Happiness is infectious…

So I had the weirdest night last night. I went home and finally found the missing disc of 90210 that I had watched a couple of months back. I had a mind numbing day of sorting out depressing statistics from the last year of AIDS work. My job was to take 12 months of monthly reports on the HIV/AIDS awareness statistics and try and sort them into age brackets for 42 elementary schools and 17 associations. By the end of the day yesterday, when I closed my eyes, I saw an excel spreadsheet. Needless to say I was tired. So, when in Africa, I went home to escapist DVDs. I couldn’t move off of my couch. I fell asleep with my door wide open (not a good idea) and my dog very confused (which she is most of the time.) I struggle up to try and take a bath. Summer has finally come during the days, but at night it still gets down in the low 60’s (which is cold when you live in a concrete shack!) I’ll stop the parenthetical comments – my English teachers would hate me. But after the mind fluff of 90210 I wanted to watch another movie. My friend Shaun just gave me an 8 in 1 of Denzel Washington Movies. I watched this movie called John Q. Oh my God is all I have to say, well not really because if I did, the blog entry would be over here.

The movie is about this working class family in the age of high gas prices and wonky mortgages (now, {oh damn it!}) The son of the family has a heart defect that puts him into heart failure. He needs a new heart. The father says that’s fine, he has insurance. But he only works about 25-30 hours so he only qualified for tier 2 catastrophic insurance ie up to 20,000 dollars. Even writing about this now is making my blood boil. The guy starts selling of his house, he tries everything and this is where the movie gets interesting. He takes the heart surgeon and some people in the Emergency Room hostage. He doesn’t want to kill anyone, just wants a new heart for his son. Is that too much to ask? The majority of the movie takes place within the Emergency Room so it’s not packed with action, but all the while I couldn’t help cheering this guy on. He wasn’t taking no for an answer from the monolithic, money-hunger bureaucracy that is the American Health Care System. Truth be told, it wasn’t that well made of a movie, but it got me thinking. Who is in the wrong here? Any thoughts?

PS. My dog jumped onto the couch with me to hang out and then she suddenly decided that on top of the couch would be a more comfortable spot. Kinda like a cat. I've not laughed so hard in a really long time and I think that is what put me in such a good mood.