Nesting

Lea requested some fun pregnancy posts every once in a while. Well, ask and ye shall receive!

I have always been a baker, especially when under stress. I'm not terribly stressed at the moment--the second trimester indeed is better than the first, though I still have some nausea--but I've had a resurgence of desire to Bake Stuff.

First I decided to take up my mom's tradition of baking Halloween cupcakes. She has sent my dad to work with said cupcakes for several years now. So last weekend I whipped up three dozen adorable cupcakes for Mrs. Gerbil and her classmates. I hear they were very well-received.

Next I decided it was time to make persimmon pudding. Mrs. Gerbil had bought three persimmons without a specific use in mind for them. I am somewhat embarrassed to report that I haven't made the persimmon pudding yet. Anyone know how long persimmons will keep in the fridge?

And now I'm letting three dozen more cupcakes cool prior to icing them. We are having a little going-away party tomorrow for one of the supervisors. Natch, I volunteered to bring cupcakes.

Oddly enough, I've lost about 95% of my sweet tooth since becoming pregnant with the gerb. I don't even miss chocolate--it gives me heartburn these days. For whatever reason, all I want is salty stuff; and yet I go and bake 36 cupcakes on a whim.

Public transit story #22: Out of the mouths of babes

BART was full of cuteness this evening. Or perhaps I am merely noticing cuteness more often now that I am growing some cuteness in my midsection.

Well, whatever. I was sitting across the aisle from a spunky five-year-old and her mother. They were evidently returning from a rather eclectic shopping trip. The little girl's loot included a couple of lollipops and a yellow plastic recorder. The mother's loot included some perfume, a sweatshirt, and a hookah. She removed the hookah from its box to check it out.

"Oooh, mama, what's that?" asked her daughter.

"Never you mind," said mama.

"Oh, I know what that is! It's a guitar!" crowed the little girl.

At this point, mother and daughter were joined by a random new seatmate, a middle-aged man. "Look, this is my mom's new guitar!" the little girl announced. The man found this all very amusing.

The little girl conversed a little while with her new friend. Then he asked (as one is wont to do with small children) how old she was. The little girl cycled through several attempts at holding up five fingers, then asked her mother for help. Her mother held up one hand.

"I can do that!" said the little girl. And she proceeded to position her fingers in an instantly recognizable gesture that had nothing to do with her age:

METAL!

The Spam Files 3: Size matters

[warning: may be NSFW]

Why, all of a sudden, has my spam folder been deluged with penis spam?

Some of my favorite recent subject lines:

Is your small penis your only problem?
no, actually, that's not one of my problems at all

Your new penis is waiting for you!
I don't remember ordering one of those...

No doubt! Your bigger penis will make them jealous!
I'm speechless

Bigger penis won't be on TV but in your shorts!
God, I certainly hope not!

Well, I suppose I should be grateful that I'm no longer receiving spam with subjects along the lines of "My new boyfriend's [random synonym for penis] keeps slipping out."

ps to anyone who found this entry by Googling something about phallus size: Sorry, no penises here.

I'm only happy when it snows

There is a variety of mood disorder known colloquially as Seasonal Affective Disorder. In the DSM-IV it is actually not a separate disorder, but rather a specifier which can be tacked onto a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder or a major depressive episode in Bipolar Disorder. Basically this specifier is a fancy way of saying "the person becomes depressed when a particular season (usually fall or winter) begins."

I think I have reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder.

For the first twenty-five years of my life, I lived in places that had four seasons--one of these being cold, snowy winter. To be fair, I used to feel down fairly predictably from just before Thanksgiving through my birthday, which is a week and a half after Christmas. However, the most wintry weather tended not to arrive until a few weeks after my birthday, by which time I was already feeling much better.

I was a little nervous about moving to Northern California on account of the lack of seasons. "But we do have seasons here," Mrs. Gerbil pointed out. "We just only have two: wet and dry."

At first, the prospect of six straight months of sunshine seemed like a neat little novelty. I snickered when our neighbors complained about the "heat wave" that first summer; it was in the low 80's and about 10% humidity. (My definition of a heat wave is that it's got to be hot and humid.) But then I got tired of the sunshine. I got cranky, and I longed for a thunderstorm to improve my mood. None arrived.

When the rains started, I was pleased. Grey skies mean fall; and fall means winter's coming. But, of course, the rain never turned to freezing rain or snow, and I got cranky. I wanted some snow to cheer me up. Instead, the daffodils came up and the skies began to clear. I felt cheated. Spring had arrived, and I'd never gotten my winter! And the next twelve months were much the same.

