The Duck Man, Phil Robertson - wasn't it really only a matter of time?

I will preface this – I have never watched the show and I know nothing about this dude other than what I see on Facebook or in some of the periodicals I peruse.  So, with that said I do not want to bash Phil and his beliefs but society as a whole.   WHAT??  You heard me!  Why is it that we can’t accept people for who they are, for whatever THEY believe in?  Does no one see the hypocrisy here?

Anyway, it is not really about Phil in my mind anyway.  I am mildly amused by the reaction to his comments.   There were many, as most of you have probably seen.   There were many who were raising hell, everything short of calling for his beheading  and then on the other side of the isle, we have the likes of Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Sean Hannity bringing support for his cause.  Not sure any of them are really qualified to weigh in, maybe Sarah has seen a Gay person from her porch.  I did find it mildly amusing that Cracker Barrel took the Duck products out of their restaurants and then after, imagine this, their client base raised Hell, they put them back – they really did not see that coming?  That in and of itself is amusing as hell to me, a restaurant that caters to the folks they cater to – REALLY Cracker Barrel, you did not see that coming?   I suppose the one thing this is going to cause – they are going to sell a shitload of all things Duck Man!  A whole bunch of companies are going to exploit the hell out of this opportunity. 

I think where the conversation needs to go is about evaluating ourselves – yep ourselves!  I would start by asking, why is it that a group of folks (in this case Gay folks), who have struggled so hard for equality and understanding in our society has so little tolerance of some Duck Man and his beliefs?  I mean think about it, how can the community, as a whole, who have struggled for lots of rights, marriage, equal benefits, openly serving in the Military and they (as a group) have no tolerance of someone else beliefs.  I suppose I will get my ass handed to me for the comparison but my bigger point is what happened to our tolerance of anyone or anything that is not exactly like we are?

As many of you have probably seen I have on numerous occasions raised up some prayers for someone who is suffering with any one of many life’s adversities.   What many may not know is that I am not a Christian and that I do not believe in God.  King of hypocrisy many will no doubt say.  WELL, before you smite me and condemn me to everlasting damnation let me explain.  I say those words not for myself, if I have a friend who is suffering and they happen to be a Christian, I will raise up a prayer to their God.  Why, because that is what they believe and because I am tolerant and empathic of another human being – I raise up a prayer to their God.

Why has our society turned into such a divisive group, a group who has no tolerance or even a wiliness to have tolerance of others and their beliefs?  In this Case Mr. Phil Robertson.  I hear that he is supposed to be a decent guy, I don’t know though - and really neither does anyone else.  Folks watch a reality show and they think they know the characters playing on the stage. What folks really know is exactly that, the characters they play on TV.  It is a scientific fact that just by watching something, the watched will change, just from being watched – the watching is a variable that needs to be accounted for. 

I keep hearing Sargent Hulka saying lighten up Francis!  That was from Stripes.  If a dude who makes a duck whistle wants to be a hater (their perception not mine) who are we to stop him?  By the same token, if another group wants to be haters of the original hater (their perception not mine) – what does that really mean, what does it tell us about ourselves?  How is that different from any one else who wants the right to be vocal about what they believe, regardless of what the topic of hate is?   At the end of the day, it is not – it is just hate!    

This is really about the haters, haters of all colors not like their own, haters of different creeds than their own, haters of any religions that might have someone praying to a different God than their own; haters of anyone who may have a different sexual orientation than their own; or a hater of anything that pigeon holes folks into some perceived bullshit reason that might make that person different in any microscopically tiny fucking way than them.  Why is there such an inability to allow others to have their own beliefs and opinions?  Why do we feel that we must conform everyone to our personal belief system?  The hate and the haters are the biggest problem in our country today.  Give em hell Duck man, and give em hell Sean Hannity and most assuredly – give em hell Sarah, from the rocker on your front porch! 

Besides all that, don’t we always tear down people who scratch their way into the public spotlight – I guess that is a topic for some other blog!! 

Oh well, let’s see what kind of attention this one gets.  Bring it on you haters!

Time, it is the fire in which we all burn

 I want you to, if only for just a moment, try to imagine what the world would be like if we did not have the concept of the river of time carrying us along.  I am sure it can be done, to imagine life without time.  We understand the month, year and day of the week. There is a clock on your wall, on your wrist, on your phone, in your car and rarely do you not know, within an hour or so what time it is. We have schedules, a calendar to keep and that dinner date to make.

 

But when you look around at the rest of the biological world, it makes you wonder how mixed up time makes everything.  A dog has no watch, a deer does not fret over passing burfdays and cats could give a shit about time, they sleep most it away anyway.  Man alone measures time, man alone chimes the hours as they pass. It is the single most feared thing in our lives, time.  We have and always will have a fear of time running out! 

 

Time is the most familiar thing in the world, and yet philosophically one of the most puzzling.  Is the present what's left when you subtract what has already happened, and what is yet to happen?  Then it seems to vanish into a mere instant.  Are future events completely unreal?  Or are they just the things we can't know yet?  Is time unreal, as many of us simpletons have speculated?  I have never been able to get the math to work. 

 

I have often used the comparison of life to a train ride, starting on day one, ending at that hopefully distant station.  Folks get on, folks get off and sometimes she just goes off the rails.  I have never understood those who fear time, it is not the ceaseless reaper, stalking us on our ride.  I may not know or understand time fully but I tend to look for the positive in everything.  I  refuse to believe in anything that would conclude with the end overcoming the means to get to that end!  We need to enjoy the ride because the end is unknown.

