30. July 2009 by Frank.

Quite a number of dates that I commemorate are about to occur.  August 5 will mark 11 years since the stroke and 10 years at my current job.  It was also the beginning of my financial death spiral which has turned into total disaster this week.  I don’t remember the date but sometime during the next week will be several years since the woman who was my best friend online and my mentor died from her 6th stroke.  August 17 will be 2 entire years since my mother died.  This past Monday was the date we took her to the hospital not knowing her life was over.  Then August 22 is my wife’s birthday.  My dad’s birthday is one month later on September 23.

You may think I’m preparing to wallow around in self pity with all that on the horizon.  Or at the very least that I get rather sentimental.

Neither would be correct.

My life began on August 5, 1998.  I was 43 at the time but all that was wiped out by a lack of oxygen to the brain.  Aside from the memory damage and the pain there were profound emotional and mental changes that took me years to come to terms with.  The biggest change was the complete disappearance of my faith.  It made no sense whatsoever so I kept studying religion to figure out what happened.  I also became a guinea pig for more drugs and heavy duty narcotics than I can remember.  The drugs did more damage to my body than the stroke did.  If the side effects for something include the words “sexual side effects” then believe me you don’t want to take those drugs.  “Weakness in the extremities” is also quite a bad side effect.  And, of course, we had to throw some Prozac in there somewhere which literally made me want to kill myself.

Karen the stroke survivor became my mentor and best friend soon after.  Barely able to speak and only able to type with two fingers, she created an entire online empire to help stroke survivors.  She had already suffered 5 strokes in her brief life but she would not quit or give up even an inch in her fight against what they had done to her body and her life.  She inspired me to become active in trying to help other survivors.  She’s the reason I started blogging and the reason I continue to this day.  I never met her in real life but she’s the most inspiring human being I ever encountered.

Unfortunately, her death at her 6th stroke occurred during a time where my memory is very hazy.  That’s why I can’t come up with the year for the life of me.  I’m very sad that she’s gone but I know in my heart that I am a much better person for having known her.  Her influence in my life was far beyond anything I had ever experienced before including my religion.  I know there are many more people that she affected just as much or more.

My love/hate relationship with my job began exactly a year after the stroke.  It didn’t take me long to realize that I could be very happy managing my own store.  Unfortunately, my health and the drug trial and error process combined with several managers who were threatened by my ambitions led to a series of denials of advancement.  By the time I actually did get promoted 3 years ago it was such a pyrrhic victory that all I managed to do was get more work dumped on myself for no money.

The job is, however, the catalyst that got me to change my name.  Frank is my first name but I was always known by my middle name.  The manager at the time paid no attention to that and called me Frank.  I had changed so much that I liked the idea even though I previously hated the name.  When I realized how much confusion that would cause with people who used to know me I went with it wholeheartedly.

July 27 began three weeks of the worst suffering I have ever witnessed anyone go through.  My mother’s pancreas malfunctioned and literally dissolved itself and other internal organs.  The doctor described it as having 3rd degree burns internally.  No one should have to suffer anything like that.  The horror she went through should be enough to convince anyone that there is no god but all her religious friends kept saying how wonderful god was and that he was just calling her home.  It was sickening.  I would rather someone blow my brains out than be made to suffer that agony.  I actually handled her death better than the rest of the family.  Take that whole fairy tale life after death business out of the equation and it becomes so much simpler and easier to handle.  You didn’t exist before you were born and you don’t exist after you die.  What’s so hard to accept about that?

I can’t believe two years have already gone by.

Birthdays won’t be any big deal, we can’t afford to celebrate them so the most that happens is a computer generated greeting card.

So I take note of these days and I usually write a blog post like this.  A lot of changes took place in my life over the years and they seem to converge in the month of August.  I don’t actually feel much about any of them.  Emotions are alien to me for the most part.  Apathy isn’t really an accurate word for my mental state but it’s probably how I come across.

Perhaps these are just reminders that if you can survive all this you can survive whatever is yet to come.

Technorati Tags: death,life,stroke,mentor,dates

Posted in wild guesses, interpretation, communication, listen, signs, religion, emotion, hearing, stroke | Print | 7 Comments »

23. July 2009 by Frank.

Perception.

How you interpret what I say depends on a vast number of factors.

Do you pick up on sarcasm or are you more literal minded?  Is your sense of humor as warped as mine is?  Are you serious and do you take things seriously?  Do you need emoticons in online messages to make things clear?  Have you read so much you have no problem reading between the lines?  Have you read enough of my posts to have a good idea where I’m coming from?  Does my attitude completely baffle you?

