1. Jack Kerouac died forty years ago today. I’m not doing much to commemorate the occasion, though I am hoping to see the new film One Fast Move Or I’m Gone soon. If I were in Lowell, Massachusetts I’d go on this walking tour tonight, if I were in Northport, Long Island I’d check out Patrick Fenton’s tribute play, and if I were in San Francisco I’d go to The Beat Museum this Saturday at 11 am for a walking tour with John Allen Cassady. But I’m not in any of these places, so I think I’ll just recite Kerouac’s poem “211th Chorus” and hope for the best:
The wheel of the quivering meat conception
Turns in the void expelling human beings,
Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,
Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan
Racinghorses, poxy bucolic pigtics,
Horrible unnameable lice of vultures,
Murderous attacking dog-armies
Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the jungle,
Vast boars and huge gigantic bull
Elephants, rams, eagles, condors,
Pones and Porcupines and Pills —
All the endless conception of living beings
Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness
Throughout the ten directions of space
Occupying all the quarters in & out,
From supermicroscopic no-bug
To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell
Illuminating the sky of one Mind —
Poor! I wish I was free
Of the slaving meat wheel
and safe in heaven dead
2. Ian Pearl, brother of literary/mystery novelist Matthew Pearl, has written a riveting Huffington Post article about his outrageous experience with the health care insurance system our Republican Party wants so badly to preserve. Pearl has muscular dystrophy, and his article is called “I Am Not A Dog”.
3. On a completely different note yet again: Barnes and Noble presents some new competition for the Kindle: The Nook.
One Response
2. Great link to Ian Pearl. I
2. Great link to Ian Pearl. I absolutely hate, despise, detest, the American Health Insurance Goliaths!
And my problems are miniscule compared to Ian Pearl’s. My insurance company has so many ways to get out of paying what it is supposed to insure for, it’s mind boggling!
What’s the point of having insurance in this country, to make them filthy rich?
They are so scared to have public health insurance because practically everyone would move over to it, if it’s done right. Then their seemingly endless well of profit would dry up.
In my mind, these companies rank right up there with the likes of Bernie Madoff. Just a bunch of greedy, corrupt bastards.