 

I hope I never get to hung up on the end, of whatever it may be.  If our lives run down the river of time, I want an inner tube and I am going to enjoy the ride.  I watch a lot of people rushing around, for God only knows what. Got get to work, gotta get home, gotta get to the store.  We focus on the end, almost always - think about it!  There is a philosophy called presentism, which is compatible with Galilean relativity, in which time is independent of space.  But when you start thinking about my favorite Brother from a different mother Albert, it is incompatible with Einsteinian relativity.

 

I find it funny that presentism can also be used more loosely to refer to a narrow focus on the conditions of the moment - HELLO!  The 28th Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautamano, was preaching that 2500 years ago!  We have to live in the moment.  But damn it, there we are again back to time.  Why is it that nothing else cares about time like we do, why have we figured out all these elaborate methods of keeping track of it.  Almost all ancient cultures were tracking it, with stars and celestial body's roaming around the heavens.  

 

Time, it is a hard thing to understand!  Time, I hate to admit,is the MOST IMPORTANT thing for our hearts.  It is so important to tell those that you love, that you love them.  It is so important to not to put things off till tomorrow, tomorrow may never come.  It is so important that we are present in our lives, smelling roses, enjoying a sunrise, staring at the clouds while floating in a pool. 

 

Don't let it get away, if you want to do something or see someone - do those things.  We always have choices, don't let the fact you may find yourself in a place you don't want to be!  Change it!  We may not see the change happening quickly, but with time and a series of different choices a better ride will come, a bigger inner tube and a cold beer.  Be part of your own solution, do it now! 

 

Time, it just hurts my head!  Maybe it is simple, maybe we created it to remind us how important the journey is and to remind us to cherish every moment we are given.  Maybe time is the coal that is powering my train of life, driving us into some distant destination that is just unknowable.  Oh well, I am glad each of you has joined me on my ride through life, just reading this means you are on my train - thank you for joining me.

 

 

 

 

Things are trending – This is a VERY bad trend if you ask me.

This stems from my own observations of the world around me and some of the things I read. So a little background first. If something is trending on twitter, it means a lot of people are using that hashtag (#) and talking about it. That could mean people are talking about your account and what you are hash tagging. By definition, an internet trend is a topic, event, picture, video, catch-phrase, app, etc. that is being widely used or discussed and mentioned over social media. NOW most news and social media sites now have ‘trending’ sections where viewers can see the most popular articles and tweets available to read. The hashtag has also become a widely recognized tool on Twitter and now facebook that is used to briefly identify the central topic of a message.

So, what could be wrong with that – what is Smitty going on about now you might be asking? Well let’s take a moment to ponder about social media in general, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in for the main stream and maybe Pintrest, My Life and meet-up for some of the smaller ones, or Tumblr and the myriad others that are available. It has been my experience that most folks LIE their asses off on social media. I know, and am FB friends with people who are obnoxious asses who are nowhere close to religious but when you spend a few minutes on their page one would think they were literally the second coming of Christ. Most people on social media, with Linked-in leading the way, are image crafting. Folks are attempting to put their best foot forward to make folks believe something that is an exaggeration.

That is all well and good but being able to put ones best foot forward on the interwebs is NOT the same as actually putting ones best foot forward. Social media seems to create a reality where folks could say what they are doing, for all intents and purpose their life is apparently very out in the open. It is a reality where most folks present a greatly exaggerated and near perfect version of their own existence. They kiss babies, believe in Jesus Christ as their savoir and they never swear, are good parents and are always nice to those less fortunate. They are compassionate and empathetic to those who are or have suffered. When folks chime in, their careers and relationships are at their best, folks who are struggling tend not to be as vocal or broadcast their circumstances.

So the perceived reality becomes magnificently skewed from reality. Folks tend to think, wow Mr. Oatmeal has his shit together, sunrises and sunsets and loving on the Bride. In my case I post and share my life as it is, the good the bad and the ugly – you have read me when I was at high points and you read me when I was at very low places. Most folks are not Mr. Oatmeal though, hence the need for me to attempt to demonstrate an absurdity that I have noticed. People who are engaged users of social media could easily fall into the trap that everyone is doing really well. This is a dangerous slope to be on for many reasons but one important one revolves around a person’s self-worth.

Imagine if you will for a moment, someone who grew up with social media, when they see all the lies and mistruths posted on their friends and celebrities feeds, it would be easy to feel a bit of misery. Why isn’t my life going as well as all my friends? Why do they seem to get all the breaks? What a great relationship they have, why can’t I have that? We are in a sense creating a false reality that is self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Folks, probably mostly younger folks rather than older, are sucked into bizarro world. An alternative reality is really what it ends up being. I am unsure what this is doing to the psyche of folks, especially the younger folks. I could easily see where a person could be unhappy. At least, they could be feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate.

It seems mostly straightforward to me, if the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, by comparison to someone else’s posts, they're not as happy. So what does that mean in the context of this blog. My point is that social media is an alternative reality that we created, not unlike Nero created in the First of the new Star Trek Movies. “Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party." An entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party huh? Hummmmm. That seems to me what social media does, only in a false or at a minimum very deceiving way. We do not place our hurts and our pain on facebook or twitter, we just don’t.

