Saturday, March 1, 2003

Rob is mad about something now that I mentioned so I'm writing it down because it's entertaining when Rob Reed gets so mad. I was talking about that girl that died after they screwed up her heart-lung transplant the first time and then did it again and she died anyway (which they shouldn't have done because after the first mistake that was probably it - medical people said it is very unlikely that anyone could survive 2 heart-lung transplants in a week, no matter what - so they should have given the second set of organs to someone else on a waiting list). He is going off about how people shouldn't go around suing constantly for accidents and say things like "It should never have happened" and that you can't prevent accidents they're built into the universe. Accidents happen, that's the end, no one's responsible, He says negligence is the only acceptable reason to blame someone and that's it - if everyone did their best no one can be held responsible. Negligence means you purposefully, knowingly ignored a known issue, etc., not that you just screwed up.

This is a direct quote from Rob Reed, the last one was paraphrasing: "There are 2 things you're supposed to say when stuff like that happens. The first is, would it have been better if she died some other way? The second is she could have grown up to be the next Hitler. Everybody should shut up, the fact that she's dead is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. The problem is that thousands of other young girls died that same day. At least one of them killed herself because her father was having sex with her, another several died because they couldn't get iodine or something stupid like that, someone else starved to death within a few city blocks of some guy who spent a million dollars on his tie clip." He continues, "The mistake was transferring the organs twice (if not organ transplantation in the first place). Two wrongs don't make a right; whether it's a kid in a playground pushing a kid because someone pushed him yesterday, or whether it involves complicated multi-million dollar medical procedures.

If the parents really cared about the kid, and everyone else's kids, then rather than suing the hospital, they'd let the hospital keep the money so they could use it to improve whatever the process was that failed in their case and the whole argument goes full circle back to my argument/observation about everything - ultimately people are selfish - everything that they do is motivated by selfishness, at least in some way shape or form. At least if we could acknowledge this then we would be less surprised by some people's actions. They had a kid in the first place because they were selfish and wanted a kid. We don't need any more kids in the world, we've got plenty of goddamn kids! The money is being spent on organ transplants because people can't get over the fact that some people die, boo-hoo. The last time I checked we were not an endangered species. There are plenty of us. We can pop out kids. They're going to sue the hospital out of selfishness. Whether they use the money to take a trip around the world, improve their personal situation, or set up a charity to help other people whose children have difficulty involving an organ transplant surgery, in any case, the motivation is a selfish one and the end result is destructive. If they set up a charity to help organ transplant people with the money that they got by suing the medical community they've just added another obstacle [increased medical costs].

What about me, or anybody else for that matter, makes me feel so special about myself that people are more or less deserving of freedom, comfort, education, life, just by virtue that they know me (or anyone else)? As if I am some God handing out favors? Clearly that's how we all see ourselves. People die every day and you don't care unless it affects you personally. You could make the argument that that is just a natural reaction to the fact that there are 7 billion people on the planet and you couldn't have any productive thoughts if you were constantly mourning every loss everywhere, which is a fine argument I guess, but you could take it in the other direction, which means acknowledge each loss for its real value. Mourn over the losses that touch your life, but keep everything in perspective. The fact that your kid dies is relatively insignificant, and the fact that we're about to go to war in the Middle East is relatively more significant, however you feel about the war."

The opinions expressed by Rob Reed are not necessarily the opinions of Jenn Martinelli or jennmartinelli.net. But, I would like to add just about my least favorite thing is hearing about a terrorist bombing or a plane crashing somewhere that killed hundreds of people and all our news can concentrate on is the 3 Americans involved. Give me a break.

4:32:15 PM  

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We're in the car now on the way to Syracuse to bring the car up to Rob's mom. He cleaned it yesterday but now we're getting it dirty again. Oops. We're trying to be good and covered everything up with sheets and towels, but we had to bring the dog because we don't have free babysitter Heather in town anymore, so he's getting hair all over probably and snotting up the windows.

We were talking before about how bad banana-flavored candy is and agreed that it's nasty then talked about how gross it was that Heather liked it and it's one of her favorites. Gross, Heather. Ha ha.

We're a little more than halfway to Syracuse. We were supposed to already be there by now but we had technical difficulties. We are also bringing Rob's mom a new computer (don't worry, it's not a gift, we just picked it up for her so Rob could set it up, she's giving us money for it) and our street lost power both last night and this morning for a few hours each time which hindered his setting up the computer and also meant we didn't wake up with an alarm this morning (though I still woke up frighteningly early - 7:30am - maybe because my internal clock was trying to make sure we got on our way.) So it will be a late late night for us because we're coming back to Boston tonight too. But we didn't want to spend an entire weekend in Syracuse. We've been up there a billion times lately it seems like, so we wanted to have at least one day this weekend with some time to just hang out. Tomorrow Rob might do some work in the morning but then we are going to the Museum of Fine Arts in the afternoon for an "Introductory Gallery Walk" for new members. It's from 2-3:30. I don't know if that means it's one massive tour or that if you come by anytime during that time you can get a tour. We'll see. It should be good to do - it's enough time to see a lot but not so much time that short-attention-span-Pete (ie: Rob) will get bored. Our house is reasonably clean so maybe after the Museum we'll actually just relax and hang out at home or do something else fun instead of cleaning.

There is a horrible commercial on the radio right now for a temp agency in the Albany area and it has this guy on it who keeps saying "You want I should...?" as in, "You want I should sit down?" which actually means "Do you want me to sit down?" It's a weird slang thing - I don't know if it's upstate New York or what but they said it at least 3 times just in that one commercial and it's very annoying.

Finding a good radio station in upstate NY is a big problem.

Ugh, now we've got Avril Levigne. Someone save me.

4:22:53 PM  

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