This is not skull-base surgery; this is not molecular biophysics. While committing to memory every detail of a particular academic field, an increasing schism grows between the self and the whole. The magnifying glass catches the pixel, not the image. Upon reconsideration of a splintered lens, what can be seen?
Alas, an albuterol inhaler does little good in a field of methyl isocyanate--we succumb to that which we neglect.
Our society is clumped around metropolitan areas -- less than 3% of the total land area in the United States is urban. The image of the superpower is that of a monumental front surrounded by miles of oblivion. Such was the case for the Soviet Union, and in China, the glass is half-full. So -- what demons exist in the rural outpost? The U.S. is undergoing another period of recession, and therefore urban contraction; it may be time to revisit the derelict towns and that which exists therein.
The de facto truth can be best illuminated by first-hand accounts of the matter. A surprising visit inspired me to record a few accounts from the backyard of the U.S., which is paradoxically distant from its urban core.
After the scrambled story she told me about being tossed through a kitchen in a scuffle with whomever else was staying where she was living--an incident resulting in a concussion and twenty staples to seal the wound--I decided to let her stay through Christmas at my residence. She went on to elucidate the situation involving several characters stuffed into a home in Masontown, Pennsylvania, a small town beneath the shadow of the cooling towers of Hatfield's Ferry nuclear power plant. One, an aging, ailing Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon with an oxycodone issue, allowed his "daughter" (not by blood, of course), an obese diabetic we shall call "Marie," to stay at the house with her violent friends. It was this bizarre creature who battered the skull of my hapless holiday visitor in a sort of sucker punch.
I recognized this character, "Marie." I paid her a visit once (maybe I will explain later) at her fly-infested home in the middle of a large field. She greeted my mother and I, sat down at a table, and with her pale, fleshy hands crushed an entire column of saltine crackers into tomato soup. She countered the 114 g of carbohydrates and 2,250 mg of sodium with a singular shot of insulin that was injected, as a sort of appetizer, into her large, gelatinous arm.
My visitor then elucidated much more intrigue. Her mother, a severe alcoholic that often enjoys weekends consuming two cases of beer each containing 30 cans (5.6 gallons in 48 hours), receives a fixed government income for Parkinson's disease. Alcoholism gradually destroys hypothalamic mamillary bodies, the amygdala and the cerebellum--delirium tremens stem from the destruction of the latter, which would cause several forms of ataxia. So, in a bizarre way, she likely receives SSI for alcohol damage which manifests itself in tremors.
Inappropriate diagnoses also affected Monsieur "Dragon" mentioned earlier, who suffered a stroke relating to medicinal complications combined with epilepsy prodromes--the source of his SSI wage.
Medical mistakes are a different topic entirely, and will be covered separately. Let's just say that the quality of care precipitously drops in certain areas, but healthcare prices remain constant.
Disability fixed wages run at about $735/mo., and members of the house accompany them with food stamps, an additional $200/mo. for food. Together, that would be roughly $935/mo. to cover expenses, just $100 less than full-time minimum wage employment, and $300/mo. more than a full-time, independent student loan refund affords. The people stuffed into the Masontown home constantly bicker and attempt to pilfer each other's food stamps. "Marie," in particular, consumes an alarming amount of the other residents' supplies--amounting to close to a thousand dollars in food products. While she becomes yet more obese, the less aggressive grow thin. The level of dysfunction caused by "Marie" and her unwelcome hoard can only be seen as absurd.
So, my visitor and I had a celebration that was nice and slow. The only mishap was an attempt to use the oven, which, in burning debris left by the mice underneath, left the house with an overpowering and horrid odor, remedied only by the opening of all doors and windows. Luckily (at least for us), this is a curiously autumnal December, and the air--previously saturated with mold spores, smoke and incinerated fur--was refreshed with an outdoor breeze.
The visitor recalled a similar incident, in which the bodies of a mouse and several cockroaches were found in the broiler at her old residence after the kitchen was engulfed in smoke.
The purpose is this to say, the statistics and archetypal clichés do not provide enough information to extrapolate details. So, here is a blog that exposes disjointed fragments to redirect imaginations to the state of their neighbors. The details may be distant (a good twenty miles or so?), but alas--they are part of the whole.
After the scrambled story she told me about being tossed through a kitchen in a scuffle with whomever else was staying where she was living--an incident resulting in a concussion and twenty staples to seal the wound--I decided to let her stay through Christmas at my residence. She went on to elucidate the situation involving several characters stuffed into a home in Masontown, Pennsylvania, a small town beneath the shadow of the cooling towers of Hatfield's Ferry nuclear power plant. One, an aging, ailing Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon with an oxycodone issue, allowed his "daughter" (not by blood, of course), an obese diabetic we shall call "Marie," to stay at the house with her violent friends. It was this bizarre creature who battered the skull of my hapless holiday visitor in a sort of sucker punch.
I recognized this character, "Marie." I paid her a visit once (maybe I will explain later) at her fly-infested home in the middle of a large field. She greeted my mother and I, sat down at a table, and with her pale, fleshy hands crushed an entire column of saltine crackers into tomato soup. She countered the 114 g of carbohydrates and 2,250 mg of sodium with a singular shot of insulin that was injected, as a sort of appetizer, into her large, gelatinous arm.
My visitor then elucidated much more intrigue. Her mother, a severe alcoholic that often enjoys weekends consuming two cases of beer each containing 30 cans (5.6 gallons in 48 hours), receives a fixed government income for Parkinson's disease. Alcoholism gradually destroys hypothalamic mamillary bodies, the amygdala and the cerebellum--delirium tremens stem from the destruction of the latter, which would cause several forms of ataxia. So, in a bizarre way, she likely receives SSI for alcohol damage which manifests itself in tremors.
Inappropriate diagnoses also affected Monsieur "Dragon" mentioned earlier, who suffered a stroke relating to medicinal complications combined with epilepsy prodromes--the source of his SSI wage.
Medical mistakes are a different topic entirely, and will be covered separately. Let's just say that the quality of care precipitously drops in certain areas, but healthcare prices remain constant.
Disability fixed wages run at about $735/mo., and members of the house accompany them with food stamps, an additional $200/mo. for food. Together, that would be roughly $935/mo. to cover expenses, just $100 less than full-time minimum wage employment, and $300/mo. more than a full-time, independent student loan refund affords. The people stuffed into the Masontown home constantly bicker and attempt to pilfer each other's food stamps. "Marie," in particular, consumes an alarming amount of the other residents' supplies--amounting to close to a thousand dollars in food products. While she becomes yet more obese, the less aggressive grow thin. The level of dysfunction caused by "Marie" and her unwelcome hoard can only be seen as absurd.
So, my visitor and I had a celebration that was nice and slow. The only mishap was an attempt to use the oven, which, in burning debris left by the mice underneath, left the house with an overpowering and horrid odor, remedied only by the opening of all doors and windows. Luckily (at least for us), this is a curiously autumnal December, and the air--previously saturated with mold spores, smoke and incinerated fur--was refreshed with an outdoor breeze.
The visitor recalled a similar incident, in which the bodies of a mouse and several cockroaches were found in the broiler at her old residence after the kitchen was engulfed in smoke.
The purpose is this to say, the statistics and archetypal clichés do not provide enough information to extrapolate details. So, here is a blog that exposes disjointed fragments to redirect imaginations to the state of their neighbors. The details may be distant (a good twenty miles or so?), but alas--they are part of the whole.
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