Perhaps it says something about my personality that I love inclement weather. I'm a sucker for the pouring rain, thunderstorms, snow, and grey skies of all shades. I'm not keen on freezing rain or tornadoes; but otherwise, anything but constant sunshine floats my proverbial boat. Indeed, when I was two I drew a sun wearing a big ol' frowny face.

Last week the rains began. Mrs. Gerbil is a little cranky. She misses the sun. Me, I'll take what I can get.

Public transit story # 21: Punky's Dilemma

The City of Berkeley has an ordinance which prohibits smoking in various public locations, including bus stops. Being the comprehensive city that Berkeley is, there is another chapter of the same ordinance detailing exactly how this information is to be posted. The penalty, supposedly, is fine and/or imprisonment.

Unfortunately, the Berkeley police have their hands full with such weightier issues as drug dealing, vandalism, the occasional assault or homicide, speeding, expired parking meters, and kids who ride their bikes on the sidewalk; and so I have yet to see a single officer of the peace confront any of the hardened criminals known as bus-stop smokers. Thus, enforcement is left to such health-conscious and/or respiratorally challenged citizens such as myself. And, except for one memorable incident, I have found bus-stop smokers to be quite willing to light up elsewhere if asked politely.

Several days ago, while waiting for the bus in downtown Berkeley, I was suddenly accosted by the smell of cigarette smoke. I turned around and realized, with horror, that I knew the offender. He had once been a client of mine--one toward whom I'd had some pretty intense, negative countertransferential feelings. He did not appear to recognize me. It had been well over a year since I'd encountered him in a clinical setting; we weren't acquainted for very long; and plus I'd since chopped off my (formerly ridiculously long) hair.

I really wanted to remind him, for the sake of my lungs and the gerb, that smoking is prohibited at the bus stop. But I did not want to risk him recognizing me--and possibly striking up a conversation with me (see countertransferential feelings above). In addition, I didn't think I'd be able to be perfectly polite in my request (again, see countertransferential feelings above), and I feared I might accidentally address him by name and find myself in awkward conversation. On the other hand, my bus was already late, and if I didn't say anything, I would continue to breathe his secondhand smoke until my bus finally showed up.

Finally, I decided just to get up and move to another bench. This was a fine solution until his bus pulled up near me, whereupon he ambled over, continued to puff away until it was his turn to board, and tossed his still-lit cigarette by the curb. He still showed no sign of having any idea who I was.

I briefly debated stomping on the discarded butt, but then my bus arrived.

Was avoiding interaction altogether the right thing to do? I don't know. My rule of thumb on greeting present or former clients in public is to let them greet me first. On rare occasions will I be the first to say hi; but I only do this when I'm out alone. But this situation was not about saying hi--and therein lies the rub.

Passing the buck

Last month I was chosen to attend a "town hall" meeting at work. It was a chance to meet our new CEO, to find out the company's official corporate goals (executive summary: global domination), and to voice our questions and concerns.

Several employees voiced concerns about our terrible benefits package. We work for a ginormous health insurance conglomerate, and yet we get shafted by the insurance policies written by our own employer. It makes me sad when I have to quote benefits to a member whose plan is more reasonable than my own.

Our new CEO said that they are aware of employees' dissatisfaction with the benefits and that they were diligently working on something better in preparation for open enrollment season.

Well, open enrollment season is upon us, and guess what? Our benefit package is even worse. Mrs. Gerbil and I will see up to a 10% increase in our premiums, our already stratospheric deductible, some prescription co-pays, and our out-of-pocket maximum. The official reason for the increase is that it reflects "rising healthcare costs."

Now, I may be a cynic, but I happen to believe that a major factor in rising healthcare costs is insurance companies. Yes, they want to protect their profit margins. But think about it: advances in healthcare technology (including medicines, laboratory tests, and procedures) don't come without a price tag. Yet providers must accept very low reimbursement rates in order to participate in managed care networks. For example, I recently had standard prenatal bloodwork and (on account of my Ashkenazic heritage) some genetic testing. The lab charged my insurance company over $1000, but because they are a network provider, they'll be paid only about $300. Sucks to be them. But it also sucks to be the rest of us, because if the lab pressures the insurance company for a higher reimbursement rate, the insurance company will pass the increased cost along to the employers who buy their packages... who will then pass it along to employees in the form of higher premiums and/or crappier coverage.

