Shen Men Reunite For AAAOM Rally
Ending a hiatus of nearly 20 years, AOM super-group The Shen Men have announced plans for a nationwide tour set to kick off on the steps of California State Capitol Hill, Saturday, April 23rd in Sacramento. The event will reunite the long estranged 5-piece original AOM boy band as the AAAOM launches its AOM Unite America! campaign. The tour has been named “Consensus 2009” and the band renowned for dressing up in Kiss-like costumes representing the 5-Spirits of Chinese organ theory is back and ready to rock! Widely rumored to consist of the biggest names in the AOM establishment including the presidents of large AOM schools, The Shen Men collectively decided that personal egos needed to step aside in the name of personal gain, and it was time once again to resort to song and dance in the name of professional advancement.
The Shen Men have not performed together since a feud between the ever volatile Hun and the quiet, brooding Po. In a now infamous moment of rage, Hun slapped Po onstage while performing at the Tri-State College of Acupuncture in 1991 when Po tried to sing his favorite number “OMD”. The times have changed, however, and the Shen Men are all made up and ready to reunite in the name of professional unity and advancement.
With songs written especially for the AAAOM 2009 agenda including the first professional doctorate, hiring a lobbyist, Medicare coverage, attention from Barak Obama and actually getting people to join the AAAOM, the band is eager to dust off the old costumes and start gyrating their hips once again (though they better be careful…those hips are getting pretty old!). There is nothing more important than ensuring that the AAAOM doesn’t get laughed off the line when they attempt to influence legislation with a membership that represents a bloated 5% of license holders and The Shen Men are ready to do their part. A source at the AAAOM leaked the set list with sample lyrics.
“Consensus” lyrics point straight at the doctorate.
Can’t you just sense it, consensus, there’s no holding us back
No one can fence us, consensus, we’ll get back on the track
AOM is failing and we blame it all
On that dirty piece of paper hanging on the wall
When the phone rings I want to grin
When my reception says ‘Yes, maam the Doctor is in!’
Then there’s the hard pounding dance number “Lobbyist”.
Unless you’re a hobbyist, you gonna need a lobbyist
What better way to reform, then to join the norm
No, we’re not delirious, we’ve never been so serious
We’ll buy Sebelius caviar, and a member funded car
Lastly, there’s the tender ballad simply entitled, “Barak”.
Barak, it’s only fair
AOM should get caught up in Medicare
Barak, we see your Qi
it’s Essential and Upright
We are pleading on this night
For some Medicare funds
We only want what is fair, Barak
Medicare funds
We’ll do our part to gut it
The trough is open, please don’t shut it
The show is rumored to be free in the hopes that people will actually show and the AAAOM won’t embarrass themselves on the steps of the state capitol building. Then again, no one will be looking so it should be ok. CEU credits will be offered to practitioners in attendance and “The Men” will be signing autographs when the music stops. After rocking Sacremento, The Shen Men will begin a long grueling tour of some of the bigger name colleges in the country including, but not limited to Bastyr, Tri-State College of Acupuncture, Academy of Oriental Medicine at Austin, 5 Emperors, Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, East West College of Natural Medicine, the PCOM empire and a rooftop gig at NCCAOM headquarters in Florida. Attendance by the student body will be mandatory as the songs are littered with practice management advise that can only help students as they plan their careers.
So lets help the AAAOM hire a lobbyist and unite America! Then, we can help them acquire weapons grade plutonium to promote world peace. The Shen Men are ready to do their part. Are you? Oh, and will you please go to the freaking AAAOM FPD survey site and vote ‘no’ already, that is if you haven’t done so yet? The clowns are extending this thing as long as possible in order to make it look like there is actually a profession out there.
Author: The Zang Fool
<p> This is a satirical blog post by a practitioner that is serious in his attempts to both increase acupunctures accessibility to the public and challenge practitioners preconceived notions of what acupuncture is and how it functions in society. It may make you laugh, but that is just a means to an end. That end is thought and ultimately positive change. This is what all good satire does: prick, prod and provoke thought and positive change within a community. </p> <p> Satire has long been a part of muckraking and this profession is teeming with muck. So, in the wake of the nonsense spewed from the foul anus of the Acupuncture-Industrial Complex come my musings on life, love and the proposed doctoral program. </p>
hmmmm…
I noticed that our new friend Honora is on the education committee. Has anyone tried to talk with her? She could be a worthy ally…
Do you send your stuff to Acupuncture Yesterday?
It would be funny if you did but it’s not like they would get it…..at all……even a little.
Keep on Rockin’
dude…
where are the audio clips?! i feel totally cheated.
Free Bird!
Free Bird!
survey….?
im embarassed to say I never knew you could fill out a survey on their site!? thanks for the reminder.
“I feel very strongly that what our profession needs is to build itself from the ground up The FPD seems to be taking the opposite approach and has proven over time to be very ineffective. We need to spend our resources on community outreach and accessibility rather than an abstract and vague notion of professionalism. As the numbers of people receiving acupuncture increases, so will our profession’s strength. Making Oriental medicine as common and accessible of a modality as say, yoga, will do much more for us than the FPD ever could. Grassroots building also serves to put the needs of our patients and practitioners at the forefront of our professional organization’s agenda. Thank you.”
thanks for the survey link
I seem to have missed this also, or maybe I forget that I filled it out…in any case, I gave them another blast of my mind:
I am concerned that the AAAOM, in pushing this FPD agenda, is unwilling to see that securing a sustainable future for acupuncture in this country will not come about via forcing an increasingly unaffordable and unnecessarily long education upon a dwindling pool of students willing to buy into those assumptions. I would be much more likely to become involved in the AAAOM if I felt they represented the interests of Community Acupuncture, a movement which seems vastly more sustainable from a business model and economic justice standpoint. There is no reason – other than stubborn self interest and protectionism – why acupuncture needs to cost so much money to both study it as a student, and receive it as a patient. If the cost of the education rises, so necessarily will the cost of treatment to the public – making it less and less likely that the average American can afford acupuncture, thus dooming our profession to irrelevancy.
https://www.communichi.org/
another “no” vote on the FPD
Thanks for the vote reminder. Here are my coments to the AAAAAAAAAOM:
I am deeply saddened by the fact that AOM is financially inaccessible to the majority of people living in our country. The FPD threatens to worsen that problem by making an acupuncture education even more expensive. According to statistics in a recent Acupuncture Today article, only about 1% of Americans were treated by acupuncture and oriental medicine in 2007. The solution to expanding our profession and helping more people, more often, is to change the financial model that makes AOM prohibitively expensive. Key to this is making sure that practitioners are well trained to deliver effective treatments, allowing patients to come in for a course of treatment, get well, and get on with life. Also key is making sure practitioners are not overly burdened with student loan debt, requiring them to price their services out of reach. Our education needs to be shorter, better, and cheaper – not longer and more expensive. We don’t need more schooling; we need to get more out of what we already have.
not one to gush
but this is, IMHO, kinda brilliant.
Thank you
this is my favorite zf
this is my favorite zf post yet! i think the groupies have got to be the CEU crew…
thanks for the gut laugh!
Melissa
Good health is not a measure of adapting to a sick society.
When the power of love outshines the love of power, the world will know peace.
Funny you ended up writing about The Shen Men…
…as I was *just* listenin’ to Po’s under-rated emo-rocker solo record, “In My Prison”.
4 stars on allmusic.com
This one’s pretty good, but
This one’s pretty good, but my favorite still remains “acupuncture effective for pre-acupuncture anxiety.” I’ve actually cited that study for new patients twice now, and just mentioning it dispels the anxiety.