So how then can we trust something that is “trending” when that trend is formulated by data mining the shit out of the information we share – especially since that is an incomplete and flawed data set from the beginning. What does it mean that “Is it possible to build a snowboard underwater?” In just this moment I Googled what was trending on twitter, and that was at the top of the list. What possible relation to my life can that information have? Trending, I think we are sucked into areas we don’t belong and I would not be surprised if those are skewed on purpose to divert our attention from more important news bits that would have some relevance in my life. So, I say to you my friends, be wary of news groups or others offering you “what is trending” it could be bullshit, like most of what we read in social media!

September 11th, 2013 - 12 years later - my short view of history

I have sat and pondered 9-11 over of the last few days – I realized that there sure has been a LOT of water under a lot of bridges.  The sting of the shock is gone now, but on the heels of another potential war I just have to think about what the last 12 years have meant, for me, for our country and for those folks in the Middle East. 

So on that fateful day 12 years ago two thousand, nine hundred and ninety six souls were lost; nineteen of those were the terrorists.  I have even thought long and hard about the word terrorist -- what does that really mean?  Terrorism is defined as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons”.  That does not say Muslim, it does not say middle easterner, and as a matter of fact it does not say anything about the religion of Islam.  But what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear someone say terrorist?  We tend to immediately think in our minds eye, someone who is brown and wears a turban and loose fitting layered clothing.  I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I too am guilty of that picture popping into my head.  

I watched a video on the interwebs yesterday from a show that puts people in odd situations and then records how they react.  I generally don’t like that kind of thing but it mentioned a soldier so I thought I would take a look.  The setup was a man behind the counter of an order-at-the-counter restaurant, decked out as a Muslim and some kid playing this jackass who did not want to be served by him.  The scene played out a number of times and most folks did the right thing and told him to stop or to leave.  Then we come to this Army Sargent who said it best:  he is allowed to be anything he wants to be.  That is why I wear the uniform -  to give him that right.  I suppose we all racially profile in some ways, even if we don’t want to admit it – we do it all the time. 

But when I think back before 9-11, what did terrorist mean then - was it what we feel today?  I don’t think it was.  I think it was Ted Kaczynski, it was Eric Robert Rudolph, it was Tim McVey – terrorists for sure, Rudolph was the Olympic bomber in case you forgot.  Why did these men hate America so much?  Have folks in the middle east always hated us?  Maybe, maybe not.  When we think about the two sovereign nations that we invaded, Iraq and Afghanistan, what was the goal, the governments of those countries were horrible hateful ass wagons and probably deserved to be deposed.  BUT, and I say BUT both of those regimes were regimes we created in sovereign countries.  We funneled billions into Afghanistan when they were engaging the USSR.  We funneled billions more into Iraq when they were engaging Iran.  Then what, they go from ally to foe, overnight.  How many times would it take you getting stabbed in the back and tossed under the bus before you start to think, hey wait minute here…….. there seems to be a trend here – the United States could start to look like a terrorist to the common folks of those countries. 

Sorry, I diverted a bit.  I wanted to say that since 9-11 of 2001 one million seven hundred and forty two thousand five hundred and twenty three souls have perished as a result of the attacks of that date.  1,742,523 dead as a result of the attacks.  That is the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the states of Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming combined.  Or the cities of Austin TX, or Charlotte NC or the City of Mickey Mouse in Orlando.  This is our legacy folks, we lost 2,977 and we caused the extinguishment of 1.7 million souls in retribution.  That does not include ours or our allies military losses, so the number is probably closer to 1.8 million.  Playing with my calculator that comes out to 604 souls dead for every one of the ones we lost on 9-11.  Talk about kicking some fucking ass - holy shit!  What other analogy could we use where the odds are 604 to 1?  There are no analogies to that because here in the real world NOTHING is that lopsided – 604 to 1 WTF?   

I don’t care who they were, what their nationality was, what their religion was or what color eyes they had.  I, for one, will NEVER be convinced that all of them were combatants of the group Al-Qaeda.  Hell the best estimate are less than 20,000 members total over the 25 year life of the organization.  Even if you added in the Muslim Brotherhood, who have been around since 1928 and Hezbollah and Hamas, we still don’t even get close to the 1.8 million number.  I am in no way advocating that we should have done nothing.  I am only thinking maybe we did not take the correct course of action.  Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq did anything to the United States.  Terrorists called Al-Qaeda did, and I am saying maybe, just maybe, we should have just tracked down offending bad guys, regardless of location and feelings of whatever government that ruled the country they were hiding in and terminated them with extreme prejudice.  Then maybe, just maybe, we would not be in the position we are now, having most of the world hating us and us contemplating yet another crazy fucking boondoggle war. 

We just cannot afford to be engaged in another war.  We cannot afford it financially, we cannot afford it militarily, we cannot afford it politically and we cannot afford to have our reputation tarnished any further internationally.  What is happening in Syria is HORRIBLE, it is freaking HORRIBLE!  There is no doubt about it!  BUT what is our interest there?  I have heard the words humanitarian relief bandied about, due to the women and children, to which I say BULLSHIT!  If we as a country cared about providing humanitarian relief we would have stopped the genocide in Rwanda.  I am sure you remember that, a million men, women and children were slaughtered!  Or maybe Dafur, but there were only 400 thousand who died there.  In both cases, the United States did nothing…… WHY?  I think the why is that there was no oil under those places.  They are located outside the region where our primary oil supply originates.  That has to why we give a shit about the countries of the middle east -- what other reason could there be?     