There are, of course, other explanations for rising healthcare costs. This article from the Annals of Internal Medicine does a good job of outlining them. But in the end, I still think that the industry which currently pays our bills has created a fantastically self-perpetuating cycle of cost increases. So I'm all for socialized medicine--even if it means I'd have to find another job.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering: all that expensive labwork came back normal. Go little developing gerb!)

Irony

Yesterday Mrs. Gerbil and I finally bid farewell to the Big Gay Subaru.


My parents bought it new in the spring of 1995, toward the end of Mrs. Gerbil's and my sophomore year of high school (the year we met). It became mine a few years later, and two and a half years ago it became Mrs. Gerbil's also.

It was a good car, but alas, it was growing progressively more senile. And so we traded it in for a piddling amount toward a shiny new 2007 Outback (possibly to be known as the Bigger, Gayer Subaru).

We didn't remove the rear windshield decals from the Big Gay Subaru. They were pretty old and included one from my alma mater, one from my doctoral stomping grounds, and a rainbow flag. We'll be up near my alma mater in a few weeks, making procurement of a new Fairest College decal quite simple.

But here is the ironic part: Though Mrs. Gerbil and I live in possibly the gayest city on the planet, I have absolutely no idea where to get a new rainbow flag sticker.

(Irony part 2: My doctoral stomping grounds of Cleveland were not exactly the most gay-friendly. Even so, I knew exactly where to buy all manner of gay stickers, including the one affixed to our now former vehicle.)

I'm sure I could get thousands of new rainbow flag stickers in the Castro. But I think I'll just wait a few weeks and buy one in Massachusetts.

First class

Last week I went back to my old stomping grounds for a little visit. I had racked up enough frequent flyer miles on Continental that my flight was free... plus $10 "tax," of course. (How do you assess sales tax on something that is free? Ask an airline executive; I sure don't know the answer.) To my delight, I even had enough miles to fly first class--but only on the way there.

I had never flown first class before. I'm intimately acquainted with the uncomfortable nature of the seats in the main cabin, and I figured that the big cushy seats in first class would be thousands of times better, especially for my preggo self. Plus, I was flying overnight; and so I thought I'd get a decent night's sleep (something I've never accomplished in coach).

Oh, I was so very wrong on both counts.

The first-class seats were indeed big and cushy. However, after about an hour I realized that they were actually less comfortable than coach seats. A former physical therapist of mine once explained to me that airplane seats are designed for passengers who are 5'10"--i.e., six and a half inches taller than I am. (Given that I once had to explain to her what a treatment goal was, I am not sure I should have believed her about seat proportions. But it sounded right.) The first-class seats also appeared to be designed for people considerably taller than I--and considerably wider to boot. In the ultimate irony, I found myself with too much leg room. I like to rest my feet on a carry-on tucked under the seat in front of me, as this prevents my feet and my butt from going numb. In first class, my carry-on was too far away from my little tootsies.

As for my disappointment with not sleeping, well, it's really my own damn fault. The magic of pregnancy also brought me the magic of getting up to pee several times a night, not to mention the magic of generally decreased quality of sleep. I'm not sure why I thought I would get nice, uninterrupted sleep on an airplane when I can't even get this in my own bed; but I suppose I really did set myself up for a letdown on this one.

There is, however, at least one distinct advantage to first class, and that is the food. The food is better and more plentiful than in coach. We even got little tablecloths for our tray tables. There was apparently also free alcohol, of which I obviously did not partake. (I wonder if the flight attendants put two and two together after observing my vehement refusal of wine and my multitudinous trips to the bathroom.)

Oh, and there were warm salty nuts. Lots and lots of warm salty nuts. They kept appearing in little ceramic bowls.

I was happy to be back in my rightful place in coach on the way back to California. I put my feet up on my carry-on bag, got a bit of sleep, and noshed gladly on little pretzels from a foil bag.

I will admit, though, I did kind of miss the warm salty nuts.

Public transit story #20: In vino veritas

Yesterday was San Francisco's annual Folsom Street Fair, a celebration of all that is leather, fetish, or otherwise kinky. (NB: the aforementioned link is probably not suitable for work.)

I have never been to the Folsom Street Fair. It's really not my scene. However, there were some really hot fairgoers on the BART with me in the late afternoon, which I found pretty interesting.

