Back for a Brief Minute (Please DO NOT *ACCIDENTALLY* DUMP THIS!!!)

[LADSP]

Third try....

OK, I'll try this again.  About 24 hours ago I made three posts (one about all the spam), which apparently all got dumped along with the spam, which of course has come back like kudzu (a vine that grows in the southeastern U.S. at a rate of about a foot a day).  Then I made the post you're currently reading yesterday, but it too disappeared without a trace.

First of all, hello again, everyone.  Briefly, here's what my life has been like since I last posted (not counting yesterday's dumped stuff) and that from a few days ago).  I think that was around Thanksgiving.  So after almost SIX years of fighting the damned Social Security red tape, I FINALLY won my case on 1/28, with a fully favorable decision, meaning that besides the modest amount I'll receive monthly, I'm owed a lump sum of 47 months of back disability payments.  However, since in the interim I've been living on $221 a month in General Relief (aka welfare) plus food stamps, I've obviously been unable to pay the rent and am being evicted at the end of this month.

A couple of weeks ago I received a call from the secretary of the lawyer who handled my SSI/disability case, informing me that he (the attorney) had been paid, and if I could just send a check to cover the copying of medical records, they could close my file.  This came as a shock and a slap in the face, since I haven't received a single CENT from SSI, or even a phone call or letter.  My life is still that of a less-than-subsistence $221 a month, with an eviction at the end of this month hanging over my head.  If I'm not out of here by 3/31, the sheriffs will come at 6 AM on 4/1 and forcibly throw me, now totally and permamently disabled, out on the street, while everything I own becomes the property of the landlady, which was part of the eviction agreement I was forced to accept in order to continue living here until my disability case was heard and I would presumably have sufficient funds by this time.

After telling the attorney's secretary that I was still essentially penniless, she told me to go to the local SSI office with the court papers outlining the eviction decision, because they would provide sufficient funds for "dire emergencies."  I called SSI and was told this was true.   Although I wanted to make an appointment, I was told it was walk-in only.

So, I walked into the local SSI office, notarized court eviction papers plus the Social Security Judge's decision in hand.  The government flunky at Window 3 took the briefest of glances, certainly not actually reading the two documents, and informed me that eviction was not considered a "dire circumstance"!!!  WTF??  Must I have a heart attack, or actually die, right in front of these people to get the money that has been rightly mine since SIX YEARS AGO?

Of course, if we had universal health care in this country, or even a less than entirely broken health care system, I probably would not have ended up totally and permanently disabled at all, let alone the psychological, social, financial and other destruction this whole hellish and completely inexcusable, unforgivable experience has caused.  Health care and cutting the endless miles of government red tape probably would have left me able to return to the work force, and would have prevented me from an extremely limited life due to the daily, constant, severe pain I now experience, requiring lifetime medical care.  That is NOT efficient government!!!Most certainly I would not have come to a situation of living in abject poverty and being evicted from my home of 30 years.  I have close to zero money as I write this to put a deposit on a new apartment, and the physical logistics of moving from somplace I've lived for more than half my life are overwhelming, especially since I am unable to lift more than 10 pounds without risking another fracture in my spine, wrist, or really anywhere in my body.  To think about that right now just makes me freeze mentally so that I can't do ANYTHING to move forward, so I'll deal with it at the appropriate moment.

In the meantime, it's the month for my annual re-up for the county's largesse of $221 a month plus food stamps so, despite the fact that I sent them a copy of the SSI judge's "fully favorable" decision, indicating that I am totally and permanently disabled since 2/22/06 (the day after my first hearing resulted in an unfavorable verdict), I still have to go to one of the county's dog-and-pony show doctors (I've had to do this multiple times over the last six years) to yet again "prove" that I am in fact disabled, due largely to the malignant neglect of the health care and Social Security systems.  Once I do finally get the lump sum of 47 months' back disability payments, I also have to repay the county for the $221 a month they've provided for almost a year.  I'm glad to do that, because all I really want at this time (besides having my health back, which is now impossible unless I become totally bionic) is to get this undescribably horrid experience behind me, to stop feeling bitter, angry and totally betrayed by this country, and get back to LIVING again.

So here you have the story of an actual human being with whom many of you have been communicating online since late 1997, and several of whom I've met personally.  This health care crisis and otherwise broken government is not an abstraction, as I have somehow survived (though MUCH the worse for wear) to tell.  Although I have no doubt that Obama was the right choice, there's been precious little to show for it in more than a year, and this is one of millions of examples of what happens to real human lives until the Democrats all grow a pair and put their collective feet down to actually get something DONE.