I have no delusions about being a great writer, I know that I’m not.  I enjoy expressing myself with words but I am painfully aware that what I think is absolutely crystal clear is anything but to other people.  I’ve been blogging for many years and I’ve had a great deal of misunderstandings about the things I write.

Professional writers know how to use words in such a way that there is little doubt what they mean to a vast majority of people.  But even then what may be the most wonderful work of fiction ever written can be total dreck to someone else.  It all depends on the perceptions of the reader.

And those can vary wildly.

A preacher once came to candidate for the position of pastor at our Baptist church.  During his sermon he quite clearly declared that he was just testing the waters; he was also considering teaching at a religious college.  Despite his plain honest statement several members of the selection committee (who were quite taken with his personality) declared that he obviously didn’t mean what he said – he wanted the job, no questions asked.  They were quite shocked when he ultimately turned them down.  It was quite obvious to me that he never really had any interest in the position but they were baffled beyond belief.

People see and hear what they want to see and hear.

Which is the problem.  I can prove practically anything I want using nothing but the bible.  I can prove that you are saved by faith alone.  I can also prove that you can only be saved by faith and works.  I can prove that speaking in tongues is the only sign that you’ve been saved.  I can also prove that tongues died out long ago.  I can prove that baptism is just a ritual and I can prove that if it isn’t done just right you aren’t saved.  I can prove old testament laws are still in effect and I can prove that they aren’t.  I can prove that obeying the law is the only way to god and I can prove that just calling his name is all it takes.  I can prove you have to repent of all your sins and I can show you where repentance isn’t required at all.  All from the same bible.  And that doesn’t even require different translations.

How is it “the owner’s manual” is so vaguely written that there can be that much variation?

This is why I don’t care much for the atheist sites that want to dabble in logical arguments all the time.  You can show a true believer contradictory passages in the bible that there can be no doubt are real contradictions and they will not see or acknowledge whichever part goes against their belief.  How do you think logic and reason is going to have any effect on someone like that?

What kind of all knowing god would make people with such radically different reasoning and interpreting abilities and then give them his rules which are so vague they can be interpreted in a myriad of incompatible ways?  The bible even teaches believers to avoid all contact with other believers who don’t hold the same teachings.  Who has the correct set of beliefs?  They all claim they do.  Who’s right?

There are ways to use words which clearly convey the original intent of the author.  But even the most expertly written prose is still going to be interpreted by the reader.  If the writer is an unrepentant jokester and the reader has no sense of humor, will there be any understanding?

Do you think the title of this post is a true statement of how I think?  Or am I just being facetious?  Consider how much I talk about living in pain.  If I start feeling sick in addition to that isn’t it possible that’s what I really mean?  I also speak sarcasm fluently.  So which is it?

You decide.

Posted in communication, humor, interpretation, wild guesses, hearing, listen, religion | Print | 9 Comments »

19. July 2009 by Frank.

No, this isn’t from the 4th of July:

it was last night at the end of the Venetian Festival, a four day annual party here on the shores of Lake Michigan.  Food, booze, semi-famous rock bands from the 80s.  Normally it’s 90 to 100 this time of year but it was only 65 last night so the girls in bikinis were not included.  We did have an abundance of drunks, however, cool air does not restrain them.

I discovered that my tripod is woefully inadequate for holding my camera still for night shots.

A rather large church offered some christian rock during the day to compete with all that secular satanic crap downtown.  When I drove by I observed only that they were horrendously under-attended.  It took more people to set up their stage than were there listening.  But one thing was clear, everyone likes to party.

In different ways, perhaps, but party nonetheless.

Personally I’d prefer a jazz band to a rock band any day of the week.  No temps over 70 with a slight breeze blowing off the lake and just a few people instead of the 150,000 that were there last night.  To each his own.

The best party I’ve ever been to was my daughter’s wedding last month.

I just read a blog post about time, about how we perceive it differently.  Have you ever noticed how long the last few minutes of your work day can get compared with the rest of the day?  Have you noticed how hours seem like minutes if you’re doing something you enjoy?  When I’m out with my camera I can walk around for hours with absolutely no concept of how long I’ve been walking.  I can cover miles without being aware of it.  On the other hand, a boring Sunday afternoon can seem to last an eternity.

This is common to everyone to some degree or another but I’m somewhat different.  How much I enjoy something or how fast time seems to be moving has a tremendous impact on how aware of pain I am.  My body, my arm in particular, is in a ridiculous amount of pain.  It never completely goes away but when I’m really enjoying something it gets shoved so far back in my consciousness that I actually feel relief.