Many of these fairgoers were also inebriated. One guy took the opportunity to squat down (presumably out of range of the security cameras), remove a bottle of wine from his backpack, wave it around victoriously, and take a long swig. Thus emboldened, he stood up and reached for the overhead handrail.

(For some reason, guys like to show off by doing pull-ups, flips, and other vaguely gymnastic feats from these handrails--especially when the train is zooming through the Transbay Tunnel at speeds upwards of 70 mph, and even more especially when they are under the influence of at least one substance.)

Alas for this sloshed fairgoer, he miscalculated his upward trajectory. Instead of executing a flawless pull-up, he whomped his head on the handrail and set his equally inebriated friends to laughing.

In case you were wondering

I mentioned once that Mrs. Gerbil and I were thinking about parenthood.

Well, I suppose now would be a good time to announce that we are expecting a little gerb!

(Of course, dear reader, you are quite intelligent; and if I haven't already told you in real life, you probably would have surmised this from my newly belly-riffic avatar and the baby ticker.)

Hooray for little April gerbs!

Let them eat wedding cake

Right now there is a bill on the Governator's desk which would make marriage in California gender-neutral. This very same bill landed on his desk for the first time two years ago; and the Governator vetoed it. His rationale was that gender-neutral marriage was against "the will of the people." That, in turn, came from a ballot initiative passed in 2000, Proposition 22, which was supported by just over 60% of the voter turnout. Translation: The material and emotional resources of a group of otherwise free citizens was subjected to a popular vote.

The Governator hasn't officially said that he will veto the bill this time around, but it sure looks like he will. And, if he does, it will be for the very same reason as before.

Today is Mrs. Gerbil's and my second wedding anniversary. To the best of my knowledge, our getting hitched has not caused a single opposite-sex couple to break up, nor has it damaged a single child's well-being. And yet there is a very loud minority which believes that our private promises to each other are a real and immediate threat to a whole bunch of people we don't even know.

I could point you, dear reader, to a slew of peer-reviewed articles in professional journals which demonstrate that, regardless of each spouse's gender, marriage confers more than just legal and financial benefits. I could point you to statistics about the rates of dissolution of same-sex marriages and civil unions, and how these rates are far, far lower than the rate of divorce among opposite-sex couples. I could point you to data that show that children raised by same-sex couples are just as healthy and well-adjusted as children raised by opposite-sex couples.

But I won't. You can go find them if you want, though.

Instead, I am going to issue a challenge. As a social scientist, I know that sometimes one gets results which one does not like; but those results are just as important as the ones that one does like. So I want to see data that suggest that same-sex marriage has a direct effect on the integrity of opposite-sex marriages. Here are the rules:

1) The study must have been published in a peer-reviewed professional journal whose impact factor places it in the top or upper middle tier for the field. (See here for an explanation of why Paul Cameron's "research" is hereby disqualified.)

2) The study must have been published in the last 5 years (i.e., since same-sex marriage became legal in Canada).

3) The study must demonstrate a statistically significant (i.e., greater than expected by chance) proportion of participants cited the availability of same-sex marriage as a major contributing factor in the dissolution of their marriage. Also, all participants must self-report exclusively heterosexual attraction, behavior, and identity.

4) The study must not have any methodological problems. (I probably haven't mentioned this before, but I'm frequently solicited to be a peer reviewer; and I show no mercy on manuscripts with poor research design and/or faulty analyses.)

4) The study must be available in English or German. (Why? Because I can't read any other languages.)

So, there is your challenge. Any takers?

Oh, and I'll eat my hat if anyone can come up with anything.

Here is a picture of the hat. It's my favorite hat, but I'm willing to sacrifice it for science.

Tales from the cube

toothpastefordinner.com

Most nights I come home from work with a couple of choice stories for Mrs. Gerbil. These stories fall generally into one of three categories: Calls that Break My Heart, WTF?, and Oh My God I Thought I'd Never Get That Person Off the Phone.

Although I skipped kindergarten (I was a precocious little gerb) I do know about sharing, and I think I'm generally pretty good at it. So, I hereby share a handful of vignettes, previously heard by Mrs. Gerbil.

I can't believe we let you into the network
me: Does the member meet criteria for a parity diagnosis?
caller: Yes, she has bipolar disorder and major depression.
(explanation for those unfamiliar with DSM-IV: by definition, you can't have both)

And you are calling now because...
caller: Oh, I didn't think you were open now.