I was also thinking about a couple interviews I watched with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  It scared the shit out of me when I realized that he was making more sense than my own President.  I am sure you have seen them, but he asked a lot of questions that I don’t think we have answers to yet – hell we are not even asking the questions!  I feel we need those answers before we can make informed decisions.  Our ability to rush to judgement and make important military based decisions has a bad track record since 9-11.  I think we have been so focused on retribution that we may be missing a larger point – we are the United States.  We do not invade foreign nations.  We are, or used to be, the ones who had a moral and ethical base to our national decisionmaking.  I don’t feel that anymore, although some fanatics flew some planes and killed three thousand people, we have turned that around and are responsible for causing the deaths of 1.8 million more – retribution at a whole new level!

I had a string on FB about our potential role in Syria.  It was an interesting string for sure.  I have a couple of old Navy buddies who are now firefighters, so an analogy popped up about putting out fires.  While I agree the fire needs put out in Syria, I argued that I would not expect one of them to drive down from Maine or Massachusetts to put out a fire at my neighbor’s house.  What is happening in Syria is HORRIBLE!  It is, and shouldn’t it be just as horrible to their neighbors.  Why not let those who are better suited and better positioned to lend assistance on that fire? 

This eye for an eye path we have been on has proven to be BULLSHIT!!  What about turning the other cheek, what happened to that.  I think we have more than settled the score.  So, the day after  President Assad of Syria’s birthday I ask – haven’t we done enough, enough killing, enough alienating, enough damage to our reputation, enough harm to our young men and women serving on the Military, enough money wasted abroad that could have been used here, enough erosion of our souls – haven’t we done enough?

Disappointed in myself

Yesterday a friend of mine lost his wife and life partner of 44 years – I learned about it via an email.  That email contained 18 words to sum it up, it was startlingly bleak.  She has not been well for some time and I do not feel I have been as good a friend as I needed to be for him.  Another friend is going through a divorce and I do not feel I have been as good a friend as I needed to be for him either.   Another friend, I also found out today, has been struggling with the decision to put his Mom in Hospice care, which he did over the weekend.  I do not feel I have been as good a friend as I needed to be for him either.  Even in my own life, I am disappointed in myself.  I have not been doing a lot of the things that I like to do as often as I need to be doing them.   It is funny how when we look at each day as it passes; everything seems the same as the day before.  That is until we garner some perspective with the passage of time.  THEN, when I look back, I think to myself – how the fuck did I get here!

I can attribute these disappointments to not having found the new balance yet in my life after some changes in my work world.  I had found the balancing sweet spot with my old job long ago, although I can’t remember how long that took as I had that job for about 5 years.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the new job – it is the hardest thing I have ever done!  I have learned more in the last year than I dreamt even possible.  Mainly because I thought I was a pretty smart dude, but I was reminded no matter how smart we think we are – there is always more to learn – and not necessarily book learning!  That was a great thing to be reminded of!  That might be at the root of my balance issue.  It might be that I have immersed myself into the learning for the new job way too much.  Not a completely bad thing because all learning is good BUT like all things in life, there has to be a balance.

Today was a light bulb over the head moment for me!  I have neglected my personal life, unknowingly set aside my personal goals and ambitions, all in an attempt to keep up with the super hectic pace of work and the new JOB.  As of today - I am going to strive to restore the balance in my life; I have to for my own freaking sanity.  Not that I can slack off on the work side, we are involved in a very important project that requires a lot of attention but I must find the balance.  If I don’t, my worse fear may be realized - I could be creating a life I don’t really want to be living.  In hindsight it seems like I have been lying to myself, creating my own bullshit reasons for my behavior – I need to purge the words “can’t” and “don’t have time” from my vocabulary with regards to the balance of my personal life. 

I have not been as engaged a partner for the Bride – even when I am home hanging with her or out to dinner, my mind wanders back to construction schedules, budgets, staffing levels, timeline, concerns of our partners, did we miss some functionality here or there.  It is like my brain is on a demented merry go round, spinning faster and faster with the centrifugal force incrementing up exponentially.  It is a freakish ride that I need to get the hell off of somehow!   I feel that I have been so unfair to Bride through this, not giving my best friend all of my attention when she needs it from me, or when I need that from her as well.  She is the most tolerant and understanding life partner a man could ask for, I love her and have no idea how bad my life would have turned out without her.

I have not been to a park in WAY to long!  I have not spent as much time tinkering with the Jalopy or the Girl Jalopy.  I can’t even remember the last time I made any sawdust or sparks from the welder.  I have not taken Bride for a long walk on the beach or even drug her out of bed for a sunrise in WAY too long.   I need to resume all of my hobbies, they are what have kept me distracted from work, they were the levers I used to maintain that balance – allowing my mind to focus on the simple things in life.  It seems I have only playing with about 8 Crayola’s, I need to figure out how to get back to the big 64 box with the built in sharpener – life is always better with crayons and a built in sharpener. 

