Mother Truckers – The Pleasurecraft

September 29, 2010

Spider House Ballroom

If you’re like most people in Austin, you probably walk around with some extra pocket change. It might be just a few coins that jingle in your jorts and tip off the Hooters waitress you’ve been stalking, or it could be something bigger – maybe some fives and tens that you keep in your wallet for stoned, late-night food-trailer binges – or perhaps you like to roll like a playa and keep a couple of hundies wrapped around a spool of lesser bills, the kind of pocket chum that gold diggers instinctively swarm. Regardless, any way you fold it, you have more than you need. If you weren’t compelled by your love of humanity to deny the tin-can-rattling con artists at traffic lights, the cardboard-sign-carrying fauxmless dudes who work the interstate intersections, and the Drag-worms with their cute, hungry-looking stray dogs in dirty red bandanas, you might go broke – well, except for your Platinum MasterCard. To be fair, you’re probably not one of those people who thinks charity is just a really unimaginative stripper name. You may not be Bill Gates or Eunice Kennedy Shriver, but you’ve hit your share of theatre-group fundraisers, celebrity silent auctions, and high school cheerleader bikini car washes. Really, what more can you do? You can’t save everybody because … as the saying goes … not everybody wants to be saved. In fact, if you were to lean in close enough to that Somali orphan on the TV who appears to be dying of starvation, he just might whisper, “It’s all good,” in your ear. Then again, he might not – and how can you be sure you heard him correctly over the buzz of the fly swarm? That’s what really freezes you into inaction. How can you know for sure? Where do you draw the line? You pony up for a couple of bags of famine rice, and next thing you know, you’re dodging Uzi fire on an aid flotilla headed for Gaza. Truth is, there is a mind-boggling number of worthwhile charities in the world to which you can devote your leisure time and money. How do you decide? Which is most important? Is it better to feed a starving child, keep a kitten from being euthanized, or teach an adult how to read? Who reads anymore anyway? Other than Twitter? Reading just leads to a guilty conscience. Why spend money on something that makes people feel guilty? Don’t we have churches for that? Besides, where would Jesus or Muhammad or Stevie Ray Vaughan want you to bestow your largesse? Save the Children or Ducks Unlimited? Everybody loves ducks – even the people who shoot them. You can’t say that about children. Probably the best thing to do is lean in a little closer to the starving Somali orphan. Maybe he really is saying, “It’s all good,” but maybe what he means is, “Anything you can do will be appreciated.” You’ll need to brush up on your Somali to know for sure. Even still, any time you can step out of your own little drama and help improve the world for others, you’re doing good. No need to get stuck up about it. There’s plenty of selfishness in altruism, but it’s a selfishness that requires wisdom and patience. Yuck. Of course, if you practice doing good regularly, chances are it won’t seem so strange and churchy. You might even learn to have fun with it. Here’s some good news: You can start practicing Saturday, Oct. 2, at the United States Art Authority when the Mother Truckers and Dertybird perform in the third annual Band Together for Hope, a fundraiser for the DiscoverHope Fund, which provides an opportunity for women in poverty to create their own prosperity through microcredit, entrepreneurship, and training. Sound good? It is.

September 15, 2009

Health care. We got it. Then there are those unlucky wretches who happen to have pre-existing conditions: obesity, arthritis, diabetes, depression, pregnancy – really anything short of acute head trauma is grounds for disqualification from most American health insurance programs. The remaining few crazy enough to actually provide insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions charge rates just slightly less than the actual medical treatment itself costs. Generally, people with pre-existing conditions are the lepers of the insurance world (and, by the way, leprosy is a pre-existing condition). Why shouldn’t they be? No insurer wants some obese, diabetic, depressed, pregnant chick pissing all over its actuarial tables. That’s no way to make a fast buck. On the other hand, you can’t exactly march all the pre-existing condition cases out to a shallow grave in the woods and pop a cap in the back of their heads either. The bleeding hearts ruined that gambit for Hitler, so there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t ruin it for Humana too. If Hitler had succeeded, however, his master race would have dressed up German actuarial tables nicely. Imagine what a nation of ruddy-cheeked Aryan Übermenschen would do for health insurers’ profits – especially if they were somehow conned into believing that their health insurance premiums weren’t artificially inflated. Attractive an idea as it may seem, using genocide to fleece up the gene pool is not without its problems. There’s corpse disposal, grieving relatives, and all the lost revenue for the health care industry. More importantly, if you start offing the old and the sick and the feeble-minded, where do you draw the line? Genetic purification is a sticky moral wicket to say the least. Do you start with the coma patients? People on respirators? Dialysis machines? Asthma nebulizers? If you really think about it, old people in general put a huge strain on the health care system. Maybe if you instituted an age limit … sort of like Logan’s Run? You could start modestly at first – maybe say that anyone over the age of 65 gets sent to the woods for “renewal.” If you’re worried about the Rolling Stones, don’t sweat it; they’re English. England loves it some old people. Case in point: Benny Hill. Here in America we’re into youth. We like hairless genitals; smooth skin; svelte, glistening physiques; brash confidence; inexperience and ignorance. People over the age of 65 are sorely lacking in all these qualities (at least let’s pray the Sun City spa isn’t overbooked for Brazilian waxes), so why should we let them drag down the finest health care system in the world? Make no mistake, insurance companies and their greedy shareholders are not driving up the cost of health care; old people are. Old people and the chronically ill are driving this country toward bankruptcy, and the only two choices are Obama’s death panels or spending even more on health insurance and crippling our already fragile economy. There is no other way … well, except for the health care systems in Japan, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Maybe some Congress members should put in a few long-distance phone calls. Maybe somehow we could come up with a health care plan that covers all Americans for two-thirds of the cost we pay right now – like France. Maybe America could spend some of that extra money on things like drug abuse – which, depending on your health plan, is probably a pre-existing condition. Until then, those with chemical dependencies have to get support and treatment where they can. Fortunately there are organizations like the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, which provides free support for teenagers dealing with chemical dependency. Tonight at Antone’s the Mother Truckers are playing a benefit concert for the Palmer Drug Abuse Program. $10 gets you into the show and gives you an opportunity to help out local youth and, in a broader sense, the overly expensive but ailing American health care system. Remember: It’s either your charity or Obama’s death panels. There is no other way.