Try again later
caller: Is this DirecTV?
me: I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. This is a mental health insurance company.
caller: Oh. Do you have the number for DirecTV?
me: No. You might try the phone book, though.
(the next day)
same caller: Is this DirecTV?
me: Sorry, no. This is a mental health insurance company. Try the phone book.

How can I help you?

Rebel with a Self-Perpetuating Cause

In these parts, everyone's got a cause. Whether it's immigration, keeping immigrants out, world peace, taking over the world, stopping global warming, disputing global warming, gay rights, "traditional family values," preserving Lake Tahoe, developing Lake Tahoe, keeping sex ed in schools, keeping sex ed in the home, gun control, the right to bear arms, multiculturalism, hegemony, keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance, removing God from the Pledge of Allegiance, eco-sustainable-green-whatever, NIMBYism... well, let's just say James Dean wouldn't have stood a chance in the rebellion department.

I guess if you want to be an agent for social change, the Bay Area is a good place to be. After all, this was the hotbed of radicalism in the 1960s. (Some people seem to believe that it's still the 1960s, but that's another story). It's said that if you throw a rock in Manhattan, you will hit either a psychoanalyst or a person who's currently in psychoanalysis. Around here, I think that if you throw a rock, you hit a social change organization. And the funny thing is that there are hundreds of tiny organizations working toward the same goal--but not always together. Sometimes they don't even know that their comrades exist; other times they just don't want to cooperate, often for reasons of personality politics.

(To wit: I once was asked in an interview how I would increase the organization's visibility to queer youth of color. I said that I would find out first which other organizations were already successfully providing services and activities for this demographic--of which there are many--and then see if we could co-sponsor some of their programming. The interviewers' collective response was one of stunned silence. I'm still not sure whether mine was just such a novel idea, or completely the wrong answer. Whichever, I didn't get the job.)

Now, I'm all for social change. The status quo is certainly better than it used to be, but it's not as good as it could be. What saddens me is that I see a lot of pushing for too much, too soon. Let me be clear that I don't think we should just hang around until public opinion changes, and then move in and re-work the system. I'd love it if, overnight, marriage equality were a reality across the US. But realistically, that's not going to happen. Eight years ago, there was not a single state in the US which offered any official sort of recognition of same-sex relationships. Now, seven states and the District of Columbia offer at least some rights to same-sex couples. Yes, there are still those who think that Massachusetts is going to slide into the Atlantic on account of marriage equality (come on, it's been over four years! so where's the sliding already?) but I think there are also those who've figured out that two chicks getting married isn't actually all that bad.

Simply put, every one of us is afraid of change; and so if we try too hard to change, there's going to be backlash. Even changing for the better is scary. In fact, fear of change has been hypothesized to be a sort of "allegiance to the self"--when you change, even for the better, in a sense you lose the person you were before. I think this happens on a societal level too. The more a small group of people yells, "THIS HAS GOTTA CHANGE!" the more the rest of society girds its loins.

But then we have another problem, which is that the more the agents of change are told to sit down and shut up, the more frustrated they get, the louder they yell... and the more they are told to sit down and shut up. If they are wise, they will take a moment and re-evaluate their tactics. But throwing tantrums is human nature; and it takes a lot of mental and emotional wherewithal to decide to take things slow when you want what you want and you want it yesterday. So in many caes, nothing gets accomplished--

--except that as long as the status quo remains, there's something to try to change. Not changing tactics is a very self-protective mechanism for those who are oriented toward fomenting social change. For once you've completely accomplished your goal, your choices are either sit back on your laurels or find some other cause to champion. And sitting back on one's laurels is pretty antithetical to the personalities of those who work toward change.

So there you have it: Change, and the world changes with you. Keep doing the same thing over and over, louder and louder each time, and you might find yourself the chronic kvetcher amongst a whole lot of pissed-off sticks-in-the-mud.

Now what?

Animaniacs came out just as Mrs. Gerbil and I were starting high school. The timing could not have been better. We were just barely too old for kids' cartoons, but just old enough to get adult humor. For Halloween of our sophomore year, a bunch of us even went out trick-or-treating as several of the Animaniacs. Appropriately, Mrs. Gerbil was Wakko, and I was the Brain.


