I have been a mighty, mighty bear tonight. 3080 words on "The Unicorn Evils," and 700 words on a review for Tor.com.

Darling:

It wasn't that Solomon Todd hadn't seen this sort of thing before.

It was that he had.

Phew. And I get to get up in the morning and do it again.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/1K3jSIqgjts/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3096

Peter and I had a blazing* row this morning.

            About the NHS.

            Other couples fight about sex, money, in laws, who left the cap off the toothpaste tube, and who does the dishes.**  We fight about the National Health Service.***  Right.  Um.

            Peter had told me while he was still in hospital that I was welcome to blog about it, and he mentioned it again as we were fighting our way out of Zhar and Lloigor’s tentacles† . . . I mean the car park.  Just don’t abuse the NHS, he said.

            Okay, I said. 

            This is where opinions diverge.  By Peter’s standards, I did.  By my standards, I didn’t.  My bottom line is, has always been and I predict will remain, I am very glad the NHS exists.  You—whoever you are and wherever you live—must have some form of nationalised care.  Must.  Have.  The fourteen-ring circus about this lately while Obama has been trying to push through health care reform in the States, which I would like to think is now mostly over but probably isn’t, has completely done my head in. ††  There should be no question about whether, only about the details of the thing and how it’s going to work and who’s going to administer it. †††  Gaaah. 

            However.  While I’ve had some very good encounters with individuals working for the NHS—most recently, for example, with the nice young doctor who diagnosed my Post Vitreous Detachment—my overwhelming experience of the NHS is that it contains way far too many arrogant idiots, including, in at least two cases, big important vainglorious consultants who were in a position to do me serious damage through sheer frelling not listening because They Are Doctors and my experience of what’s wrong with me is irrelevant.  I could tell you stories, as I said last night, only I’m not going to.‡   I’ve heard several more stories of medical arrogance and idiocy since I brought Peter home from the Royal Free, barely twenty four hours ago, including one just this afternoon about something that is going on right now that makes me so angry all over again that I almost want to have another blazing row with my husband. 

            Almost.

            This morning Peter said that I should say something on the blog in praise and support of the NHS.  I said it was my blog and if he wanted to write a guest post I’d think about publishing it.  But that I would say that he thought that the NHS got more right than it got wrong, and that his experience is a case in point.  This is the polite part of the email‡‡ he sent me this morning:  

I had several free visits to my local doctors, and we weren’t getting anywhere, so I asked to see a specialist.   I got an appointment within a month, was seen in about ten minutes of arrival, had a thorough examination with high-tech equipment by a friendly young junior surgeon who spent plenty of time on me  and then sent me home with free medicine; which didn’t do the trick, so he decided I’d better have a scan.  I had that in a fortnight, pretty well as soon as I showed up, then a few days’ wait to give him time to look at the result.  I went in again, and he showed me what was happening behind my face, slice by slice; all the cavities blocked solid, a bone out of place (result of a long-ago smash), polyps that the drugs hadn’t shifted, etc, etc and told me, much to my surprise, that my trivial little complaint would need actual surgery, with a general anaesthetic, and I’d have to come in for an overnight.    That was brilliant too.  The senior surgeon did the job.  I had a baddish night, but the nurses were attentive to my needs, cheerful even in the small hours, and to those of the other guys in the wards, two of whom were having a much worse time than I was.‡‡‡       

Good.  Excellent.  Excellent twice.  First and foremost that this is my husband we’re talking about, whom I remain stubbornly fond of despite his sometimes bizarre beliefs in the way the world and its organisations behave, and second because I want the NHS to work.  I totally believe in national health care.  But I believe the system we’ve got at present in Britain needs a lot of revision.

             . . . Peter has just made coffee in my peppermint tea strainer.   Ewwwwww.   Aaaaaaaugh.  Can this marriage be saved?§   

* * *

 * Well.  Peter doesn’t blaze.  I blaze.  But it was recognisably a row. 

** Peter is happy to do the dishes.  He just doesn’t do them well enough.  He says that Americans have a hygiene fetish.  I say the British think that washing-up is a ritual activity which has nothing to do with getting things clean. 

*** Artists are all weird. 

† It’s a stupid waste to have a Great Old One—for example Zathog—designated as The Great Confuser when it’s merely an orange-purple humanoid monster.  You want something really unfathomably dire and ghastly, I recommend the car parking situation at a 120-year-old hospital. 

†† I’m too old still to be this naïve about people.  Evidently not.  I thought when Hillary was cut up into Congressional canapés for daring to put a lot of work into a paper on health care reform while her husband was president it was about Hillary and the perceived role of the First Lady.  I was sorry that people being damfool about capable professional women^ was going to slow down obviously necessary health care reform. 

^ Ambitious?  Sure.  And your point would be? 

††† [violent oversimplification alert] 

‡ About the only one suitable for a family blog is my ex-GP who ‘didn’t believe in ME’. 

‡‡ I have attempted to iron out the spelling.  Peter is an appalling typist. 

‡‡‡ I will add in my own experience that Peter had his little bottle of arnica out on his bedside table and none of the nurses nor the (Indian^) doctor who came to check on him had any problem with him using it.  Although I will add that this is by no means an NHS-wide phenomenon, and the NHS’ frequently witch-hunt attitude toward us alternatives is one of the things I have against it as the head of practical and practising medicine in this country.

            I was also apologised to by two different nurses about the mix-up over who was phoning whom and at what time yesterday afternoon. 

^ There’s a very strong living tradition of homeopathy in India 

§ Yes, Peter did read this before I posted it.

It’s been pointed out to me that I’ve been slacking off on giving progress reports.

Tiassa is being difficult.  Between conversations with Reesa and with Neil, I’ve been convinced to try something a bit challenging.  I think it’s going to be really cool if it works, but at the moment I’m beating my head against it about halfway through.  Judging by past experience, I imagine in a week or so things will fall into place and I’ll be moving forward.

Originally published at Words Words Words. Please leave any comments there.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1604

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November 27th, 2009: I did a guest comic for Dr. McNinja and it is up RIGHT NOW. That's TWO comics for you to read today. And it's Friday too! Nice. In other news, guys there are so many great Dinosaur Comics shirts and things that you can give people as presents, like whale hoodies! Also, we just set up an affiliate program, so now if you link to these awesome shirts and things yourself, and somebody buys them, you get 7% of what they paid! PRETTY SWEET, I GOTTA SAY. Check it out! – Ryan

http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/blog/archives/2009_11.html#000786

So you know about the war of the billboards, right? The clever atheist billboard campaign begun in the UK and various, largely less convincing (because derivative or grumpy) religious responses. (Other religious people have been ecstatic, like the Swiss religious school teachers I read about whose recalcitrant pupils finally got interested in talking about religion after seeing the atheist billboards on a field trip to London).

The billboards have been a matter of some debate in Switzerland, with various cantonal bus authorities refusing to run the atheists' ads, while running plenty of (Christian) religious ads -- another piece of Switzerland's current abominable xenophobic fit of religious self-righteousness, like the disgusting referendum this weekend to forbid the construction of minarets, which never ceases to make my blood boil (These damned posters are all over my neighborhood. Hello, German-speaking Europe: targeting individual religious minorities and restricting their civil rights? Haven't we been over this before? If you are Swiss and reading this, please get out and vote this weekend!)

Anyway, back to the billboards. As usual in contemporary public debates over religion, I feel left out.

Here would be my entry (if someone wants to photoshop it up in the right font, I would naturally be obliged):

There's a God, all right, but don't worry: she's not like they say she is.

Also, if you prefer a different metaphor, that's okay too.</a>