Behind on Blogging

We had a pretty good 4th of July - our neighbors organized a block party, and we rolled our new grill out to the end of the cul-de-sac (our house is right at the circle), and we had three barbecues going. I tried a new marinade for chicken, which turned out pretty good, and also slow-cooked some ribs on the charcoal grill, which turned out great. We had a bunch of other food, and my parents, my aunt Mercia, my grandmother, and Leslie and Henry all came over and hung out.

After dinner, we did fireworks in the court. I think there were 4 families that had brought fireworks. It was pretty insane. One guy had this huge fountain called the Komodo 3000 or something...at one point it actually fell over, and one brave neighbor grabbed a broom and tipped it back up. Then, like a half-hour later, the top of the spent (or so we thought) firework caught on fire and started to burn. Even after being doused with a bucket of water, it was still smoldering. The thing wouldn't die!

Marc took a bunch of pictures (he was really proud of his pre-show fireworks display) so I'll have to post those soon.

Tuesday night we went with Leslie to watch Sicko, the new Michael Moore film about the health care industry. It's definitely worth seeing (and I'm not just saying that as a unabashed lib ;) - the movie is pretty partisan-less anyways). I found it pretty eye-opening, because I expected it to be about all the people who don't have medical insurance (50 million or so) in the US. It's actually more about people who do and the various ways they've been screwed over by the insurance companies. It's all pretty unbelievable, and really scary. A little bad luck health-wise, and you can find yourself in a world of trouble, financially.

The movie touches a bit on the AMA and the pharmaceutical industry (one woman's inhaler costs her $150 in the states, but 5 cents in Cuba), but not as much as I was expecting. Most of it chronicles how we came to have a for-profit health care industry, and how HMO's are, first and foremost, about the bottom line, and how that doesn't make sense, because we don't have a privately run police force or fire department, etc, so why should something as equally vital, that should be available for everybody, be secondary to the needs of big corporations to make money?

Unfortunately, it's still a Michael Moore film, so I'm sure those that hate him won't ever see it, although he does tone down the antics and political discourse from his previous films. He certainly focuses more on making his point than making the counterpoint, but I think if he weren't so provacative, no one would care to see the movie anyways.

Hopefully people will see it, because it's pretty clear that things need to change. I do wonder if Americans are apathetic about these things because we have this mentality that if someone ends up on the shitty side of life, that somehow they did something to deserve it - they didn't work hard enough, etc - and that's why those that are more fortunate just don't care enough to make a change. Or maybe I'm just being cynical. Maybe people will realize that you can do everything right, and still get screwed, and sometimes we need to help each other.

Ha, that was more than I intended to write about that, but I guess I had a lot to say.

I had all sorts of little bits of things I wanted to blog about, but I think this entry is long enough!