It is hard to find one axiom within Buddhism that gets right to the point quite like the concept of non-attachment.  Attachment, to anything, is the origin and root of suffering, which is what causes so many of the problems we face in the living of our daily world.  Growth is painful, change is painful, we get all attached to the way things were – but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t want to be, which is where I find myself.   Life is so ironic, it takes sadness to know true happiness, it noise to appreciate the silence and it takes absence to value presence – I smile just thinking about how cruel that irony can be.  I need to get that straight in my head again!  One thing about life, it will always be tripping us up, I think it is a protection mechanism.  Maybe a gentle reminder that maybe we need to see what we stumbled over to truly get clarity of purpose reestablished.

I hear folks say, “Ya only live once” to which I say BULLSHIT!  You live every day, you only die once!  I have heard, and experienced this, the best cure for anything is a good belly laugh and long nap – so tell me a funny damn joke and tuck me in!  To all those I have been absent for, I am truly sorry and hope you are able to forgive me. 

Sunrise is a very special time for me. It is a way for me to relax and restore my senses.

I have watched the sunrise in many places, in this country and many other countries as well as the middle of the Atlantic, Pacific, the Med, the Indian and even the Persian Gulf.  I love it anywhere but next to ocean will always be my favorite.   It has an effect on all of my senses.

Sight - by arriving at the beach when it is still dark one is able to watch the entirety of the show that happens every morning, no matter where you are.  The sight includes peripheral vision, edge to edge and as far as we can see, which I seem to remember is about 12-14 miles when sitting on the ground.  Some days there is so much magnificence in the view that I am brought to tears, it is a visual delight.

Sound - when I walk out onto the beach the sounds of the world start to fade, literally and figuratively.  The sounds of air conditioners, cars, ambulances and all the rest fade down as the sound of the surf and seagulls fades up.  Surf and seagulls are the original white noise, the never ending drum of the waves crashing and birds fighting over food create an environment that is devoid of anger, turmoil or stress of any kind.

Smell – I love the smell of the ocean, from the very first time I saw it in Atlantic City back in the early 70’s with my Mom.  I loved it the whole 10 years I served in the US Navy, although I remember the port at Dakar Senegal had a rather unique odoriferous emanation.   The smell of the salt air is just an amazingly refreshing thing, it is almost impossible to describe.   

Touch - I love walking off the asphalt and cement, leaving the hard, inflexible and immovable right into the soft, nonconforming always moving.  Small changes in latitude make such a huge difference in attitude.  Tere is just not much better than sand between the toes!  Some days when the wind is blowing, feeling the sand and salt on your face is cool.

Taste – seems silly to think of taste when talking about the sunrise or the beach.  Well, there is a taste, a taste of the air, the hint of salt as you breathe.  There is also the taste of salt as you lick your lips.  It is a total sensory experience for me and I wish everyone could feel the way I do when I watch it. 

And the sixth sense, whatever you want to call it - me I like soul – It is a very cleansing experience for me, flushing out the bad and pulling in the good.  I know that sounds simplistic but that is how I live my life – distance from the bad, of any sort, and draw in the good – simple and it works for me.  I find a certain peace in the solitude of my old plastic purple lawn chair while sitting out there.  I have made some great friends out there as well.  Every time I walk away, whatever trouble I may be dealing with seems so insignificant and unimportant after watching the total majesty of a sunrise.

So that my friend is why I go to watch the sunrise on the beach J 

Truckloads of bullshit from the news - what the hell does it all mean?

How do we process it all, I for one do not think we have evolved enough to keep pace – and that worries me.   We are bombarded with the likes of Benghazi, Boston bombing, Jodi Arias and the kidnapped and tortured women of Cleveland.  I have a hard time fitting these things into my head, I know a lot of people do and can but the pure evilness of people is beyond my comprehension.   When I think of the hell that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight must have lived through being locked up by a crazy man for years I just get sick to my stomach.  I cannot even comprehend the terror they must have felt, for years and the hands of a madman. 

I won’t pretend to know these women, or anything about who they were, prior to being kidnapped.  We won’t learn that – we will however, learn all about the madman who perpetrated the crime.  We are fed information in an ever shortening news cycle and we think we know all about it, from those little snippets of news that are created solely to create sensationalistic responses.  No deep thinking about things today, we only have a few seconds to dwell on this topic and then it is on to the next tidbit of   sensationalistic bullshit designed to grab headlines and more importantly ratings points.

I wonder if everyone finds it as scary as I do, the brief and horrifying vivid 30 seconds of the news cycle that will indelibly stamp my cerebellum with some horror or heinous crime for months or years.   Doesn’t it seem WRONG how often and briskly we are forced to acknowledge the horrors of human existence?   Our world serves up the miseries of people’s lives like the kid at McDonalds serves up a super-sized order of French fries.  Does not our brain rebel from it all, the same way a big mac meal deal will make me shit it back out within 30 minutes.  My brain is repulsed by it all the same way my stomach is repulsed by the crap served at McDonalds. 

Some days, I want to and do shut myself off from the world, ignoring television and radio news and sticking to my internet radio stations that allow me to just listen to music with no interruptions.  That is not a very good thing either though, to insulate ourselves, to numb our feelings to pain and suffering.  What happens then when a family member or friend gets sick or is dying, has our empathy been over extended?  When we get sick from eating too much McDonalds do we stop eating that food – for a while we do.  But sometimes we want to clean up our insides with a salad and some water, water that is not bottled!    What we can’t do is, stop eating all together.

