Monthly Archives: October 2015

Driving

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I’ll tell you what really pisses me off.  People that don’t know how to drive on an interstate hi way- or don’t know how to drive, period.  Rule number one for interstate driving is the passing lane is just for that- it’s the PASSING lane.  Maybe it’s rule number two.  Probably obeying the speed limit is rule number one.  Shit I don’t know the exact order.  I can’t say me and that speed rule get along all the time, so in my book the passing lane rule supersedes the speed rule.  Get off your fucking cell phone and pay attention to where you are for Pete sakes.  Geezuz now I got that guy behind me on MY ass because you won’t get the hell out of the way so we can both get around you.  You’ve been dicking around in the wrong lane for five minutes you stupid douchebag.

Inconsiderate Dicks Clogging up the Passing Lane

Inconsiderate Dicks Clogging up the Passing Lane

Nice People Getting Out of My Way

Courteous People Getting Out of My Way

Well, shit, now it’s not just me and the guy behind me, it’s the guy (could be a gal too- don’t get all politically correct on me- I can’t ascertain gender- my rear view mirror gives me only so much information) behind him and another car, and another, and then- holy shit- there’s a fucking cement truck back there bearing down on some poor bastard in a- not sure.  I think it’s an old Volkswagen Beetle.  I didn’t know there were any of those still around, much less one capable of going ninety.  Well, we would be going ninety if the stupid dick in front of me would get the hell out of the passing lane.

I guess I have to be the one to make a move and pass this asshole in the non-passing lane, so here goes.  God damn it!  NOW you move to the regular lane you piece of shit.  You didn’t even signal.  That’s what one of those levers that sticks out from your steering wheel column is for you moron.  Use it.  Now I’m still stuck behind you while all the normal people zip by me in the passing lane.

Wow!  That cement truck. It’s not only a cement truck. It’s tandem towing a trailer full of busted up concrete AND another marked Hazardous Waste.  Whoa!  That thing is wobbling all over the place.  Guess I’ll slow down.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of those containers will swerve into the car driven by that prick that’s still on his cell phone.

close up of man using smartphone while driving carIt was close, but the twit with the cell phone stuck in his ear didn’t get side-swiped.  Time to pull out in the passing lane and finally get around him.  My wife took this picture of him when we blew by him.  Do any of you recognize him?  What a putz.

 

So this is the kind of crap you have to put up with when driving on the interstate.  I’ve never been able to figure out what all that speckled stuff is in the picture my wife took.  There are three facts of this trip down the interstate I do know though.  First, the speckled stuff in the picture was flying out of the hazardous waste container the cement truck was pulling.  Second, that specked stuff left ugly orange spots on the paint job of my car.  And third, the ugly orange spots on my car would not be there if the jerk on his cell phone had been paying attention and going 90 in my lane like he is supposed to.  Stay off your damn cell phone you piece of shit!

 

Mistakes

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I can’t remember where I read this- on the internet or a magazine I get- but the chief exec of UBS  recently unabashedly told his bankers it was perfectly fine to make mistakes, as long as they are honest mistakes.  WTF!  I can’t remember the guy’s last name, but his first name is Sergio I am pretty sure.  At first my brain glossed over the comment, but later on I started to process what was said and I did some research and then got really steamed. The reason it took awhile to get ginned up was because I’m not too good with acronyms and capital letters that really don’t spell anything, but I recalled seeing the word “bankers” and that is what finally stoked my anger and I started to snoop around.

Turns out UBS sort of stands for Union Bank of Switzerland.  They dropped the name Union Bank of Switzerland after a long series of mergers with a variety of investment and banking firms, and there were a number of these acquisitions that ended up being big mistakes.  Driving these mistakes was greed, graft, and deception and it all went on for awhile because the dirty bastards involved knew they could get by with all the mischief because they knew no one was was paying attention, that is until it all imploded during the subprime mortgage crisis.  The tally for the mistake was a 50 billion dollar loss and a loss of 12 thousand jobs.  That’s a lot of money and careless attention to detail, a true clusterfuck of a mistake, and of course UBS got in line for TARP money.  There is another one of those acronyms I can’t remember.  It basically means “bailout'” but if you feel it’s important to you to know its exact meaning look it up yourself.

I’m no international traveler, but I believe the Banks of Switzerland are the  preferred travel destination for all the money the drug cartels need laundered, as well as all that dough over- paid CEO’s want to conceal from the IRS.  Are we stupid or what?  That just double pisses me off.