In the meantime, I'll be catching up with you as soon as I can, since I have greatly missed this board.  Although the next month or so will be very busy, any personal e-mails, or messages left on this board, would be welcomed.  I hope y'all are doing well, and look forward to getting back to a life, online and off.

~ Debra

[SlushGumball]

This is the only post I've seen by you....me and the serg meister have been dumping reams of spam....we do that more than we or anyone else actually posts here.
Both of us have accidentally erased our own threads, so it's posible we nailed yours too, though I would think that I would have noticed.
Sometimes we come here and there's 30 or 40 news spam "topics".
Not much goes on at this board.
Steve, Bubba and most of the others seem to be gone.
Obama has been a dissapointment.

[steve]

Steve, Bubba and most of the others seem to be gone.

I'm not gone. There's a post of mine from 3/6 in the folder next to this one, fer chrissake! Though I did sort of lose my enthusiasm after I started a new thread last week about Chopin and it wasn't there the next day. I sort of gave up after that.

I realize that you've put in a lot more work on deleting spam than I did on writing about Chopin, so I'm basically being a big crybaby, but I am nearing the end of a two-month window of writing a lot of reviews of classical recordings for a new website that should launch soon, so I need to be productive, and honestly, I could justify to myself attempting to duplicate three paragraphs of commentary about my favorite Chopin pianists so that three or four other people could read it.

If you weren't so opposed to Facebook, I'd say we just start a MuAbo page there and abandon this spot.

Debra, sorry for hijacking your thread. Here's hoping you can claw your way through the bureaucracy before the end of the month. There's something very fucked up about your lawyer having been paid before you.

[SlushGumball]

Steve, Bubba and most of the others seem to be gone.

I'm not gone. There's a post of mine from 3/6 in the folder next to this one, fer chrissake! Though I did sort of lose my enthusiasm after I started a new thread last week about Chopin and it wasn't there the next day. I sort of gave up after that.

I realize that you've put in a lot more work on deleting spam than I did on writing about Chopin, so I'm basically being a big crybaby, but I am nearing the end of a two-month window of writing a lot of reviews of classical recordings for a new website that should launch soon, so I need to be productive, and honestly, I could justify to myself attempting to duplicate three paragraphs of commentary about my favorite Chopin pianists so that three or four other people could read it.

If you weren't so opposed to Facebook, I'd say we just start a MuAbo page there and abandon this spot.

Debra, sorry for hijacking your thread. Here's hoping you can claw your way through the bureaucracy before the end of the month. There's something very fucked up about your lawyer having been paid before you.

I'm  not opposed to face book so much as I've never bother to figure it out.
I have more and more friends, but I enver do much of anything there.
I think Serge has dumped more of our posts than I have, but I COULD be wrong.

And where are you going to go, deborah?

[LADSP]

SlushGumball asks:  >>And where are you going to go, deborah?<<

Ah, the million dollar question.  At this point I have absolutely no idea, but I'd like to stay in this area, where I've lived since 1975.  I even called my landlady a couple of days ago asking if I could stay here and repay all the back rent, or at least stay for one more month since all this red tape with no money to date has really put me up against the wall timewise, but she would have none of it, saying she just wanted me OUT OF HERE, in the most insane crazy person rant I've ever heard in my life, including television, movies and my mother.  Gee, I was a "great tenant" for 29 years, and suddenly I'm the worst person in the world because of an accident that occurred ON HER PROPERTY, for which I did NOT sue her (she's always been a bitch, and never dreaming that the accident would turn into a permanent disability and the attached total nightmare, I didn't want to deal with her shit as well as a pelvis fractured in three places, a broken wrist and other assorted injuries).  So, instead of recouping her money she has chosen to cut off her nose to spite her face, and presumably will raise the rent hundreds of dollars for the next tenant, but before that happens this place will require several thousand dollars in work.  It hasn't been painted since 1994, and the hardwood floors were in terrible condition when I moved in 30 years ago.  I really thing the only thing holding the structure together is the termites holding hands, and the morning glory that has grown between the walls.  When my bathtub/shower tile literally started falling off and I got it redone, the workers were pulling out 20 to 30 feet of vine at a time, no exaggeration.

Anyway, I guess she won't be giving me a good recommendation, but I think my lengthy tenancy here, my positive payment records from a few utility companies and the assurance that I won't be having any problem paying the rent for some years to come will help, along with letters of recommendation from a couple of other long-time tenants on this five unit property.

Of course, I need to find a place on the first floor (I have enormous difficulty with stairs because of the accident), which allows cats and will have on-premises parking, since I can't really schlep groceries or anything else for any distance while using a cane in one hand.

Probably I missed the explanation, but why the name "SlushGumball"?  And BTW, I despise the spelling "Deborah."

~ DEBRA!!!