We are just not able to seal ourselves off, unless we live in a cave on the Serengeti and our worries center around which freaking animal is going to eat us.  Unless we are that dude we will never to be able to block the evilness that surrounds us from our lives.   It will seep in, no matter where we hide.  Attempting to create a mental panic room does not work and if it did it would be only temporary.  The suffering always finds us, no matter what walls and fortresses we build to protect ourselves.    

We have to accept that evil exists in the world, we cannot escape that fact.  How do we deal with it? Especially when the news cycle feeds it to us like a big mac, one every 38.2 seconds.   How do we get our brains to go from someone who lost their legs in Boston to Tiger Woods new squeeze to the fact that Kate Middleton is wearing an Alexander McQueen maternity dress in between which we are forced to decide what kind of erectile dysfunction medication to use and what soda to wash the pills down with.   

It seems we take more time to pick out the right breakfast cereal than we do actually experiencing fear, terror, anger, envy and downright befuddlement.  The world spits out so much and spits it so fast that there is little time left for contemplation.  To wonder what it all means.  In one minute I am having my righteous indignation raised by the Cleveland story, which is immediately replaced by my repulsion over a thousand dollar maternity dress of the Princess.  My pain about the Boston marathon murders slams right into Tiger Woods’ sex life – like I give a shit about which girl he is dating today, his is a freaking pig!

CNN or HLN or Fox or any other, they are all selling to and celebrating our monkey minds.  They have figured out how to turn us into automatons.  It almost feels like they want us to react a certain way, to feel fear or compassion, anger or joy, but only in the briefest and most superficial of ways.  We experience a roller coaster ride and like all roller coasters, our adrenaline can only be ramped up for so long before become accustomed to it.  Much like a drug addict has to get the fix, we need a fix of adrenaline to keep us going, they have conditioned us, much like a man and his bell with his dogs.   

We have had Philosophers over thousands of years who have tried to explain war, violence and suffering.  The search for understanding, happiness and contentment is as old as life itself.   Back in the day, we used things like ceremony, tradition and spiritual introspection to understand how we fit into the world, what our purpose was.  Now we are getting it between ads for personal injury lawyers talking about transvaginal mesh and long-lasting lip gloss – neither of which I care about.  I am unsure how this will work in the long term.  Like anything, when it is new we don’t fully understand the consequences, only after some time do we have some hindsight do the impact of things become clear.  Our brains need a sick day folks, a break from it all to contemplate the meaning of things. 

Taking sick leave is a short term solution, we can decide to shut off the news and sit with the facts for a while.  Not the details of how Jodi terrorized that poor man before killing him but the facts of our very existence.  To practice Yama – or self-restraint, self-control and discipline is what is needed.  The yamas comprise the "shall-not" in our dealings with the external world just as the niyamas comprise the "shall-do" in our dealings with the inner world.

We have monkey minds to begin with, the brain is a trickster that roams from this to that and this again.  The media has figured out the key, exploiting our monkey minds and desensitizing us to the horrors of the world – with mostly their opinions and not many facts anyway.  When someone died back in the day, it wasn’t a once-every-five-minute event, it was not a blip in a 24-hour news cycle.  When these things happened, they happened to people we were intimately acquainted with. The story was very real to you, very inescapable.  We were forced to deal with it, to contemplate the meaning of it.  This wasn’t entertainment, it was part of the healing process and you didn’t have the luxury of changing the channel.

We are being taught by the world that the monkey mind is a comfortable place to be, it is in actuality the exact opposite.  Introspection, meditation, the slow and steadied examination of these questions is what leads us to, if not peace at least acceptance.   Slowing down and stepping back from it a bit, we allow ourselves to move beyond the initial reaction of fear and despair.   Fear is the emotion most often used by the media to draw us into the news cycle.  Those snap judgments, that intense reaction to the horrors of our world, is only the surface of a very deep ocean.

To meditate is to be a deep sea diver.  To meditate upon murder, poverty, jealousy, joy, forgiveness, revenge, sickness is to slow the cycle to a halt, to relax our monkey minds.  When meditating we are not preventing someone else from murdering, we are not preventing the death of our loved ones or the loss of our job.   We are preventing our brains from becoming a flash-fried burger and fries.  We are keeping our heart open and our will strong.  Meditation hopefully provides you with a different kind of narrative to take out to the world, one that allows time for suffering, grieving, healing, and time for peace and contentment.

Facebook stalking – is there really such a thing?

So, I am a Facebook stalker.  I was unaware that when you accepted my FB friend request I was not to poke around your wall and dig through all your particulars.  I am kind of an old fogey but I was kind of thinking that was the purpose of the place, seems I am mistaken. 

The thing is, I am completely open about it.  In most circumstances I leave a note on the person’s wall I was digging around in the façade of their lives.  It seems weird that some folks watch it so closely; I know several of my friends who use an app to see who was there.  To me, that seems like paranoia.  The definition typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself.  The thing is, WHY put things on Facebook that would ever make you feel that way.  Seems you have to be dumber than a bag of old rusty hammers if you put things on FB that you don’t want other people to see – the term dumbass comes to mind actually. 

Come on folk’s your privacy is GONE!!  Once you place something on FB it can never be retrieved, it will be floating around out there, somewhere, FOREVER!!  And besides, why would you worry about it  anyway – did you not accept all the people in your friends list?  Unless you are one who just friends all sorts of people just to get a large number of friends, in which case, again dumbass comes to mind!!  Don’t get me wrong, I am huge fan of Facebook, it has allowed me to reconnect with friends long ago forgotten, especially those from my Navy days.  There is one dude I served with back on the USS Stump that I just can’t seem to shake loose and get rid of, a bad penny if you will.  You will know him because he will post a comment on this blog.  Other than that, all the people on my friends list, is actually a friend.     