Rescue Vehicle for Swiss Skiers

Rescue Vehicle for Swiss Skiers

Rescue vehicle for Swiss Investment Bank


Rescue vehicle for Swiss Investment Banks

Sure we all make mistakes.  It’s nice when my wife forgives me for not putting my dirty glass in the dishwasher or leaving the toilet seat up.  In my defense, because of  the heavy concentration of scotch my glass contained I felt it was pretty well a self-cleaning situation that a 160 degrees of dishwasher water couldn’t improve upon.  There is no excuse for the toilet seat though, now that we have one that is self-lowereing.  That was a Christmas present from my daughter-in-law, which seems to speak to the fact that this is an important issue for the women in my family.

Yes I suppose some mistakes can, and should be forgiven.  But there are degrees of mistakes and the more blatantly careless and thoughtless are less forgivable.  What makes this Sergio guy’s philosophy so egregious is not only is he saying it’s ok to make a mistake, but to me for someone in his position to say that is like saying “whoops my bad” to a world-wide economic crisis his company contributed to, and also inferring that maybe the rest of us should be prepared for another to come our way.  It’s perfectly normal in his world to slip up and fuck the rest of us over, and he is prepared to promote any employee of his that comes up with the best idea to give us a sore asshole.   And of course we should all be forgiving of any pain so endured.   It’s just galling that this guy not only says such a thing, but he says it publicly for the whole world to hear.   Geezuz that pisses me off.

People are not too forgiving of a surgeon who removes the wrong limb of a patient.  It’s hard to forgive military personnel responsible for bombing a hospital staffed by Doctor’s without Borders.  Usually mistakes like that will get you fired or sued, or both. Maybe even a jail sentence.  But not always.  In fact hardly ever in the financial sector.  What the shifty scum bags in this profession have mysteriously been able to do is to take that one adage “We learn from our mistakes” and flip it on it’s head.   What they learn from their mistakes is what they can’t get by with, and then apply that knowledge to help them decide how to get by with their next mistake.   And the rest of us seem to be helpless to stop it.

I’m not so sure we really get smarter with age.  I think for most of us there’s just less stuff left that we haven’t screwed up yet.  We really should wise up to these pompous dicks running gigantic financial institutions though.  Believe me there are plenty of Sergio’s out there drawing up plans for their next mistake.  Vote for Bernie.  He’ll straighten those greedy bastards out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mergers

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Have you heard the news?  CVS bought Target’s pharmacy business.  I don’t know how this will all work out, but generally I view mergers suspiciously.  Whenever that happens there will undoubtedly be all sorts of mailings about what a great deal it’s going to be for you and me, and undoubtedly what you and I will get out of the deal is an uncomfortable economic butt screwing somewhere down the road.  Less competition almost always equates to higher consumer prices.  Target got out of the pharmacy business because they were losing a shit load of money dabbling in it.   Reimbursement rates for pharmacies get whittled down by pharmacy benefit managers (pharmacy/insurance company negotiators) with each passing insurance contract renewal.  And drug formularies likewise get more restrictive.

It won’t be long before CVS, Walgreens and Walmart are all that remain in the way of competition.  It’s inevitable.  You need a lot of pennies to buy stuff for your company and pay your employees.  Since insurance contracts allow pharmacies to collect only pennies for their drugs dispensed, it only makes sense that bigger companies swallow up smaller ones so they can acquire more pennies.  Gotta pay the bills.

Pharmacy Benefit Manager hard at work figuring out how many pennies your insurance company should pay your pharmacy

Pharmacy Benefit Manager hard at work figuring out how many pennies your insurance company should pay your pharmacy

Of course now that I am retired I couldn’t care less about any of this.  The fact is, I barely gave a shit about it the last few years I was employed.  I wound my working life down managing one of Target’s pharmacies for 13 years, and it was about year three working there that I gave up caring about reimbursements.  That is because by that time I had sent over two dozen emails to Target pharmacy operations about huge losses our pharmacy was taking, and every time the reply I received was one that basically stated I was not to worry about it.  So I finally decided I wouldn’t.  Instead of worrying about negative insurance reimbursements, Target preferred I worry about what their people in high places flushed into their unrelenting shit stream of corporate busywork that flowed down-river to their pharmacies.  Target assured me they had people at headquarters taking care of insurances losses.  Turns out maybe Target should have been doing a better job supervising whoever those people were, but CVS is probably glad they didn’t.