[SlushGumball]

SlushGumball asks:  >>And where are you going to go, deborah?<<

Ah, the million dollar question.  At this point I have absolutely no idea, but I'd like to stay in this area, where I've lived since 1975.  I even called my landlady a couple of days ago asking if I could stay here and repay all the back rent, or at least stay for one more month since all this red tape with no money to date has really put me up against the wall timewise, but she would have none of it, saying she just wanted me OUT OF HERE, in the most insane crazy person rant I've ever heard in my life, including television, movies and my mother.  Gee, I was a "great tenant" for 29 years, and suddenly I'm the worst person in the world because of an accident that occurred ON HER PROPERTY, for which I did NOT sue her (she's always been a bitch, and never dreaming that the accident would turn into a permanent disability and the attached total nightmare, I didn't want to deal with her shit as well as a pelvis fractured in three places, a broken wrist and other assorted injuries).  So, instead of recouping her money she has chosen to cut off her nose to spite her face, and presumably will raise the rent hundreds of dollars for the next tenant, but before that happens this place will require several thousand dollars in work.  It hasn't been painted since 1994, and the hardwood floors were in terrible condition when I moved in 30 years ago.  I really thing the only thing holding the structure together is the termites holding hands, and the morning glory that has grown between the walls.  When my bathtub/shower tile literally started falling off and I got it redone, the workers were pulling out 20 to 30 feet of vine at a time, no exaggeration.

Anyway, I guess she won't be giving me a good recommendation, but I think my lengthy tenancy here, my positive payment records from a few utility companies and the assurance that I won't be having any problem paying the rent for some years to come will help, along with letters of recommendation from a couple of other long-time tenants on this five unit property.

Of course, I need to find a place on the first floor (I have enormous difficulty with stairs because of the accident), which allows cats and will have on-premises parking, since I can't really schlep groceries or anything else for any distance while using a cane in one hand.

Probably I missed the explanation, but why the name "SlushGumball"?  And BTW, I despise the spelling "Deborah."

~ DEBRA!!!

I never did spell very good, and it's been getting worse as I get older. As for Slush, Rush Limbaugh was already taken.

[LADSP]

Slush writes:  >> I never did spell very good, and it's been getting worse as I get older. As for Slush, Rush Limbaugh was already taken.<< 

Well, the "Rush" does explain it.  And your grammar could use a bit of work too... (it should be "very well," not "very good").  But I'm not going to rag on you about that.  In fact, I was just about to make this post, dedicated to you; I found it in the Laffaday newsletter that I read literally minutes ago.

"This is weird, but interesting...   


fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too   

   
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.   


i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was   
rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to   
a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht   
oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is   
taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset   
can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.   
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by   
istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas   
tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!"

But Slush, you've had permanent immunity as regards the accuracy of your English skills, since long ago, even as posted by FrKerch, who is (for those of you who don't know) an actual Catholic priest, who has a ripping good sense of humor, as well as truly extensive knowledge about classical music and baseball, among many other subjects.  I miss him...Slush, do you know what he's up to?

~ Debra

[SlushGumball]

Slush writes:  >> I never did spell very good, and it's been getting worse as I get older. As for Slush, Rush Limbaugh was already taken.<<  

Well, the "Rush" does explain it.  And your grammar could use a bit of work too... (it should be "very well," not "very good").  But I'm not going to rag on you about that.  In fact, I was just about to make this post, dedicated to you; I found it in the Laffaday newsletter that I read literally minutes ago.

"This is weird, but interesting...  


fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too  

  
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.  


i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was  
rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to  
a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht  
oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is  
taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset  
can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.  
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by  
istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas  
tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!"

But Slush, you've had permanent immunity as regards the accuracy of your English skills, since long ago, even as posted by FrKerch, who is (for those of you who don't know) an actual Catholic priest, who has a ripping good sense of humor, as well as truly extensive knowledge about classical music and baseball, among many other subjects.  I miss him...Slush, do you know what he's up to?

~ Debra

Saving souls and cheering for three run homers, as far as I know
I met that guy, I'd nearly forgotten: he's way younger than me.
 

[serge]

I could read it just fine, but then again I've had years of practice reading Slush's posts. 

[LADSP]

>>I could read it just fine, but then again I've had years of practice reading Slush's posts.  <<  Serge

As could I, and as do I, respectively.  What really bothers me is that statement at the beginning that only 55 out of 100 people can read it.  Is this nation truly so illiterate?  I actually wouldn't doubt it, especially with the decline in the public education system K-12 since my tenure there until 1971 (then 3-1/2 years of college, until I realized that all I had ever learned to do, besides the three R's, was to memorize and regurgitate, then forget; i.e. I was great at scoring well on tests).  Nobody had ever taught me to THINK!!!  But if that 55/100 figure is true, now nearly half the population can barely read, if at all.  That is truly disturbing.  And don't even get me started on cutting art and music classes, etc.  Even P.E. has been cut - and nobody can figure out why the U.S. population is largely obese!