I have 193 friends, according to my list, which still amazes me by the way.  I have met all but 5 of them, and you know who you are.  Not sure how I connected with those 5 and ya know what, it does not matter.  I find watching their lives scroll by on my wall pleasant, if I didn’t I would boo them off MY list.  I have deleted many folks who were just filled with the hateful mean spirited bitchiness that I do not allow in my real life and especially do not allow on FB.  I have seen some people with over 1000 friends, I am not even sure that I know 1000 people and why in the hell would I want to share anything with people I don’t know.  

Earlier I mentioned the façade of their lives, I wanted to talk about that a bit more.  As I watch people and the vitriol they spew sometimes I am always amazed.  Some folks will profess righteousness and display high minded ideas in the pictures and links they post.  One might think they were saints come down from freaking heaven with the grace of God himself.  So while they share those little sayings and pictures about how they want to be perceived (God fearing) it seems a different story when you read the things they actually post themselves.  In one case I remember seeing a picture of the Dalia Lama saying something, does not matter what because whatever he says embodies peace and love kindness.  So the very next post, after sharing that link, was spewing some political bullshit lambasting one government program or another along with a high minded and very narrow minded comment about someone who has been less fortunate in life then they have been. 

I have one friend, he knows who he is, that I met on FB and then later met in real life.  Since that time we have gone to shitty Jaguar games and changed brakes on a Honda, or Toyota I can’t remember.  Had it been something from the 60 or before I would have been able to rattle off all the particulars but since it wasn’t, I can’t.

So, after a recent “incident” I have started leaving a picture on the walls of people I stalk, here it is.

If you see this on your page, I hope it makes you smile and I hope you realize I must be somewhat interested in the boring ass life you put up as your façade J

Love ya, one and all!

 

 

I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN!!!

I have not looked at the TV much since the crazy MF’ers up in Boston set off a bomb at the finish line.  There have been some stories rolling through my facebook feed telling stories though.  I consider myself ill-informed on the topic of the Boston bombing.  I have raised up some prayers for those who were killed and those who lost loved ones and for those who were injured and will carry the scars of that day with them forever, whatever form those scars take. 

I saw something attributed to Mr. Rogers on the old interwebs.  Here it is. 

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."

There were hundreds of helpers!!  

I also saw something from Patton Oswald, who by the way I have never thought was that funny but this was poignant.  Here it is. 

“I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

For me, that sums up what it is to be an American, we are helpers and we outnumber the evil bastards that roam our planet with us.

Something I saw today on the facebook got me riled up again about the way the media reacts to such things.  It is fucking shameful that they glorify the worthless bags of shit that perpetrate terror on our society.  Even the word terror pisses me off!  These guys, foreign and domestic, are mass murders, no different than Hilter, other than in the numbers.  They believe in something and are committed to their  cause, as committed or more than we are to protect our way of life.  When was it changed, changed from what it is, mass murderer, to terrorist and why?  Terrorist is word used by the media to get ratings.  It is used by the government to identify certain of those among us.  I believe the word is already overused and when a word gets overused it loses its effectiveness.   These people are killers, plain and simple and I don’t need the White house or the media to tell me that is was terrorism. 

Another thing, I could case less, less than I would a puss filled festering boil on some nasty toe, about ANY BIT OF information about these two shit birds.  The media hypes these guys up and they have gotten their 15 minutes of fame.  Our young people see this and it is a way for them to get their 15 minutes of fame.  It becomes the “norm”, my life is just like his, maybe I should do the same thing.  I think it the most terrible of disservices we can do, talk about the murderers.  Other than to let us know what the sentence was and when they have been executed.  I don’t want to know, and REFUSE to watch anything else about them.  Don’t care where they are from, don’t care why they are here, don’t care about their parents, uncles, neighbor’s friends or teachers.  I don’t give a shit!!     To give them anything more than that is to give them what they want, perpetual news coverage and an extended bit of fame for a cowardly act.      

I know there have been lots of stories about the helpers, and I appreciate that.  I wish there was a way they could come back in a few months’ time to talk to survivors, folks who helped out and were fearless in the face of adversity.  I would like to know the impact this had on their lives, how did it affect them at work, at home, in church.  I want to hear the story of the guy whose leg had every bit of flesh blown off of it.  How will his recovery go, will he become friends with the man in the cowboy hat who saved his life?  Tell me the stories about us, because Damn it there are more helpers and people who stand facing the darkness of the world around us – and there will always be more of us than there are them and that is what I care about.    

On a lighter note, I did see something about Boston.  I can’t remember exactly but basically I will not act up when I am Boston.  They will shut the city down, everything will stop – buses, subways, public and private transportation, work, schools everything and then ask the citizenry to lock themselves up while they will bring in whatever resources necessary to hunt you down.  Talk about the American way, props to the mayor of Boston! 

