msb-0179 An Awful choice...
intro
---- "This old shirt" by: "Al Stravinsky" http://www.soundclick.com/alstravinsky
Feedback comes first, so...
I got some from Homer. It was very encouraging.
I'm hoping to get an episode from "Herrad" soon.
My downloads are hovering around 19,000.
---- "we are so old" by: "boobootin" http://www.2all.co.il/web/Sites/boobootin/DEFAULT.asp
Feed Forward comes next, so...
This is "your" segment.
Say "your" piece on this segment.
Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.
Drop me an email: charles at MSBPodcast.com
---- "Mean Old Daddy" by: "Byther Smith" http://www.black-and-tan.com/
Feed Me comes third, so...
Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?
Consider advertising on this podcast.
Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)
It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.
That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)
But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.
No play, no pay.
Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...
Send me an email at: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com
---- "Old T-shirt" by: "Jake Coco" http://www.jakecoco.com/
Main Topic: " An Awful choice..."
I'm currently stuck between a "Scilla" and a "Charibdes" (a rock and a hard place.)
I have an opportunity to travel for work, but its rather like being press-ganged into the navy. Its not so much an opportunity as a demand. I don't really have a choice.
I have the prospect of spending the next four years somewhere else than here, "without" my partner, my best friend, my wife. I will be about 500 miles away. (That's about 10 hours driving time, too far to do a weekly commute for me, unlike, say, South Jersey to Jersey City which took three hours each way.)
[Update: I have to go there but only occasionally. I can stay in Jersey City and handle everything by telecommunication since the participants are spread on several continents. Yahooo!!! :-)]
When I was younger, it would have made me pause; now that I'm older and that I've got to schlep around with a cane, it really gives me a cold shiver down my spine.
I know that the United States has no health-care unless you're indigent; and that you're supposed to work for insurance (unless you're fabulously wealthy, which I definitely am not.)
While that may be fine for some, I happen to be 53 and, I would wish to retire at 65 like everybody else; but my body may decide for me that I'm done. (Basically, I don't figure I'll be, uh, walking away from another exacerbation. They have tended tended to be the catastrophic kind requiring hospitalization.)
Basically I'm unemployable. I'm on my last job. What I've already done means nothing and if I'm not able to do the work, or even "look" like I'm not able to do the work, I'm toast.
The competition is younger, healthier and, while they may be less skilled, they're also less expensive (in both salaries and benefits.)
So, I'm press-ganged into it. I've got no choice but to try, despite my reservations about my health and the rest of the whole thing.
(Oh, by the way, this barrel that I'm being held over exists "nowhere else" in the civilized, industrialized world. Once you start working for health-care benefits, you're a slave and will put up with anything, and employers know that.)
---- "Old World to New World" by" "Simon Lawrence" http://www.myspace.com/simonlawrencemusic
Main Topic, part deux:
We could get by on our savings (barely) until the "old age" pensions kick-in (If you're relying only on Social Security, lord help you, cause the government won't,), except that leaves us at the mercy of the health-[don't]-care system which here in the United States which doesn't kick in while we still own "anything". I don't particularly fancy parking my wheel-chair beside a shoe-box, middle-of-road.
I guess I will use the opportunity, since I'll be so near the border, to renew my Ontario residency; then both my wife and I can look forward to becoming full-time Canadian citizens again.
Lord only knows how we'll be able to work out the pensions.
My wife has spent her entire adult life in the United States. (She doesn't have any Canadian pension.)
I have spent halt of my adult life here and I wiped out on my 401k on 911 when I cashed them in so we could have some money to live on. (They were losing almost money as I had put in so they would have all been gone by now anyway. [Yeah. Osama owes me "big time" {but in one respect I sort of owe him one for letting me see how lousy the retirement planning is in this country} ! ])
I have a little money in Canada in a pension plan (the R.R.S.P. or Registered Retirement Savings Plan) but I would have something after selling the condo here in Jersey City and be able to buy something cheap in a suburb, probably in Montreal.
I'm getting old, and tired, and sick and tired.