I love Pinky and the Brain. Like all good cartoons, the plots are highly predictable. But there's something just extra cool about lab rats with designs on world domination. With few exceptions, each episode ends with Pinky's question, "Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tomorrow night?" and the Brain's answer, "Same thing we do every night, Pinky--try to take over the world!" And by the next night, the Brain has already developed a brand-new, highly detailed plan. How much time does he actually spend thinking up new plans? Does he mull over possibilities for a while, or does the whole thing come to him all at once? We will never know.

But one thing is certain: once one plan fails, he manages to come up with a new one. The Brain does not sit around and ponder where to go from here. He has no need of that cliche "next steps," because the only thing on his agenda is to try to take over the world again.

The phrase "next steps" fills me with a weird sort of revulsion. I was taught to avoid cliches (like the plague, haha) at geek camp; and yet my visceral reaction to "next steps" is very much unlike my visceral reaction to other cliches. It's similar to my visceral reaction to words like "sustainability," "green living," and "ecoresponsibility." These are fantastic concepts, but sometimes I think they fall victim to name-dropping. (I admit, I had to Google "sustainability" to find out what it really meant, so many times did I hear someone say "we're focused on sustainability" without mentioning how, exactly, this focus was accomplished.)

Because Western thought and life are quite linear, I suppose it only makes sense that we should think about what to do next. I'm fairly certain that my problem with the phrase "next steps" is that it gets used when nothing's actually been accomplished yet. For instance: I used to work in a non-profit that worked with a whole bunch of other non-profits. As a group, we had tremendous difficulty deciding what to do now, and yet somehow we were perfectly happy to discuss (for hours at a time) what to do next. Non-profit paralysis had set in for many of us--the deadly combination of not enough money, not enough time, and not enough resources. Having "next steps" meetings was a defense against having to do something in the present that might, of course, fail.

The other problem with "next steps" is that someone actually has to follow through with them. Brainstorming "next steps" is great; but who's going to make sure the list doesn't wind up in the circular file? Perhaps it's an odd sort of motivation for those who aren't actually doing anything measurable in the present, a way to avoid feeling aimless once the first task is finally completed.

Or perhaps I am too much of a cynic. Perhaps I don't have enough patience or tolerance for other people's way of doing things.

Some (including but not limited to Mrs. Gerbil) have said that the world would be much better off if I ran it. So I think tomorrow night I'm going to try to take over the world. I'll plant subliminal messages in car commercials that link the phrase "next steps" to "I will do whatever Gerbil says."

They tried to make me go to rehab

I get a lot of calls from people who want to go to detox, or who want their family members to go to detox. Often they are legitimate candidates for immediate, do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$200 detox. For example, they've decided to go cold turkey from alcohol and now are tremulous and sweating. Or they've been quadrupling their Xanax and their psychiatrist won't write another prescription. Withdrawal from alcohol or benzodiazepines can be fatal; and detox is a medical procedure which (hopefully) keeps the withdrawal process safe. I can't begin to count the number of alcohol- or benzo-dependent people I've had to convince to go to the hospital immediately... not tomorrow, not the next day, not next week when they already have time off from work. I've found "Withdrawal can kill you" to be a fairly effective tactic.

Opiate detox is another story. Opiate withdrawal is highly unpleasant, to say the least; but it is not necessarily dangerous. Managed care does not always cover opiate detox, especially of the inpatient sort. I have no idea why. But if I get a call from someone who wants to detox from Vicodin, I tell them to go to the hospital immediately. Some will ask whether withdrawal will kill them. I reply, "At the very least, if you try to do it yourself, it will be extraordinarily uncomfortable."

But then I have some people who want to detox from cocaine. There is no medical detox procedure for cocaine. Cocaine is rapidly eliminated from the body; so even if there were a way to do cocaine detox, it would have to be done very quickly. When people ask me for cocaine detox referrals, I tell them to go to the ER right away if they have any unpleasant physical symptoms or pre-existing cardiac problems. But unless they are suicidal, homicidal, or using alcohol or benzos with their cocaine, they can most likely wait until the next day for an assessment for some other level of care.

My favorite callers, though, are the parents who want their teenagers to go to marijuana detox. (Oddly, no one ever seems to call for detox for their own pot habit.) Again, there is no medical detox for marijuana. Marijuana hangs out in the body for a while, but there's really nothing to do about it--and no real need to do anything, either. I am often tempted to tell these folks that marijuana detox is a home procedure involving a couple bags of potato chips administered over the course of a few hours. But I don't, as this would be poor customer service.