After the stroke I went to a neurologist for awhile.  The most interesting thing she told me is that I have what is called in strict scientific terms, “a fluffy brain,” which, if you saw the MRI, is a fairly accurate description.  Unfortunately, that is absolutely useless information.  The only thing she knew to do for me was prescribe some heavy duty narcotics.  At one point in my life I would have thought that was cool beyond belief.  But it isn’t.

They turned me into a zombie, shambling through life drooling and crying out for brains.

As much fun as that sounds like it really isn’t.  I want something to kill pain not my ability to function.  She offered to refer me to a pain clinic in another state but I never pursued it because my insurance was already refusing to pay a huge chunk of my medical bills.  I decided all I could do was learn to control the pain on my own.  I do a fairly good job most of the time but sometimes it gets to be too much.

I know this post might not be what you think.  But I wonder how do you judge time and enjoyment?  For me a good time is anything that so distracts my mind that I don’t feel pain so much.  Just typing this post is distracting me enough to make this afternoon go by a little sweeter.  Last night it seemed to take forever for the fireworks to start but once they did time flew out the window.  Fortunately, my daughter’s apartment is down town so we went there to wait for the traffic to clear out before we headed home.  It took over an hour which seemed like two or three.

My sense of pleasure and of time is colored by how aware of pain I am.

I’m curious.  How is it for you?

Posted in humor, communication, wild guesses, emotion, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

15. July 2009 by Frank.

Across the street, in the Wally World parking lot, there was a semi all day today.  It had a simple black on white sign filling the length of the trailer.  The message was also all over the cab.   “Jesus Christ is the Lord, not a swear word,” was all it said.

One would have to assume the truck driver does not approve of good old fashioned vulgar language.  Or that he takes that not taking the name of the Lord in vain thing in the more superficial meaning.  That’s fine by me.

If he wants to declare that to the world, more power to him.

Have you noticed, however, that if atheists try to do the same thing (on bus signs and billboards, for example), that suddenly everyone is up in arms to try to stop them?  Even when the message is something as simple and inoffensive as “Imagine No Religion”

Or “Don’t Believe in God?  You Are Not Alone.”

How are those phrases offensive?  Seriously, how is that a threat to anyone?  I never could understand how so many christians are so terrified of people not believing the same way they do.  I don’t just mean of atheists, either.  Many christians can’t even handle the fact that there are other “real” christians that don’t believe exactly like they do.  If god is on your side how can such simple opposing views be of any consequence to you?

In related news, another atheist blogger decides to call it quits.  Yunshui of Right to Think has thrown in the towel.  He actually got loads of commenters to inspire him but, alas, has still lost interest.  Several others are getting to the only posting once a month or less stage.  Oh well, I’ll have to find some new writers.

Quite a few of these people seem to get stuck in a rut trying to debate things with fundies that the fundies have no intention of debating.  I’ll admit my brain frequently turns to mush when I see someone write that they are going to argue some point or another.  I am an observer.  I write about what I see.  I don’t really care if anyone agrees with me or not.

So it’s sad to see another one bite the dust, especially since it hasn’t been all that long since atheist bloggers were nowhere to be found.

Posted in communication, signs, religion | Print | 2 Comments »

10. July 2009 by Frank.

I got a huge spike in my traffic last month.  Why?  Because I had a post about circumcision.  Apparently lots of people look for that topic.  Why?  I have no idea.

However, because I like huge spikes in my traffic, I’ve decided to do it again.

Consider the hypocrisy in the following verses:  (Galatians 5:2-6)  “Mark my words!  I, Paul tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.  Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.  You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.  But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

And just for extra emphasis verses 11-12:  “Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?  In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.  As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!”

That’s a rather bold and extremely harsh statement wouldn’t you say?  According to Paul the sign of god’s covenant no longer has any value whatsoever.  It is an attempt to get back under the law which removes you from grace.  (Which sort of shoots the Seventh Day Adventists in the foot, but that’s another story.)  But the point is, Paul condemns circumcision as a requisite for salvation.  You didn’t need to be a Jew to be a christian.

This stance holds up in Galatians 2:3  “Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.”

Timothy did not fare so well travelling with Paul, however.  Acts 16:3  “Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew his father was a Greek.”  If that isn’t hypocrisy what is?  Titus escaped the knife even though he was a Greek but Timothy’s mother was a Jew and his father was a Greek.  So I guess his Jewish mother cost him his foreskin just like Zipporah in that Moses story.

So according to Paul’s own words Christ was now useless to Timothy.  Great way to get someone started in the ministry.

You would think a good editor would catch a contradiction like that.  Apparently god did not proofread the bible after he dictated it.  Here’s a disgusting question for you to ponder.  How would anybody anywhere know whether or not the guys travelling with you were circumcised or not?  Did they check each other out at the piss hole out back?  For that matter, how did all these bible guys know the women or young girls were virgins?  Was a gyno exam mandatory at the city gates?  I know this sounds facetious but think about it.  How many men do you know whether or not they’re circumcised?  How do you know?

