shut up in my bones

bones are important, man.

stay with me. have you ever really thought about them? beyond them being hard or hurting a lot if they break i mean. have you? bones are why you have a form!! they hold you up and let you walk and stuff. they do other stuff, too. they enable you to eat and start digestion (teeth are bones, too, you know) they hold your muscles in place so you can, like, have mobility. they make stuff taste better (the difference between unctuous and flavorful stock and blah di blah broth? stock is made with the bones of the beastie). even bugs have bones (they call them "exoskeletons" because they wear them on the outside because bugs have no shame). and the most important thing bones do?

star in noir style mysteries?

no, they make blood! thought it was the heart that did that? wrong again Bob! the heart is like the head of person city's blood distribution ring. it moves the product through the veins and what not, but it has a supplier, and the supplier lives in the bones. that would be the marrow. see, if the heart is Frank Lucas, and the blood is blue magic, then the marrow is the vietnamese general that grew the opium it was made of.

And that would make Richie Roberts a heart attack (get it? because he was the arresting officer?!)

the bone marrow is very important. it's what makes bone in food taste good, and it's what gives stock it's oomph. also it's wht gives your body blood, and  more importantly, white blood cells. without white blood cells the body can't fight infection, and if you can;t fight infection, you can't, like, live through stuff. you need to be able to live through stuff. i mean it! how terrible would it be if everytime you got a sniffle you had to fear for your life? that's how important bones are, they give you the ability to live your life and live through the stuff that wants to take your life from the inside. 

and the cool thing is we all have that superpower!

.....

ok, so i lied. most of us have that superpower, but there are those of us who don't. there are people in this world that for one reason or another lose the ability to produce new healthy blood cells to fight off infections that might do us in. and you know what? as superheroes, it is our duty to help those who cannot help themselves. we have to give our powers to those who have lost the ability to use their own. that's what wolverine would do. remember that scene in the first [read: the good] X-men movie? when rogue was latched into Magneto's "turn-all-the-people-into-mutants-but-it'll-kill-the-person-acting-as-the-battery-so-i'll-trap-a-teenager-who-can-steal-powers-into-it-in-my-place-because-the-nazi's-killed-my-mom" machine and died as a result, wolverine went and did the one thing he knew could save her: touched her so she could steal his healing power to come back to life. 

shown: life giving. not shown: what it looks like (fuckin)

that's what we are: a bunch of wolverine's. we all have a healing factor shut up in our bones. and we need to be willing to give our powers to those who have lost the ability to use there's. that's why i encourage everyone who is able to sign up to the National Marrow Donor Program as a bone marrow donor. it costs you nothing but a cheek swab and it could save someone's life, man. you could be somebody's personal wolverine!

not a butt cheek swab, you perv....

look, i know it's a scary proposition. donating a piece of you to somebody else, somebody you've never met no less, doesn't sound appealing. it sounds painful and invasive. i know man. when i signed up i had the same thoughts. but you know what outweighed all of my fears? the idea that just maybe one day there would be a part of me out there saving the next michael jackson, or the next bill gates. somebody might have leukemia and need a marrow transplant and that may be the person that cures AIDS or cancer. somebody might need chemo and require a transplant to repair their immune system afterwards, and that person may go on to invent time travel, or may negotiate peace in the middle east. hell, you may just save somebody's mom or dad, brother or sister, son or daughter, and they may go on to just lead a normal life. and that? that's worth more than any fear i had. that outweighs all of it.

i don't really know how to close this one out, so i'll just leave you with this image that pretty much says it all.

any questions, bub?

Tracy, let me ease your fearful heart

now, tracy, i don't know you, so i won't judge you. on the contrary, i want to help you. you see, we rational's (that's what i am. liberal, yes, but i base my views on rationality, not my political bent) do. we help people trapped in the poltical spectrum ease their minds about things they don't agree with, admittedly to limited success. and exactly what body WOULD you like controlling your freedoms, hmmm? Amana? Blue Cross? Metlife? ya see, or maybe you don't see, this is where this particular argument falls apart. it's the illusion of socialism and communism that has been created by right wing talking heads that has people spooked, not health care reform. it's sad, really, because alot of very intelligent people have been conned into opposing the first initiative since civil rights that will actually improve the quality of life of the american citizen. and that's what it is: a mass con perpetrated by your republican representatives and the conservative media. they conned you all by framing the debate in imaginary fantasy nightmare monsters like death panels, nazis, socialists, and black men with power. they dreamt up scary numbers with suffixes like "trillion" to sway you. they organized and gave themselves edgy names like "tea bagger" and "sarah palin".

i could go into the time not a decade ago when a president and his administration actually DID infringe upon our constitutional freedoms, but let's stick to the subject at hand.

alright, so you're frightened right now. i understand. change is scary, for sure, but so is surgery, and that can save your life. so let's ease your mind right now. this new law is not a socialist plot. there are no death wagons coming for grandma. there aren't any black suits monitoring your doctor visits. there are no government checkpoints that you have to carry papers for. now answer me this: at what point in this bill is a government run health care system proposed? i'll wait... oh, that's right, it isn't proposed in this bill! this is an INSURANCE reform bill, not a "government takeover of the health care system". all it does is tell Amana, and BCBS, and Metlife what they can't do to us, and what they must do for us.

you cannot do things without paying for them. it's funny, and i'm just observing here, how so few people from a certain side of the political spectrum were critical of the reckless way the previous administration spent money. it's even a bit shocking that nobody from a certain side of the political spectrum, and again this is just an observation, seemed to be outraged with the anti-regulatory policies enacted by the previous administration that led to the mess that the current regime had to clean up. you can't blame the current owner for the way the previous owner left the house. had the country not been bleeding money over the past decade due to poor balance of trade's, bubble economics, and a seeming aversion to creating new revenue streams, maybe we wouldn't have felt the need to pass that ghastly bailout. if the past decade hadn't been spent in a collection of wars that proved to be money pit's, not to mention where victory is an improbability, perhaps our deficit wouldn't be in the trillions.

Tracy, my dear, change is scary for all of us. i must admit that even I am not 100% sold on what has passed, but i know one thing for sure: i'd rather have an imperfect reform bill than a for profit health baron deciding my fate. give it time, my dear, give it time.