Then today I got a collection notice regarding the first Beth Israel bill. I called and told the person that I had called when I got the first bill and had been told I didn't have a balance. I told him I had gotten a refund check in the meantime, and asked why I got a refund check if I owed them money. He said he didn't know. I asked if there was some other way to look, maybe by pulling up my social, and seeing if they had two accounts for me or something. He said that wouldn't have happened.

He said there was no way I could have gotten a refund check, because it didn't show any refund check. I told him I had definitely gotten one, and I knew this, because a refund check came in the mail. To me. From them. For an overpayment. So he then said "well, I have no way of knowing what's going on with any of this, because you have 12 accounts in here."

Whaaaat? Didn't he just tell me that I didn't have more than one account? So then he tells me that I'd been in the hospital 12 times in the past two years, and so I had 12 accounts. And wasn't he able to pull them all up as being tied to me? I've been the same person and with the same insurance and address the whole time. So anyway, I asked him if he could pull up the fact that they'd issued me a check, since, you know, they wrote me a check, and they'd have a way of pulling that up. He said "that would require me going into your financial record." Wait, because we haven't been in it yet? No WONDER you think I owe you money, yet you're sending me refunds. So I asked him if he could do that. "No, I don't have access to that."

I hate how the internet allows anyone to quickly publish anything they
want for anyone to read.

When the internet first started being readily available, in the early
'90s, it took some effort to put content onto the internet. Even then,
when I was in high school, we were told that things were not
necessarily accurate just because they were on the internet, and we
were cautioned to make sure the sites listed the name of some sort of
reputable sponsor and cited the sources of their information. In other
words, we were not supposed to view information on the internet as
being as authoritative as, say, encyclopedias. Still, to me, the
internet in the early '90s felt about like periodicals as a type of
media -- anyone could publish information and was not subject to major
editorial scrutiny like authors of an encyclopedia were, but the
information was at least something that someone had bothered to pay to
have published.

A few years later, the internet began to have a feel that was more
like flyers being handed out at an event. People had either taken the
time to learn how to put up pages or they had paid someone to do so.
The information was about equally divided between information put out
by reputable professional organizations and information that someone
had just decided needed to be disseminated.

The internet today feels less like it has any analogous print form.

Some of the information available still feels much like print
information. Just about every professional organization has a large
website, with most of them being pretty impressive. For a lot of
people in certain demographic groups, the internet has become the way
to find information. I can't remember the last time I used a phone
book to find a business that did what I want. Or the last time I poked
around for brochures somewhere. In fact, I'm a professional writer,
and I don't currently own a dictionary. There are several online,
complete with usage notes and everything, so I see no point in having
a print one. I vaguely remember when I would go to a library or
bookstore if I needed a book about finance or home improvement or
something. Not anymore. Don't get me wrong; I still read a lot of
books and plan to continue to do so. But for general information, it
seems archaic.

The part of the internet that's unique is when it becomes a forum for,
well, conversations in print. Software has now gotten to the point
where it's incredibly easy to post information onto a webpage, and so
people can have discussions with each other as easily as they can in
person. This is done with instant messengers, on chat forums, in
guestbooks, and on weblogs. I enjoy this part of the internet very
much, as I like to talk with my friends and family all over the world.
I also wouldn't likely go out in the community and find someone who
knows about a particular topic that's just a passing interest, but I
frequently do so on the internet.

When the internet becomes really, well, weird is when people merge the
conversational aspect with the publishing aspect. The peculiar aspect
of the internet is that the conversations people have in blogs and on
many types of forums are preserved in print as if they were something
that had been written and published. Internet discussions are no
different from internet news articles in terms of their both being on
webpages and available for the quoting. The difference though is
intention.

The other day, I engaged in a casual discussion about a proposed local
tax. This discussion was no different than the ones I have around the
watercooler or down at the bar on the corner, except for the fact it
was in print. The next day, I found that my discussion had been quoted
by a notable Boston blogger. While the article did include a link
back to the original discussion for anyone who bothered to follow it,
it had been quoted and included in an article and presented as if the
quotes were from a published article rather than from a casual
discussion. My off-the-top-of-my-head opinions -- completely devoid of
the statistics, logical organization, counterpoint, and, oh, complete
sentences that I include in my actual writing -- were included in this
article and naturally ripped apart. There was even a link to my
personal homepage, which links to some of my published writing and
some of my professional affiliations, making it seem even more as if
this had been something I had written and published, rather than just
something I'd spouted off on an internet forum.

This is the type of thing I really hate about the internet. Obviously,
anything we post on the internet is just like anything we say in
public -- it can be used and abused by anyone who feels like it. The
important part though is context. People in general who read things on
the internet or anywhere else don't do much critical thinking,
unfortunately. Yes, someone could easily poke around and see that the
aforementioned text was from a discussion board, not from an article,
and could take it for what it was -- opinionated drivel -- and realize
that it wasn't in any way meant to represent a professional analysis
of the situation. But who's going to do that? Not most people. In
fact, there are people who think that some of us, for whatever reason,
aren't entitled to the freedom to bullshit with our friends. On
another internet forum a few months ago, I had someone threaten to go
after my mental health credentials because this person insisted that
since I freely express opinions of people I interact with on my own
time and who have come to warrant this, this must mean that I abuse
people in my professional life.

I guess what it comes down to is that the internet is just, well, a
mirror of society. Some people think, most people don't, and if
someone wants to, they can use the fact that most people don't think
as a way to "prove" anything they choose.<!--break-->

So this morning I found about 5000 ants in the cat food dish. One of the cats seems to find them sort of amusing and fun to paw at and the other cat is terrified of them. I emptied out the cat food dish, cleaned it thoroughly, and vacuumed up about 4999 ants (one went squiggling under the stove). Hey, they were alive when they got sucked up the hose, so that means I wasn't responsible for killing them. Well except for the one who marched one by one across my toe who I therefore had to smash. Sorry, Buddha.

10 minutes later, I go into the kitchen, and the ant I missed has, through some miracle of immaculate conception, multiplied into another 5000 ants. Who really enjoy cat food. This time I got smart. After wasting another bowl of cat food (I should also mention that the cats won't eat if the bottom of the bowl is showing. One of them doesn't seem to mind if thousands of ants are showing though.), I set the cat food bowl in the middle of a large baking pan and poured water in to make a moat around the cat food bowl.

An hour passed and I dared to go into the kitchen. I was relieved to not find any sort of army in the cat food this time, though there were 3 ants who did make it into the cat food. And about 50 drowned little ant corpses. Sorry, Buddha.

They can SWIM.

Tomorrow I'm headed to CVS first thing to buy myself a package of those little ant Auschwitzes.

Deal with it, Buddha.

I didn't get the, uh, opportunity to read the actual story, but I see in 3 other accounts of the story that all that is known now is that the boy died shortly after going into cardiac arrest while in the hospital and that relatives had raised questions of physical abuse after visiting with the child recently. No one's been charged with anything, no cause of death has been determined, and there's no mention of any other findings during the child's hospitalization.

Talk about jumping to conclusions.

If the cause of death is determined to be anything other than a direct result of blunt trauma intentionally inflicted by another person, I'll be the first one to start a fund to sue the Herald's ass off for libel.

Oh, and it's especially infuriating that Mitt Romney is commenting on the "enormous failure" of the foster care system. After he's made huge cuts in foster care, group care, DSS, MassHealth and therapeutic schools. And has publicly stated that it's wrong to give needy children families in GLBTQ homes.