---- "Im old" by: "Maria Daines" http://www.maria-daines.com/
Outro
Thursday, July 19, 2007
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6 comments:
Hrmmm ... Social Security. Yeah. The Mrs and I are of the opinion that it is not going to be there for our later years. We have to choose between that bottle of wine and food for a week when we are 80. Takes the fun out of youth, doesn't it? I lost most of my 401k in the .Com implosion so with a little math, I figured out that I can retire just before my 80th birthday. If I make it that far, so be it.
Actually, that's really terrible. (No. Lets be honest, that sucks and spits out change on a nickel.)
The reason that we're not piling up the money, for those of us who have savings, is that the interest rates on savings are being kept way the hell too low for those of us who don't have any savings but who are shopping up a hurricane on credit.
The rule of seventy-two says that I'll see my money double in as many years as the number seventy-two divided by the current interest rate.
With the interest rate paid on savings hovering at 2%, after inflation, that means that I'd better never stop working.
The reality of MS means that I'm unlikely to be able to keep working.
That's the Scilla and the Charibdes of it all.
And I keep buying lottery tickets because ...
I'm with MDMHVONPA. I'd bet on the fact that it won't be around when I need it. I guess I've grown up knowing to count on it not being there.
I didn't grow up with that certainty, and I'm still not quite sure that nothing will issue forth from the cloaca that seems to be the US Gummint, but it will be issued just after a lightning round of hyper-inflation and essentially worthless.
The scenario is the same as the one in effect leading to the re-establishment of the Reichstag between the wars.
The easiest way for Germany to get out of the crippling debt was to go through a period of such economic instability that the money used to collect on the debt was garanteed to be essentially worthless.
Why do you think that our tax rates are being adjusted so that the rich aren't paying their fair share?
Its so they'll still have something left after the US dollar goes through the floor and down into the cellar below.
(The cost of the reparations from the first world war were written down in hard numbers. After a short period of time, those hard numbers wouldn't even buy you lunch on a push cart.)
It may have been good for Germany (and Russia just went through the same thing, so don't go thinking that it doesn't happen again and again,) but, for seniors and the handicapped living on fixed incomes and trying to live off of their savings, it sucked eggs (while they were being boiled.)
Yep, I know I'll have a poor retirement (and it doesn't matter how much cash I could possibly pile up.)
We owe trillions, that's TRILLIONS!
There is NO friggin' WAY we can ever pay that off.
My only saving grace is that while I currently have no debts, my assets are all in real-estate.
Money WILL fluctuate, but a brick's a brick and makes a mighty fine throwing implement.
I'm looking to the next chairman of the Fed to be a bit less concerned about inflation and he'll just blame the hyper-inflation on uncontrollable economic factors.
(Damn Chinese wanted their money back, but we showed them, hunh?
Except that the chinese are a 'rising' star while we are getting economically eclipsed by the smoke rising from our own ruins.)
Kee-rist! But this doesn't bode well for my retirement years...
Hi
First of all let me say that I found your podcast upsetting, moving and brutally and necessarily frank. I called in to say thanks for using my song as an intro but stayed for the whole thing.
I know little about MS, but I have a friend who has it. It may be that he is not as severely afflicted as many, or it could be his faith in the Alexander Technique and a daily ritual of eating well, swimming, yoga, and other exercising - but he has a high degree of understanding of his condition and a control (though he has relatively bad times) of it that his doctors do not comprehend.
Hope that may be of help (hope to goodness it doesn't sound patronising). All the very best -
Al
Hello Mr. Stavinski,
I love to get feedback from the artists I feature from the PMN. (I really appreciate you guys and the fact that you are a part of the new media, without which I would not be able to do what I do; bring a music podcast to MSers.)
I would appreciate to hear from your friend about his experiences with the Alexander technique. It is one of the many ways we use to help ourselves (I used to use working out but lately, I just go to the gym strictly for bicycling. I've made to 53+ anyway :-)
I really appreciate your comments and I would really like to keep you as a listener (but your friend with MS even more.)
If you release moe music to the PMN or if the existing music strikes a resonance with a theme, I won't hesitate to use it.
Best you success on your songwriting and your skills in musical composition.
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