My friend, Alison Bodey - part II

After reading my first blog about my friend Alison, I saw that I had done what the Sherriff had done.  Like him, I made a snap decision and reported the facts.  It seems my first blog was not well thought out and just rambled.  My heart was seared with the immediacy of the pain I was feeling for the loss of my friend.  I want to apologize to the Sherriff.  I know he was just doing his job but man, with the complete shock of losing a friend the last thing I wanted to read as the last line was that she was not wearing her seatbelt.  Like it was her fault because she wasn’t strapped in, who cares about that?  I guess in some way I was defensive of my friend, not wanting people to talk bad about her or hurt her feelings in anyway.

I am amazed by the number of people who reached out to me about my last blog.  I even reconnected with folks I remember from those trips to Morehead State back in the day.  I have had a hard time the last few days, as this has hit me harder than I would have thought.  I suppose one does not really think about such things and how hard they will be when they happen.  I am experiencing a weird mix of emotions.  Every time I think about it, about her, about her kids and about her death it just seems crazy and I am unsure how I should act, what I should do.  I have stared at Google maps looking for where I think it happened, just east of Millerstown road on Zimmerman is what I hear.  I have zoomed in to look at every foot of that road, not sure what I am looking for, and obviously there won’t be real time pictures of the accident.  There won’t be skid marks I could analyze, there is nothing, nothing but the trees and fields, same thing that has always been along that stretch of road.      

I have electronically chatted with her oldest daughter, Caitlin.  I think that is cool – I suppose that is more for my own selfish reasons, trying to hold onto something that was, and is not there now.  Still I think it is cool.  She is the spitting image of her Mom.  From reading some of her posts on FB I suspect she has a lot of the same attitudes, outlooks and life philosophies as well.  Good for you Caitlin because those are some of the attributes that made your Mom who she was.  I received a very nice email from my blog from a friend of Alison’s from Myrtle tree Baptist Church, telling about the influence Alison had on her.  It was a very touching email.   It seems weird for me to even be thinking about Alison and all the times we had back in the day and since we started our journey together but each of us have followed our own very different paths in life.  Her journey took her back to our hometown, mine took me literally around the world and I could never imagine moving back to our hometown.    

Why is it that we allow the wrong things to dominate our lives?  Why are we in such a hurry to go and to do?  Why… why not slow down a bit and realize the stupid shit most of us are chasing is the wrong stuff!  I think Alison understood that better than most.  That syndrome seems to get worse the older we get, our bodies grow old, we get set in our ways and we seem to forget the important things in life.  I hope each of you can hold onto your childhood spirit, be young and mischievous, adventurous and light hearted.  At least try to be that for one day, just one day and do it in remembrance of Alison Bodey!   I had to find it but I remembered a quote from John Steinbeck from “The Winter of Our Discontent” that I liked when I read it and I think is perfect here: 

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

The world just seems a little grayer, a darker place without her in it anymore. 

I suppose the most important question one can ask at times like this is, did they really live life?  I guess at this point in my life I should know, or at least understand what it means to lose someone that is dear to me.  It never seems to fail that when I tell myself that, intellectually I know it to be true, death is the inevitable end of life for all of us.  But loss is not about the intellectuality of things.  Loss is about the gaping hole left in one’s heart when our friends and family pass away.  Sad thing is, one can never really repair the holes this kind of loss brings.  All we can do is to learn to live our lives around the holes.  On more than one occasion after a loss, I have wondered, wouldn’t it be cool if we could have just one more conversation.  One more chance to ask the things we never thought we should, one more chance to ask the things that are important in our lives.  Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to get one more chance to make up for the time we think we have? 

I am reminded of a favorite scene from a movie called “Waking Ned Devine” that Bride and I just watched again recently.  One of the main characters, Jackie O’Shea, was talking at a funeral: 

“Michael O'Sullivan was my great friend.  But I don't ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I'd congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.”

I think that is how I feel about Alison.  She was a great friend, but I don’t think I ever told her so, at least not so simpley stated.  I want to thank her for being my friend, I am better for having known her.   

“Michael O'Sullivan was my great friend, but I don't ever remember telling him that.” 

That is a sad commentary really.  How many people in our lives do we consider to be great friends and we never tell them that, not in a meaningful way anyway.   What is it that we can do to ensure our friends know how we feel about them?  If you have never watched that movie, you must go and rent it, it is on my top 10 – perfect justice all the way around at the end of that movie.     

Bride asked me if I’d like to go to her funeral.  I was unsure of what that answer should be.  It really turned out to be a moot point, I have to travel to Canada for work on the day of her funeral.  I wondered if I would want to go if I did not have a prior work commitment.  It has been a long, long time since we have seen each other.  I do not know her kids, her parents are gone.  I wondered if it would be just for my own sense of closure.  I am not big on funerals, even less excited about viewings, although my Sister told me the casket was done with Pink Floyd which I would have liked to have seen.  I did not even go over to the casket at my Dad’s viewing.  I did that once when I was younger, and then that was the last image I had of that person.  For me, I do not want the rest of my days with the image of what is left of someone I loved, propped up in a box for all to see.  I refuse to remember my friends like that.  I choose to remember them in life, not death.  Would I go, I think I would.  While I can use my mind’s eye to remember my friend and the parts of the journey of life we shared, it would be fun to listen to others tell their stories and shared experiences with Alison.

After reading back through this I suppose this is still about me mourning the loss of my great friend and not yet a tribute to her – I am working on it.   

                                                     
Below is a picture from one of her albums on FB, adorable donkeys – who has an album called adorable donkeys?