post.
Admission
Alert Readers may sometimes notice a comment in a Monday Funnies post like this one:
…as did Longtime Friend & Reader mnshaw, a while back:
Okay, I might as well ‘fess up:
There is no such account as Kim du Toit@MYOB.
If I see a cartoon, joke or meme that elicits a response, I simply edit the pic by adding this little button
…and the comment (see above).
I have no “social presence” in any of the Usual Suspects (Twatter, FizzBuke, Snapshit, TickBite, MySpecs, InstaGroan, TroofSexual etc.) so I created a fake one because, well I don’t know exactly why I did it, other than maybe to poke fun at the concept. And no, I’m not tempted to create a real one, either.
I do stupid shit like that occasionally. (So I’m sorry if you fruitlessly wasted your time trying to hunt me down, mnshaw.)
Oh, and if there’s an egregious spelling mistake in a meme (egregious enough that in my eyes it takes away the enjoyment thereof) I sometimes edit the damn thing because:
Finally, one more thing. Almost without exception, the “Dear Diary” meme family:
…is of my own creation.
So there you have it.
So That’s What I’ve Got
This article caught my eye a while back:
Harry Judd’s wife Izzy has claimed that one of their children suffers from what some experts describe as ‘pathological demand avoidance’ – a controversial behaviour pattern said to make even simple requests, such as tidying their room or saying please and thank you, trigger anxiety.
I have no idea who the Judds are — some obscure Brit celebrities, I guess — but reading that sentence would have made my mother go “AHA!”
If “pathological demand avoidance” could also be described as a hostile (and sometimes even violent) attitude towards authority figures, then oh boy: that would describe me perfectly. There’s an old English expression that my former housemaster actually used to describe my attitude: “He’s always kicking against the pricks.” (Look it up; it’s quite funny.)
The only thing that sets me aside from the kid above would be the fact that if said authority figure has earned my respect, then the process will sometimes become easier (for them). The only problem is that my respect is seldom given, to just about anyone and anything. And by “anything”, I mean conventions, rules, regulations and even — on occasion — laws, if they make no sense.
My attitude is probably the cause of at least a third of the problems I’ve experienced during my lifetime (my love of women is about half, and I couldn’t be bothered trying to think of what constitutes the balance).
Anyway, whenever the occasion presents itself and I stand accused of willful disobedience / outright rebellion, I can now just trot out the excuse that I’m not a stubborn and disobedient asshole; I just suffer from this “pathological demand avoidance (PDA)” thing, and claim victim status.
No I won’t. What a load of old bullshit.
Next thing you’ll be seeing one of those foul Big Pharma TV ads that features — guess what — a pill that promises to alleviate PDA (at $400 per pill, no doubt), as long as you don’t mind the side-effects that include eventual cessation of heart function, a 90% risk of cancer and toenails that grow six inches per hour, in no specific order, and you should talk to your doctor to make sure that Rebyniflorbitylhexacholate (brand name: Rebate) is right for you.
In case anyone missed it, I am NOT in a good mood today and I’m going to go for my personal cure for the condition: a couple hours at the range. Fortunately, the range I call home has few if any range safety nazis, because nothing gets up my nose like some 19-year-old wanker wearing a SIG 320 in a plastic holster telling me about range safety as though my 60-years-plus experience with handling Teh Dangerous Guns doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t “trigger” anxiety, but rage.
Bloody hell, I get irritable just thinking about it.