Sicko

Warning--ranty:

I seem to have pink eye. Gross, yes? Trying to be a responsible human being by sparing others from bizarre infectious childhood ailments, I stayed home from work today with the intention of going to the doctor. I have a supposedly good health insurance plan (with Cigna).

I have spent THREE HOURS on the phone trying to get an appointment with a doctor. I finally found one who will try to squeeze me in this afternoon, but it is unclear whether my insurance will pay for it. My ostensible primary care physician (whom I have not met because I haven't been sick since I got this insurance policy) said she could not see me UNTIL AUGUST, infected eyeball or no. I called dozens of other doctors' offices from the Cigna list of primary care physicians accepting new patients, and they all either (1) never answered their phone, (2) were not actually accepting new patients, or (3) said they couldn't see me until at least next week. I finally called Cigna, who suggested I might try getting an appointment with an opthamologist instead; one at Howard University finally took pity on me. Then I had to call my PCP back to get them to fax a referral form to Cigna, but they said they wouldn't do it since I have not seen that doctor before. I explained my saga to them in non-calm tones, and said if the doctor wants to see me, that's great, I would come there right away, but if not she would just have to give me a referral, since I have to go to work before August and would rather not give all of my coworkers gross oozing eyes. We'll see what happens with that.

Having not been need-to-see-a-doctor sick in a long time, I really had no idea that this was how it worked. I thought that the reason people go to the emergency room for non-emergency treatments was that they were uninsured--but it would appear that, in fact, that may be the only way to see a doctor at all.

I feel like I could be a character in that new Michael Moore movie, and that makes me very unhappy because I hate Michael Moore. :(

Curse you, Sprint M1, iTunes, and all consumer electronics

My old cell phone got rained on and died, the poor delicate flower, so I decided it was time to upgrade to a fancy one with a camera and a music player. I got this phone, the Sprint M1, which I think is kind of retro-cute like something out of the movie Tron, and which has the aforementioned camera and music player.

All good, except I WANT TO KILL THE DESIGNERS OF THIS PHONE, AND WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE OF ITUNES WHILE I'M AT IT. In the last 23 hours, I have discovered the following things:

1. The only way to put music purchased from iTunes onto a non-Apple device, like my fancy new phone, is to burn the music to a CD in mp3 format and then re-load it onto iTunes, or else download some kind of illegal-seeming software (note to The Man: I did not download any such software). This is because the files you buy from iTunes are in m4p format, or something, rather than mp3, ostensibly to prevent piracy or improve sound quality, but really so that you can only listen to them on an iPod or other Apple product.

2. You can load music you bought on CD onto the phone, but if you put it in the Music folder, which seems the logical place for it, you don't access it by going to "Music" or "Media Player," but through Tools --> File Manager --> Music. Then you can't play a whole album, just one song at a time, and you can't use the cute little "Play" button that's on the outside of the phone, you have to go in through these menus to pick a new song after each song is done playing.

IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS COMPLICATED TO USE A PHONE. I refuse to accept any blame for my problems using this thing, because I know I'm not an idiot. The problem is that somewhere along the line our society decided that Computers Are Hard And Complicated, and thus we have come to accept that you may need to spend hours reading a 300-page manual in order to use a phone, and also that there is any rational reason why you cannot play music you have purchased on a music-playing device manufactured by another company.

It's as if you bought a shirt, but it had 47 holes in it, so before you could put it on you'd have to read a treatise on which one is for your head and which ones are for your arms, and then also the shirt would self-destruct if you tried to wear it with pants you bought from a different store.

The problem is, what am I going to do about it? Do I return the phone to Sprint out of spite, which would hurt Sprint hardly at all but leave me, again, music-less and phone-less? And which might possibly just lead me to buy an iPhone when they come out because I know it will work with iTunes, thus perpetuating the iTunes copyright monopoly? Or should I just grit my teeth and figure out how to use it?

Who's going to be the primary source of archaic assumptions?

I read the NYT article "Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying" to reassure myself that it was OK that Mr. T&A and I got hitched after only making it about 1/3 of the way through our "1001 Questions to Answer Before You Get Married" book. The article only has 15 questions, which is a much more reasonable number than 1001, for which I give them props.

However, the questions drove me absolutely batshit, and have been bugging me for weeks now because of the article's seemingly permanent spot on the list of Most Emailed Articles, which is normally a nice source of work-avoidance for me. Check out #1:

Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?

You may say I'm a dreamer, but isn't it possible for two people to share caregiving responsibilities? Even if not, why do you have to decide years in advance who the main baby-raiser is going to be? Wouldn't it be reasonable to decide that, for instance, the person for whom it makes the most sense to take time off from work given their job situation at the time the aforementioned children arrive will do it?

And then we have # 3:

Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?

"Manage the chores"? Unless they mean "who will berate the gardener if he trims the shrubbery in a less than symmetrical fashion," I can only think this means "Who will end up doing the huge majority of the chores and will end up thanking the other partner for 'helping' if he sometimes does the dishes?"

In the interest of winnowing the number of questions yet farther, I propose they could replace these two with the following:

Woman, have you discarded your starry-eyed college-feminist visions of an equal partnership and accepted your inescapable fate as the primary caregiver and chore-doer?

And, end rant. Tune in next week when I explain why the Pussycat Dolls are not good role models for little girls.

Annoyances of human behavior: Crowded Bus Edition*

I rode the bus home today, which caused me to reflect on what an annoying and irrational people we human beings are. To wit: when the bus is crowded, it is necessary for the passengers standing in the aisles to move towards the back of the bus so that more people can get on at the front. Everyone knows this, since they have gotten on crowded buses before and wished others would move back, and also because the bus driver is constantly yelling, "Move back!"

Nonetheless, a majority of bus riders absolutely refuse to move back. (I could attribute this to D.C. residents, but since others have noted the same phenomenon in other cities, I will lay off D.C. and conclude it is a fairly universal occurrence.) Instead, they cling for dear life to whatever pole or strap they happen to have their little paws on. Why do they do this? Do they feel that the people getting on the bus constitute a deluge of sorts, and that if they let go they will be washed away, perhaps swept out the back windows and onto the street? Is it some kind of Rosa Parks shout-out? (Note: Unlike the strap-grippers, Rosa Parks had a seat. Also, fighting for racial justice.) Do they think they are pioneers on the frontier who will eventually be granted ownership of the pole to which they are clinging if they set up a homestead there for long enough? Are they just resisting the authority of the bus driver and/or the new passengers in an aimless sort of way?

I just have no idea. If you see a very grumpy-looking girl on a crowded bus scowling at the pole-clingers while shoving her way to the back of the bus, give me a wave.

*I realize that the entire point of this post is to bitch about something that bugs me, and that this means I am in some way imitating Andy Rooney. This is unfortunate because I have hated Andy Rooney for years. I have long said: "I hate Andy Rooney. How can a crotchety old man make an entire career out of bitching about things that bug him?" But now I realize that my hatred was actually jealousy in disguise. Sorry, Mr. Rooney. CBS, if you are thinking of replacing Andy Rooney with a younger crotchety person who will bitch about things that bug her, you know where to look.