The Spam Files: Episode II

Spam makes the everyday exciting!

spam that passes the buck.
from: Michelle
subject: Maria wants to know what you think

spam that's easily obeyed.
from: Ed
subject: Don't let Ed ruin your sex life!

spam that... wait, what?
from: Milli Kopra
subject: The permission entry for which to search

Mangled care

Mrs. Gerbil and I finally went to see Sicko last night. I was very impressed. I'm not a Michael Moore groupie--perhaps because my parents had me watch Roger and Me when I was a mere pre-teen, and I was rather bored by it--but I do appreciate a good exposé when I see one.

And it got me thinking about what I currently do for a living.

The insurance group I work for was not featured in Sicko. My actual company was not even mentioned; the behavioral health insurance system is a whole 'nother movie. So in that sense Sicko was not about what I do 40 hours a week.

Another sense in which Sicko has nothing to do with my job is that I never have to deny coverage for any individual person. I can tell a member that his plan does not cover couples therapy, but I never have to say that his particular request for couples therapy will not be approved. There are two reasons for this little bit of relief. First, "adverse determinations" can only be issued by reviewers with clinical licenses. Second, as long as a person's plan permits a specific type of treatment, it's my job to say "yes."

(And here's a third sense: I hear that the medical carrier under our corporate umbrella no longer does procedure reviews, as nearly all requests were being approved anyway.)

But this movie was about what I do simply because I work for managed care. I believe that the health care system in the US should do its darndest to promote preventive care. HMOs--health maintenance organizations--started with this very same philosophy. I also believe that, when a person needs medical treatment, he or she should get it. There shouldn't be a need to call within 24 hours of admission, or to expend time/money/emotional effort filing appeals, or to hire an attorney... or to have to decide to skip treatment altogether because insurance won't pay. Health care should not be about money--and there is where the Big Bad System and I diverge.

All of my statements above, about why Sicko doesn't point its finger at me personally, are really just displacements of blame. Like most of my co-workers, I took my job because Mrs. Gerbil and I were hurting for dough. It's been less than six months since I began, and already we're financially back on our feet. And (not surprisingly) we get really cheap health insurance, with more-than-decent coverage for what we're likely to need. Yup, managed care treats its employees well; and I think my company is one of the best in this regard.

Still, I'm part of the Big Bad System, and I'm just doing it for the money. My paycheck might not be the direct result of in-house adverse determinations, but many of our plans are carve-outs from other medical carriers. And those carriers do issue adverse determinations. There aren't many degrees of separation here.

So, no. I'm not directly involved. But lest I be accused of sounding like a complacent WWII-era German (Godwin's Law, anyone?), I hasten to point out that I do have a well-established history of fighting the system.

And on that note, I offer the following tips to anyone who might need them:

1) If you have insurance, read your Evidence of Coverage Document. Cover to cover. As soon as possible. Call member services if you don't understand the terms of your policy.

2) If you believe your claim has been wrongly denied, raise a stink. File an appeal. File a second appeal. Then contact the state oversight body for your plan. This might be the state board of insurance, the state commission on managed care, or some other such body; and you can find out which one applies with a single phone call to member services. Just don't call me about your claims.

3) If you get stuck with a huge hospital bill, contact the patient advocate about financing options.

4) By federal law , virtually all US hospitals are required to provide examination and stabilization treatment for truly emergent patients, regardless of their ability to pay. If your plan refuses to cover non-network care you received while completely unconscious, raise a stink (see #2 above).

5) Above all, don't give up. A cynic might say that somewhere, someone is counting on you to give up ("Baby needs a new pair of shoes!"). But I am not that cynical. Yet.

(For the record: Appropriately, I used a tiny little portion of my paycheck to take Mrs. Gerbil to the movies.)

The Battle for the Toy Box

Next month, select Wal-Mart stores are supposed to begin stocking the Tales of Glory line of Biblical action figures.

Apparently there is a "Battle for the Toy Box!" going on. It seems to me like a pretty one-sided battle, declared by the side that perceives itself to be under attack. But that is a snark for a different day.

For today, I bring you: The Nativity Play Set.


You will notice, in the lower right-hand corner, a choking hazard warning. Presumably this is due to the diminutive size of the molded PVC Baby Jesus.

Now I may be a heathen Jew--and a secular heathen Jew at that--but it's always been my understanding that one is supposed to take Jesus into one's heart, not one's trachea.

