I feel you. I can’t wait til september to get my flu shot.

Don’t forget TWO hospitals. Fellow Seattleite here. *hugs* for your childhood ordeal, my chickenpox was amazingly minor, I think I had 3 bumps.

I brought it from 69 to 70. It was a hard choice. I feel like I have failed my inner adolescent somehow.

Yeah, we get nurses and pharmacists as short term volunteers to go to them now. The point is, it's infuriating that people here refuse something that mamas all over the world walk for days for.

King County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in North America. It makes me beyond mad, I live in the PNW as well (near Victoria) and the attitude is very similar. When I was working in Guatemala, I met women who- no word of a lie-bundled up their kids and hiked over a VOLCANO to get their kids immunized. Unless…

You know those anti-smoking ads that show the horrendous after effects that smokers go through later in life? Why aren’t we do that with people who didn’t get vaccinated (cause your story would scare some parents straight... also, my condolences, and if you’re in Oregon anytime, you can have a drink on me)?

I was injured last year by the flu vaccine, and I still believe in vaccinating. Because vaccine injuries are rare. There is no such thing as zero risk. Just being alive is a risk. And I would rather take that risk - and it suuuuuuucks - than risk dying from a preventable disease. Maybe I can grasp risk communication…

Anti-vaxxer bullshit knows no party lines.

What kind of fucked-up bullshit did I just read? 1) running from vaccinations! 2) homeschooling! 3) Exerting parental control to teach your child only about the confederacy?

Actually, not necessarily true. I have many times warned customers away from a particular product. Usually it was actually because the product was bad.

When I rule the world the punishment for snapping your fingers to summon a server shall be the loss of said digits. I can’t even read a description of someone doing that without a red haze descending across my vision.

In the story about the scandalous folks on TLC over at Gawker, I posted about the psychological concept of Social Comparison Theory. It’s worth repeating here.

Big Business, Organized Labor, and the Tea Party are all sitting around a table. A plate of delicious warm cookies arrives. Big Business takes 11 of the cookies then turns to Tea Party and points to the remaining cookie and says "psst! Organized Labor is trying to take your cookie!"

You know what, I’m going to copy&paste a really good post I saw on Tumblr. Not my words, but I wish they were because they are so right.

But then you would lower the need for government assistance, which would scale back the employment for programs like welfare, which would then give less topics for political pundits to fight over, which would kill ratings/page views, which would kill jobs. Won't someone think about the political columnists?!

And on the other side of the equation, fast food employees would be able to afford to you know, live. Possibly even buying stuff beyond items needed for base survival, thus stimulating the economy and all that fun stuff.

Maybe these corporations could use all the money they spending lobbying* politicians and use it to pay their employees like human beings. Or we could keep sliding into a cyberpunk megacorp dystopia. No matter how cool living in a William Gibson novel sounds, we should probably choose human decency.

Bless my soul have I got a story!

Summer camp was for rich kids.