Happily, I found out yesterday that the train schedule is going to change in mid-September. My commute in the morning will be shortened to an hour, and the ride home will be 1 and 1/2 hours. (The difference, again, is because I'll have to wait at the train station on the way home for a while).

In other news, I don't get why everyone is so freaked out about the proposed changes to our health care 'system.' For as long as I've been paying attention to the news (days now), people have only been complaining about health care. First it was about how HMO's are the devil. Then it was about how the rising costs of health care and the burgeoning presence of probably 4 trillion senior citizens in the next 20 years was going to bankrupt the world.

Then, somebody had the bright idea to try and fix the system. "Hey, I know, let's fix the system." Then somebody else came around and said, "What!!!!!!! The moderately well-off people in my social class already have semi-adequate health care that usually covers a few things most of the time. I won't let you kill senior citizens and puppies with your dirty Nazi death panels!!!!!! Over this hockey-mom's dead body." And somebody else whispers under his breath, "If only." Then everybody freaks out and starts yelling at each other, bringing guns to protests, and spreading less-than-accurate information all over the place. It's as if some sort of information terrorist (you know who you are) set off dirty bomb of ignorance. Too much ignorance fall out around here.

What the heck? Right? Right? But I think there's a bigger issue here that nobody's talking about. Some sort of conservative/liberal split? Not exactly. Have you considered that it might be an upper-middle class/lower-middle class thing? Ah, duh? The UPC's have all the health care they want, and it doesn't cost them much. The LMC's could have all the health care they want, but they'd have to ditch a few of their luxury items (e.g., cell phones, too-big houses, high-speed internets, cable TV subscriptions, etc). "But those are our RIGHTS!!!!!"

See the difference? And that's why everybody is arguing: cable TV.

The short of it is that most of us have access to health care, even though some of us choose not to sacrifice for it, but some of us don't have access to health care at all. In the best-of-all worlds, health care reform would lower costs of health care for us middle-class folks, and ensure that it's widely available to everyone else who couldn't normally afford it (or was unwilling to sacrifice their cable TV for it), but we're too into this argument, this us against them mentality, to realize that we're fighting about something for which we all want the same outcome.

So let's put aside our differences and recognize that all of us share one very important philosophical ideology: we all want to live forever. If we can get our heads out of our proverbial butts, we might be able to figure out a way to ensure that all of us can get all the pills we want until the wrinkly and shriveled (yet fatter) versions of our former selves can pass on in some sort of a drug-induced stupor with the dignity we deserve. It's our right as Americans.

Now go play nice.