Hilarity, Photography and Health Care

spring sunset 2
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Before I talk about anything else, I wish to introduce you to this blog. I found it at work and it made me laugh until I cried and then I went home and showed it to Audrey and we both laughed until we cried and then we decided we wanted to find the author and become her best friend forever or something similar.

And now for something completely different. This is The Daily Shoot, a photo site I've been following for a couple of weeks now because I like getting daily assignments. That is to say, I mostly like them, or I liked them right up until yesterday, when the assignment was to take a picture that showed how I felt about health care. I thought about this one for a while and I considered a) something subtle, like drawing a picture of people bleeding to death on the floor while uncaring politicians stepped over them and insurance company executives stuffed dollars into their pockets with one hand while twirling their enormous moustaches of evil with the other and then photographing that (I could just have photographed it, yes, but I'm not in DC) and b) something more pointed, like a picture of a long tunnel with kind of a foggy sort of light at the end. That would be all allegorical and nifty and impart the sense that hey there might be light at the end of the tunnel and yet there might not. As it stands, I didn't do either.

It doesn't really matter anyway since that end is four entire years away, leaving plenty of time for not only the forthcoming zombie apocalypse but also the 2012 end of the world and the pandemic bird/swine/velociraptor flu, not to mention teabaggers, and, well, I'm not holding my breath. Yes, I'm glad that some attempt was made to change health care or, more correctly, the complete lack thereof in this country, but it didn't go anywhere near far enough. I am not a big fan of profit based health care and insurance companies and I still don't understand why we can't have nice things like socialized medicine since every other damn industrialized or post industrialized nation in the world seems to manage it quite well. But then they don't have the glory and joy of living in the corporatocracy we call home, so, well, there's that.

But let's not get bitter! Today's assignment is to do a fashion shoot and I might just go right on ahead and do that, particularly since I am wearing rather a nifty new stripey shirt from the Goodwill. Spring, you see, has sprung, and everyone is wearing t-shirts and shorts that expose the blinding glare of their white, white legs (this is Appalachia, peopled mostly by descendants of peat farmers and the kind of guys who spent the 17th century leaping around the Scottish highlands in the mist - neither group notable for tanning genes.) If I can just figure out how to use the self timer properly perhaps you can all see this orangey stripey thing that is breaking up my usual determined all black. Or maybe I can put the camera in a paper bag and take some street fashion shots. Or maybe I'll just give up altogether - one never knows and that option is pretty tempting on a day like today.