Is this a water cooler conversation?

This is a clear example of where the bible says one thing and then turns right around and says the exact opposite.  Paul wishes the men still teaching circumcision would go the whole way and castrate themselves.  He was that radically opposed to their message.  And yet because of these same people’s prejudice (Greek father, remember), he went ahead and performed a ritual he unequivocally condemned.  According to his own words he had just ruined Timothy’s walk with god, Christ was now useless to him.  Somehow that makes no sense whatsoever.

Especially since later on he left Timothy in charge of establishing some churches.

Some christians think this sort of thing makes the bible more believable because it reveals the true character of the great men of faith warts and all.  It makes them fallible and more human so we can identify with them.  I think what it does is reveal that god isn’t the all powerful, all knowing deity he’s supposed to be.  He’s a creation of primitive men geared to act and think and behave exactly the same way they did so they could justify themselves.

I just showed you that god’s chosen apostle to the gentiles was a hypocrite.  Doesn’t that make you want to question other things he taught?

Posted in communication, humor, interpretation, wild guesses, education, religion | Print | 5 Comments »

2. July 2009 by Frank.

I’ve got a really nasty one right now.  Usually this type of pain is accompanied by a bad spike in my blood pressure which isn’t the case this time.  There is the sensation of having a fever, however, which is always a sign of a really bad headache.

Nothing I can take has any effect on one of these.  I just have to suffer through.

Just one of many unpleasantries I have to suffer periodically.

I was just reading some comments on another blog that brought up the old without god you can’t be moral theme.  I’ve actually been noticing that quite a bit lately.  Basically the christian declares that without god the only option is to become morally depraved and unrestrained.

I have to wonder where this idea comes from?

Indeed, as a christian, I was fascinated by end-time prophecies.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever to fantasize about how Revelations was going to play out.  I actually found joy in imagining the utter destruction of billions of people.  There was no doubt in my mind that only a relative few would survive god’s ultimate judgment.  Of course, I was going to be among those few.

How, exactly, is this a moral way of thinking?

Billions of people’s lives mean absolutely nothing to god or his children.  They were created so he could pour out his wrath on them to show how righteous his judgments are.  If you believe in predestination, it gets even worse because you have no option about what is going to happen to you.

How is that moral?  Is your head hurting yet?

I’ve mentioned before about being in church services where the preacher in a frenzy of religious blindness actually led the congregation in asking god to put cancer, AIDS, heart attacks, etc., on their friends and loved ones so that they would be brought low enough that they would call out to god for salvation.  It didn’t matter that those people would have to suffer horribly and probably die, at least they would be saved.  Their souls wouldn’t go to hell.  Who cares if their lives were ruined otherwise?  Is this moral?

I had a real bad headache or two after sitting through this particularly horrid type of worship service.  The thing that was the most shocking was how many people gleefully took up the challenge of praying for their loved ones in this manner.  Imagine a few hundred people pleading with god to give Uncle Bob a nasty form of throat cancer because he spends so much time smoking at bars and nightclubs.

Suppose you worked in some kind of biological laboratory and had access to a Petri dish full of the most virulent life destroying little buggers ever conceived.   If you were to smuggle them out of the lab and release them into the water supply of a large city what would you expect the reaction of the rest of the world would be?  If they caught you, you would be universally condemned as the worst terrorist who ever lived.  You and I know this.  There is no question.  This would be an immoral act of the highest degree by any civilized standard.

But this is exactly what those good moral christians in that good moral church were asking their good moral god to do for them.  God, after all, has the power to give life and take it away.

How can we mere mortals have higher moral standards than god?  Why is it most societies condemn slavery but the bible doesn’t?  Why is it everyone knew murder is immoral long before the bible was written?

That question used to bother me a lot as a christian.  How could I have higher moral standards than my god when he was supposed to be the only source of said morals?  It used to give me headaches.

Being free of religion for the last eleven years has led me to realize that my moral standards never came from god or the bible in the first place, I had them before and I still have them after being a christian.  Like many other facts of life religion usurps what is right and true and then claims that you never knew or had it before religion revealed it to you.  They keep beating you over the head with it long enough you eventually begin to believe it and then you can’t fathom how anyone else could possibly know such things without your god, too.

I hope in some small way that I have made you think hard enough to get a headache.  Because, well, misery loves company.

And I am, after all, an immoral douchebag.

Posted in humor, interpretation, wild guesses, signs, religion | Print | 3 Comments »