Micolithe
Agender
36 years old
Philadelphia, PA
Online Now
Last Login: 08/30/2007

Agender Enby, Trans, Gay, AND the bearer of the gamer's curse. Not a man, not a woman, but instead I am puppy.
I got a fat ass and big ears.

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Yes I did the cooking mama Let's Play way back when. I post alot about Tech (mostly how it sucks) and Cooking and Music and Television Shows and the occasional Let's Play video
💖@FadeToZac

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We all do what we can ♫

So we can do just one more thing ♫

We can all be free ♫

Maybe not in words ♫

Maybe not with a look ♫

But with your mind ♫


last.fm listening



vogon
@vogon

when I was a kid I got tonsillitis like most kids twisted their ankle, and when I was 8 I had a case of it so bad that I couldn't swallow solid food, so my mom took me into the free clinic1 run by the county

surprising no one, it was strep throat, but we couldn't afford medicine for it, so the doctor rooted around in the back for some free samples the pharmaceutical companies give away2, and eventually came back and handed us a whole flat of some oral antibiotic powder for suspension

we took it home, cracked open the first bottle (it came in little single-dose bottles like yakult) and mixed it into some water, and I drank it back; 45 minutes later I threw up in the toilet

we dug the empty out of the trash and it was 18 months past its expiration date, but thankfully (somehow?????) only that one bottle of the five-day course

never get sick in america, kids


  1. translator's note for non-americans (advanced3): while poor kids technically have access to government health insurance over here, it still has copayments; free clinics are actually free4

  2. translator's note for non-americans: they do this to try and get them to prescribe new $75 patented name-brand drugs instead of $4 generics

  3. I assume you have already been forced to learn the broad contours of our nightmarish health system

  4. this was the early clinton administration, and since then a lot of the government-run free clinics have closed down because of government "cost-cutting"


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in reply to @vogon's post:

while poor kids technically have access to government health insurance over here, it still has copayments; free clinics are actually free

i refuse to believe that america actually exists

The only thing false about this story is the fact that free clinics no longer exist, America stopped funding them (see point 4).

This lines up with my childhood as well sadly.

This nation is a colossal hellscape.

yeah, I specifically went to double-check to see if the free clinic I went to is still open, and I believe it is, but that's only because either the local government has somehow avoided being taken over by bloodthirsty people for 20 years, or because it doesn't cost them enough that anyone has noticed

fun fact: technically the government health insurance isn't actually run by the government, it's administered by private companies1 and the government just covers the cost of it


  1. the supposed thinking goes that because these companies are in the business of providing health insurance, they'll be able to do it cheaper than the government2

  2. the real rationale is that private insurance lobbyists bribe the government to give them a few billion dollars for giving poor kids "free" health care they still can't afford to actually use

I've never seen a free clinic lol, but also I wasn't alive during the early Clinton admin

it's always amazing how I hear stories about twenty, thirty years ago, and things already were terrible economically, but there were always mitigating factors, and now we've lost even those. I'm grateful we're still ahead of the 90's and earlier on social issues, even with the quite dramatic backswing in recent memory, but like...I would have liked to dream of having a house someday. can't even afford the dream now lol

edit: I'm not kidding, either. I definitely didn't end up where I thought I would, but even the vision of my future I didn't live up to never included owning a house.

as a kid I was way into the aesthetic of infomercials so I watched a lot of sunday late-morning TV; on our local TV channels that would segue into the real estate listings

I remember as a kid marveling at the idea of a thing that cost $230,000, and now I marvel at the idea of $230,000 being enough money to buy a house outright

I was born during the v early Clinton administration, but yyyikes that sounds about American. Even in this section of California today, you have specialists that don't give a damn beyond the market, and the good ones can be so far away from you that CA's gas prices punish you further for having unusual health ailments.

Ok, except for the part about it being expired? this was my experience till i got my tonsils out in 6th grade. Over 2 years either sick or on antibiotics. I still get super anxious when I get a sore throat, and now i have a 'cillin allergy! :tada: :sob:

I remember as a kid going to the hospital to get told what medicine I needed, and then my parents having friends who regularly traveled to and from Mexico pick up some super cheap medicine while there and sneak it back in. Pills that would cost like $80 can be had for like $5 in Mexico. Mexico has better healthcare than America.