As a result of the vast sums of money that people in the good old US of A have to pay for health insurance, they do have more choice in terms of who treats them and what they are treated with. The fallout from that is that all the companies in question advertise to you to add to their doubtless overflowing coffers. At first it was a bit of a novelty getting letters from local quacks along the lines of “please come to this surgery – we’re really nice and we won’t hurt you – honest guv”. That’s in sharp contrast for all the cunning ploys their British counterparts undertake to stop all of us whining hypochondriacs from actually going to see them (only accepting requests for appointments between 4 and 5am on every third Tuesday etc) – you know the score…

What caused the novelty to rather rapidly wear off is all the print and particularly TV advertising. Not just the hospitals, but the drug firms too – peddling anything from cures for hay-fever, to heart medication, to kits for diabetics. Actually it is worse than that – any unpleasant problem your undercarriage can contract apparently has a drug to help alleviate the symptoms; a drug which needs to be brought to your attention with some quite graphic adverts *shudder*. The element of these that is both hilarious and alarming is the disclaimer that these ads have to carry – effectively all the small print, only spoken at triple speed. Regardless of the original problem, one of the possible side effects always seems to be death, invariably alongside a long list of other possible symptoms, all significantly worse than the original problem.

Related to this is the “results not typical”that flashes up  in tiny print on any ads for diet products. Ie not in your dreams fatsos, but we’ll just show this girl in a bikini some more so you can continute to hope.

I guess the one saving grace in all this is that they ARE still advertising (typically 2 pages of small print following every one page of smiling happy, cured people) – which keeps the magazines alive.

I just dread the day when a quack asks what I’d like to take – urgh – that’s what THEY went to medical school for.

America is a very large country. So once upon a time when it took many days for the fastest horse and rider to cross each state, centralised rule was impractical so it made sense to have each state run itself. Today information is a global commodity – it travels worldwide in an instant.

So why then does each state have so much autonomy? Granted, the centralised v decentralised debate is a religious one but surely it makes no sense to have such significant changes in law determined by which state you happen to be in.

Some of these are a bit irritating but inconsequential – for example in Pennsylvania you can’t be trusted to buy booze anywhere other than a state store, but you can ride your motorbike without a helmet if you want. Just a few miles away in New Jersey you can buy your alcohol from the supermarket but you must wear a helmet at all times (somehow they’ve got the balance right I think).

Some laws have greater consequences – such as whether you can get married or not if you are gay (and even that can be a movable feast as witnessed recently in California), whether you could be subject to the death sentence, how much tax you pay, what maximum speed you can drive at (not to mention subtle differences in the highway code), differences in insurance and car registration laws. One area that particularly irritates me is that education is determined locally. That sounds logical enough in theory – the last thing you want in education is for it to support a network of quangos but in practice it means that the quality of the curriculum in each state is variable. In some states evolution is positioned as “a theory” with creationism described as an equally-weighted alternative . That’s seriously scary.

For a country that talks a lot about  equality and fairness, this doesn’t seem fair.

I haven’t posted for a while – mostly because I’ve been busy, but also just a bit down. Some of that is work related. Whilst I’m thrilled to still have a job, these are strange times. It is a tough busines environment and everyone is under pressure in their own way. I accept that. It isn’t great, but you just have to get on with it.

The piece that is really getting me down is the fact that my daily work environment is basically a cave. I’m lucky enough to have an office but the only window looks over a lightless hellhole. I bought a SAD lamp last year but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. So I try to work where there is some natural light – some of the conference rooms, the cafeteria, by the stairs in the lobby…

Now everyone thinks this is slightly eccentric. It seems to be quite usual for people to spend their entire working lives in cubes like battery hens. I miss the open plan offices and banter that I’m used to. I think I feed off the buzz of having other people and ideas around me.  Now if if I have back to back phone meetings I can go whole days without any human interaction  – despite the fact that there are people working just a few yards from me.

One horror I’m spared is the sound of the cubes…somehow people get more revolting if they can’t actually be seen. There was one chap here nicknamed “Mucus Man”. Enough said.

Recently when the snow melted I found the remains of newspapers in various stages of decay dotted around in front of the house. I didn’t think much of it until then other day. I was heading for work and running late so was particularly irritated by the car in front which was driving at kerb crawling speeds, stopping and starting and generally being driven erratically. Then it dawned on me – this was a parent driving their chubby offspring around BY CAR to do a paper round. The aforementioned chubster was just slinging the papers in the general direction of the house with all the accuracy of a budget forecast.

I don’t approve of this. Much as I dislike the sort of unsolicited rubbish that is delivered to me, I am horrified that I have to go and collected it from the front garden before filing it in the recycling bin. I’m also  indignant on behalf of the people who have doubtless paid to advertise in these worthless rags that never get read and on behalf of whoever pays this lazy urchin to do the paper round in the first place. I’m particularly irritated by what must be legions of parents who ferry their slothful offspring around ENCOURAGING this in the first place.And this one in particular because it made me even more late than I would otherwise have been.

The strangest thing of all is that no-one else thinks that this is in any way odd. They don’t expect to have papers (including ones they have paid for) to actually arrive in a dry, readable condition on their doorstep. Why not I wonder?

I’m going native. One of my most recent purchases was a slow cooker. A monster capacity tub that cooks stews and other marvellous meals overnight or during the day. So I can throw a handful of ingredients in there in the morning – it spends the day cooking ever so slowly and then there’s a whole hot meal ready for me when I get back. Great. The food has been pretty good so far and there’s nothing like cooking a piece of cheap meat for 10 hours to give it that fall off the fork tenderness…

Here’s the puzzle –  guess what accessory I received with the cooker…..it was a carry case. Yes really, a heavy duty case for the cooker, like a little tent for the contraption when I go camping. It took me a while to work out what the case might be for – it is because Americans DO carry food to places – eg for potlucks and similar meals are all transported in these things, presumably in their carry cases.  I now have visions of hordes of yummy mummies clutching Louis Vuitton carry cases for their slow cookers…..a new market niche perhaps?

The real mystery to me is why they would supply the thing without a lid that closes. Yes really. So given that nobody here actually walks anywhere, it would have to be carried, in its case, in the back of one of those mobile blancmanges they call cars here. That’s just crazy.