This is all pretty boring material to the average blog reader, I realize.  Sorry.  The topic is just one that I have to harp about as a way of journaling more than anything else.  Believe me I can come up with a lot more cool stuff to complain about than this shit.  By way of making all this more interesting for you, keep track of your prescription co-pays for the next two or three  years.  Let’s just see if by then my prediction of a bigger dent in your wallet isn’t correct.  I bet it will be.  And another thing you might want to track is service.  Target pharmacies score consistently high marks on customer service surveys, while CVS scores are consistently low.  One way CVS is able to get more bang for their pennies is to cut back on help.   Just another fact of trying to scrape by with fewer pennies.

 

 

 

 

Pope Francis

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I have to admit when it comes to practicing my Catholic faith I am kind of in only half way.  The faith part is something I subscribe to, but over the years my beliefs in a lot of Catholic dogma have hit a wall.  But I would have to suspect anyone, maybe even a few people with a heathenish bend, had to be impressed with Pope Francis’s sincere, pious demeanor and words of wisdom he offered during his visit to the United States.  It had to make any Catholic, practicing or not, extremely proud.  I for one was surprisingly inspired, to the point I feel the need to blog about it and I’m not exactly sure why.  I am sort of out of my element when it comes to anything in the realm of religion and in my hands I know this topic will approach tedium.  Feel free to escape out at anytime.  But I would think the majority of people who listened at length to any of the Pope’s speeches had to be moved in some similar way.

The basic message of the hour long address to congress was let’s learn to get along with each other, help each other out while we are at it, and understand, accept and tolerate our differences.   The words “hope, healing, peace and courage” were ones he linked together early in his speech, my guess is to identify what he hoped his later words would project and resonate as he spoke.  It was a “Do unto others” speech, and everything he spoke about basically circled back to that biblical precept.

Most recent popes have expressed the same principles in some fashion, though maybe not as thoroughly and eloquently.  They are typical principles of most traditional religions.  That’s why I have such a hard time getting my head around Islam.  I know the majority of Muslims are decent people, and I am pretty sure that religion in no way advocates terrorism.  But even considering the Sunni-Shiite factionalism,  I don’t get how their religious leaders can continue to sit idly by while the Muslim world disintegrates, or even to espouse  vehemently hateful positions towards other people.  Maybe I’ve missed something lately, but the only words spoken by an ayatollah that make the news seem to be those promoting death and destruction to quite a big swath of fellow human beings.  These are religious leaders for Pete’s sake.  They should have a visible presence that encourages conciliation.   I know many religions have had their crusades in the past, but come on!  It’s the 21st century.  If the retracting Muslim world ever wants to progress, their laws and institutions will need a serious upgrade to become more inclusive.   And that starts with ideas that conform more to modern thought and practices, and avert those that proliferate hate with antiquated, vitriolic rhetoric.

It seems apparent that Islam is a religion that incorporates matters of the state into its beliefs much more than other religions.  And from what I understand, many of islam’s strict rules it’s clerics espouse stress the importance of maintaining their staid traditions, one of which I think is to lead a life free from  modern secular trappings.  I say nothing wrong with that.  Basically I hate computers and cell phones and my best days are spent in contemplation and reflection.  OK.  And watching football.  You got me.  Back off!  It’s not like I’m going to convert or anything.  But most institutions, even religious ones, have tweaked their traditions to conform with changing times.  Look at the Catholic Church.  Surely there have to be some Islamic clerics that could speak out against the outrageous inhumanity of terrorists who at the very least identify with their religion.  I realize the risk involved.  No doubt there is a good possibility such a cleric could become targeted.  I imagine that is one of the things Pope Francis thought about when he included the word “courage” in the introductory part of his message to congress.

I can’t claim I know much about Islam.  Heck, Iv’e lost tract of many of the rules and regs of my own religion.   I am however relatively positive that beheading innocent people in the name of religion is a damnable act in all religions in our current civilized world.  And I could be wrong, but I have to believe most progressive Islamic clerics, if there is such a thing,  would agree with that.  Like I said, most Muslims are decent, God fearing people.  But Islam’s leaders need to speak up if you ask me, like Pope Francis does.  Not doing so, or even worse, using religion to promote views for self interest or material gain, is hypocritical,  medieval thinking.  If religion is such a big deal in a culture, it’s leaders should step up and motivate those that practice their particular faith to practice it in a manner that reflects true religious sentiments- especially that sentiment about “Doing unto others.”  Then maybe, if religion is truly a big deal, we will all learn to get along with each other.