~ Debra

[steve]

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too   

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.   

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was   
rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to   
a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht   
oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is   
taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset   
can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.   
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by   
istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas   
tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!"

For relating to SG's typing skills, this is great.

However, if 55% of people can read it, then being able to read it means one has a normal mind, not a strange mind.

And letter order within a word does matter. The misspellings here are carefully crafted to avoid word ambiguity. Spelling "quite" as "quiet" would be confusing, as it could affect the meaning. What's been done above only works because of context, because we can extrapolate what should come next based on what we've already read.

I suspect that this comes from one of the many cognitive neuroscience experiments showing how the brain fills in missing or garbled information, which it does constantly (not necessarily on a conscious level) and in many more fields than just reading. It's an efficient way to make perceptual sense of the world, but it does often lead to misunderstandings. It is part of the same phenomenon that leads to racial prejudice, actually.

[LADSP]

>>For relating to SG's typing skills, this is great.

However, if 55% of people can read it, then being able to read it means one has a normal mind, not a strange mind.

And letter order within a word does matter. The misspellings here are carefully crafted to avoid word ambiguity. Spelling "quite" as "quiet" would be confusing, as it could affect the meaning. What's been done above only works because of context, because we can extrapolate what should come next based on what we've already read.

I suspect that this comes from one of the many cognitive neuroscience experiments showing how the brain fills in missing or garbled information, which it does constantly (not necessarily on a conscious level) and in many more fields than just reading. It's an efficient way to make perceptual sense of the world, but it does often lead to misunderstandings. It is part of the same phenomenon that leads to racial prejudice, actually.<<  Steve

Great observations.  And I know you were editing a book on cognitive neuroscience around the holidays in 2008, so you certainly know whereof you speak.  Nonetheless, I still think the literacy, obesity and public education in this country is horrendous.  That in no way contradicts anything you said, and I'm sure those of us from the old AOL boards, all of whom are quite intelligence, would agree.  This country is BROKEN in every way, despite all the progress we've made on some issues, particularly equality, since I was in school.


As far as your comment on racial prejudice, I know that nobody is born a racist; it's something that's taught by one's environment, particularly family in the pre-school years, instilling that early seed, and then societally reinforced as you said, not necessarily consciously), depending upon where you live and what you read.  Is this what you're referring to?

~ Debra

[steve]

As far as your comment on racial prejudice, I know that nobody is born a racist; it's something that's taught by one's environment, particularly family in the pre-school years, instilling that early seed, and then societally reinforced as you said, not necessarily consciously), depending upon where you live and what you read.  Is this what you're referring to?

It's related. Here comes a long lecture, apologies!

One could say exactly the opposite: we are born racist, and learn not to be. There is an impulse left over in our brains from our animal ancestors to fear the different, because a different type of animal could be a predator. But this is a fairly weak impulse at this point - we are not squirrels, after all - and learn fairly quickly to distinguish from others' behavior whether or not they are threats on such a primitive level. But all that stuff you mention is much stronger in the sense that it gets reinforced, which is generally not true of that impulse I mentioned. So, as is so often the case with the "nature or nurture" dichotomy, it's actually both.

So, if someone hasn't rejected stereotypes, the brain's extrapolation function will summon up all of the applicable stereotypes when s/he sees someone of a different race. And when we expect to see something, we often interpret input as reinforcing expectations, so stereotypes can be reinforced that way as well. This is why I so dislike the Blink/simple heuristics model of thought. Yeah, it's real and it's quick (which is why it evolved) and it's often right, but when it's wrong, its wrongness is amplified by the lack of considered feedback. Kenneth Hammond calls it coherence thinking (having a system and always going by it), and points out that, among other things, this type of thinking causes stock market losses to be bigger: Stock market/investor use of coherence thinking gets heavily conditioned, so heavily that good money is thrown after bad to spectacularly disastrous degrees. Just because a system has generally worked in the past doesn't mean that it will continue to work. No matter how detailed and intricate a theory is, it can?t take all variables into account, especially because life keeps introducing new ones. Things change all the time, and some of them may be things outside your theory that nonetheless indirectly influence variables in ways you can?t anticipate. Keep checking the system against results. Subjecting judgments to measurement against reality is what Hammond calls correspondence thinking, and his main idea is that either without the other leads to incomplete thinking and faulty decisions. I pretty much agree with him and am slowly (very slowly) writing a pop-psych book about it.