Wow, the world sure has moved on in the few days I’ve been away from the keyboard.

I may have health insurance, thanks to Obamacare. Or, I may not, because I live in Georgia.

Yesterday I was daydreaming about going to the doctor. Fantasizing about that stupid paper gown, and how cool it would be not to be afraid I’m going to die from some illness that I don’t know I have. My last checkup was almost15 years ago.

But my Governor, Nathan Deal, is a principled man. He would rather see thousands of people die of easily preventable maladies than sign onto a plan that stinks of communist filth. So, because of a weird but gaping hole in the system, a bunch of poor Southern people will be withering away on the sidelines of the healthcare debate while the rest of the country signs on, often bitching about it while they do.

In case you didn’t know, I am a writer, trying to make a living doing what I do best. Soon I’ll have enough money to buy my way out of that loophole,  but for now I am at the mercy of a rich man’s principles. That is not a place that anyone should have to be.

If you want to feel depressed, read the NYT article. It popped up in Gawker this morning and ruined my cup of coffee.

Enough of that.

This week we learned that if you are in a car, and between 100 and 200 motorcycles come up behind you, you should get out of their way in a neat and orderly fashion. It sounds like common sense. A guy named Alexian Lien stood his ground, remaining in the center lain as they overtook him. His wife and child were in the car, and by the end of his drive, he had put one man into a coma, and then ended up in the ER himself. I am sure you’ve seen the video. I did. Lien is drives the Black Range Rover, and is kind of an asshole. But then, so were the bikers. All of them.

By the way. We also learned that if you are part of a couple hundred bikers, fucking with a guy, his wife and two year old child as they drive down the Westside Highway, you shouldn’t stand, walk, stoop or bend over in front of his 5,000 pound car. You will get run over. And you may end up in a medically induced coma.

In fact, you may want to ride the other direction.

Marissa Alexander was granted a new trial. She is the woman who fired a warning shot into the ceiling during a dispute with her abusive ex husband. This happened down in Florida. She was sentenced to 20 years for that one bullet. It took the jury just 12 minutes to end her life.

She’s been in jail for about two years, and as far as I can tell, she still is in jail. But at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Then there is 71 year Herman Wallace, who was recently released from prison after 41 years in solitary confinement after a federal judged ruled that he didn’t get a fair trial in 1974. He has returned home to New Orleans, where he will certainly die of liver cancer. There is so much injustice in that paragraph.

Wallace was part of the Angola three, a moniker that he and two other inmates earned in 1997 when a young law student and a former Black Panther discovered three black inmates had been kept in solitary confinement – in 6-by-9-foot cells for 23 hours a day, for more than 20 years. Angola prison farm, in Louisiana, is the nation’s largest maximum security prison. It spans more than 18,000 acres. Not surprisingly, it sits on a former plantation.

So what did we learn this week? Don’t fuck with bikers. Don’t stand in front of a car that you’ve been taunting, even if you are trying to help him. Help by riding away, and taking your goon friends with you.

That, and don’t live in the South. Just don’t. Don’t get sick in the South, don’t be poor in the South, don’t get accused of a crime in the South, and above all else, don’t be Black in the South.