Dracula's Rainbow
Press Action
Saturday, February 05, 2005
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/engel02052005/
By Adam Engel
Certain mostly middle-class Americans who have the paper to spare on coin, believe that by laying down a couple of hundred, or even thousand (for the really well-to-do), on gold today, they’ll be able to save the family farm when the economy blows and the value of their metal investment increases five-fold tomorrow. To what? A thousand dollars? Five thousand? The average such family owes more than that in credit debt. I was reading Kurt Nimmo’s excellent refutation of the “precious metals” pipe-dream weed so many Americans are starting to smoke in anticipation of a BushCo (mis)managed Apocalypse, when an “epiphany” struck home with a frying-pan thud to my head.
Gold to us anxious, digitized, middle-class Americans, like Botox to aging celebrities, is just a metaphor for “value” hedged against the all-consuming, insatiable Tomorrow. My own “pot of gold” having turned to sand recently over a blown book deal (i.e. the illusion that my skills as a writer were somehow of “value” in any other than the moral or metaphysical realm), gave me pause to think. The pipe-dream that I could sell my “art” to the culture of the Middle Mind (read Curtis White’s book, “The Middle Mind,” yet?) made me focus on allegedly more “practical” lines.
I had, after all, made my living for most of my adult like as a “writer” and teacher of writing, but this was writing “mainstream” journalism, then the next logical and more lucrative step, corporate advertising; my teaching was reserved for about a dozen would-be Fitzgerald’s and Dorothy Parkers a semester. No need for a copywriter if there’s no one to buy whatever junk the ad-buyers would pay to sell; no need to “teach” writing to those who could no longer afford books. Anyway, too much water under the bridge, one too many a “radical” publication; I’ve been exposed…
Not to “personalize” a serious general topic, but I suffer from a rare blood disease, Diamond Blackfan Anemia (DBA). Six hundred known cases around the world; most die before age 31. I just turned 40 Jan 1st, so I’m already “ahead of the game” by nine years. About five years ago it looked like I might be going into “remission,” but no dice. Even then I was several years overdrawn on the Cosmic Life Account.
But the bills, credit-debts, student loans....
I finally succumbed, or rather “came to my senses,” and realized I qualified for “Disability.” Monthly transfusions; numerous hospital visits; expensive treatments with horrible side effects such as severe arthritis, osteoporosis, calcium depletion—five herniated discs, crushed vertebrae, full hip replacement at age 32, etc., etc, plus I have to undergo a subcutaneous process called chelation twelve hours a day to remove the excess iron build-up from all the transfusions (this, predicts my doctor, is the side-effect that will ultimately do me in). I’m bad to the bone-marrow. A sure thing.
But, really. The remnants of Bushland bureaucracy during the Apocalypse will surely have no time to fill out arcane disability forms, or come up with the funds for checks. As for canceling the student loans: the federally guaranteed student loans can be displaced, but the “direct loans”—Loan Shark Bank to me—gotta be paid, no matter what. So even if I croak in a couple of years, they may come after my family.
Then I recalled that two years ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, had shown great interest in my case, especially considering how “old” I was. They were eager to perform various “protocols” (their euphemism for “experiments"). Now, some of these protocols merely involved blood samples and family history research to get a grip on the DNA/defective gene scenario; others involved painful, dangerous treatments (experiments) that showed little if any benefits (to me) at all. And what is this, “National Institutes of Health?” Is there a national aspirin? A National Family Clinic? National Health Care? I could just imagine “them” (there’s always a “them” in such cases) finding a cure off my marrow, or lack thereof, selling it to some “participating” pharmaceutical company for a song, then said company charging me a million dollars for it. No thanks, I said.
But now I’m thinking. They’d initially offered me “free healthcare” while I was there, undergoing their ghoulish protocols, and even “free transportation and accommodations” for my immediate family. That was just off the table. I hadn’t even spoken to my Agent. Maybe we could work out some kind of deal—room and board at least. Maybe I have that “pot of gold” after all. If I cut down on the coffee and quit chewing all this nicotine gum, I might be able to “pull my weight” for a number of years.
I know, there’s that abysmally low statistic: 600 “known” cases worldwide. That’s one of the things that put me off in the first place. No consumer base. Then it occurred to me: how do I know a sizeable group of the other 599 “known” cases aren’t millionaires? After all, it only takes a fraction of a percentage of the populace to ru(i)n an entire planet.
Adam Engel can be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net.