But then I wonder: if you successfully swallow the plastic Baby Jesus, does it transubstantiate itself into a plastic Communion wafer?

I would test my questions myself, but I don't want to lend credence to the old fear that Jews eat little Christian babies. Then again, PVC was not around during the early days of blood libel. So perhaps my excuse should be that I just don't want to set foot in a Wal-Mart ever again.

There's no place like someone else's home

For Christmas last year, Mrs. Gerbil and I ordered her father a great new doormat.

There was a problem with the way the order was processed, however. It was supposed to be shipped directly to him in Seattle, but billed to us in Berkeley. What actually happened was that the order was shipped to him at our Berkeley billing address--where he obviously does not live. Having already paid a stiff UPS rate for the initial wrong delivery, we sucked it up and paid a stiff US Postal Service rate to get it to its rightful location. We were not pleased.

But our troubles did not end there.

Apparently, our innocent, incorrectly processed doormat order landed Father-in-Law Gerbil on a "new homeowner" list--for Berkeley, where (as previously stated) he does not live. At first we got a few Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, addressed to "Our New Neighbor." We were confused. We'd been in Berkeley for a year and a half and had been getting at least two BB&B coupons per month, addressed directly to me. But BB&B coupons never expire, so the more the merrier, right?

Then we--or rather, Father-in-Law Gerbil--started getting ads from exterminators. And roofing companies. And house painters. And Lasik eye surgeons. And gyms. And the AARP. And real estate agents looking to sell his home for him, which is even funnier given that we pay rent for the address at which he does not live.

I dutifully cross out the address on each piece of mail, scrawl NSR (no such recipient) in big bold letters across the front, and stick it back in the mailbox. This works fairly well, although not for all the mail we get for people who don't live here. Some church has been trying to get a former tenant (who hasn't lived here in at least six years) to attend their Christmas and Easter services, and they do not seem to know from NSR.

But what really got me is yesterday's mailing from the PG&E Care program. Like all good utility programs, PG&E has a discount program for customers with low incomes, disabilities, or assorted other things which might interfere with paying ridiculous energy bills. Father-in-Law Gerbil was thereby informed that he may be eligible for a discount from a utility company which serves an area in which he does not live.

Our PG&E account is in my name. I pay the bills every month, and occasionally I get medieval on their asses. Occasionally I get something from the Care program, but since we don't qualify, I just toss the mailings in the recycling. Anyway, the important part of this is that there is already an active PG&E account at this address, in excellent standing, and it is not in Father-in-Law Gerbil's name.

Even better: Just before said mailing went out, PG&E cashed my check for our most recent bill. Which bill, I hasten to add, does not bear any part of Father-in-Law Gerbil's name.

Father-in-Law Gerbil loved the doormat, by the way.

The Spam Files: Episode 1

I find spam simultaneously very annoying and very funny. This is in sharp contrast to my opinion on junk mail of the paper variety, which I find very annoying (and not funny at all). I have, in fact, been known to call companies which persist in clogging my home mailbox, in order to ask them please to stop killing trees in an attempt to get my business.

(Admittedly, I have also been known to attempt to get exceptionally annoying spammers in trouble with the help of Sam Spade, but I soon realized the futility of such pursuits.)

Mrs. Gerbil and I have very different approaches to spam. Whereas I will clean out my spam folder multiple times a day, she lets the messages in her spam folder ferment quietly until Gmail deletes them automatically. At any given time I have between 10 and 60 spam messages; but her spam census is consistently over 2000. I've asked her many times why she doesn't just delete them all periodically, now that one can do this with a single click. Her philosophy: Why bother? Every deleted message will just be replaced by one more, so every 30 days her spam folder goes through a complete turnover all by itself.

In my opinion, however, deleting spam by hand has its advantages. For one, I get to laugh at the randomly generated subject lines. For another, I get to share the most ridiculous ones, right here on this very blog!

So, without further ado, I bring you The Best of the Worst. Or something like that.

spam that makes you feel good about yourself.
From: Jimmie Weeks
Subject: You're not ugly

spam that tells it like it is.
From: Beatrix K. Clark
Subject: fraudulent

spam with problems.
From: Cruz Y. Lara
Subject: Hi, how your dink?

spam that knows just a little too much about our personal life.
From: Amazing Performance
Subject: Turbo sperm for you and your girl!

spam that got it backwards.
From: Relaxation
Subject: How Cialis works!

Ah, yes. The joys of randomly generated text.