24. August 2010 by Frank.

Politics, religion, conservatives, liberals, fanatics, morons, idiots.

What’s a blogger to do?

We’re trying to get the house ready for my daughter and son-in-law to move in this week.  There’s quite a bit of stress from several sources already.  But now my son-in-law’s employer is throwing around the word outsourcing.  This could be potentially disastrous for him since it’s his department they intend to use the word on.

American business has been pulling this bullshit for many years.  Our fearless political leadership seems determined to continue making it easy for them to do so.  “Screw the employees,” seems to be the number one rule of business.

My company continues to push inflated sales goals and percentages on us even after the pennies are all you need raises they so generously gave us a couple of weeks ago.  Now they’ve informed us that despite our hard work and success in attaining those goals the so called reward for it has been cancelled.  We don’t get  the tech remodel after all.  That was the only bright spot lurking in our future.  Now, it’s just more business as usual.

One thing I can’t do at work is talk politics.  I am surrounded by rabid conservatives.  You even hint at anything political you suddenly start hearing all the buzzwords: socialist, Nazi, Muslim, the country is ruined, communist, deficit, any and all Fox News talking points.  It’s like they have a script they all read from.  And just like in real politics there is no debate.

There was a lot of time on Saturday for talking behind the tech counter.  The big tech event was a total bust as was the simultaneous teacher promo. No advertising except for a couple of signs in the store so the only people who came in were regular shoppers – there was no off-the-street traffic for either event.  Of course, the company’s expectations for the day were extremely high, making the results even worse.

What’s a poor liberal to do?

But you know what’s been getting the biggest and most frequent headlines lately?  The mosque at ground zero which isn’t really a mosque or at ground zero.  Fear mongering pure and simple but at such an intensity it drowns out everything else newsworthy.  It actually rates right up there with the misadventures of the Kardashian sisters (whom I have yet to figure out just why they’re in the news or even who they are for that matter.)  I know that’s celebrity gossip but I have no idea what makes them celebrities.  But I have yet to find a news page that doesn’t reference one of them at any given time.

Smoke and mirrors.  Anything to keep attention off of anything of any importance.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I’m already condemned to having to work the rest of my life to pay all my bills – I won’t be able to retire in seven to nine years.  My stroke and my wife’s getting fired and subsequently breaking her hip has already eliminated all of our retirement money (which was so pathetic to begin with) that there’s no way I can retire even if they raise retirement age to 80.  Our fearless leaders are already pushing 70 as the new 64 while simultaneously providing funding for “THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDS,” which, as you well know, takes priority over all you baby boomers who are dragging society down with you.  Slackers!

I feel so sorry for all those disgraced CEOs who only get tens of millions in severance packages.

The only thing looking good on the horizon is that when we get our share of my father-in-law’s house we are going to say the hell with it and take a trip to Italy.  As Sandra Oh says so well in Under the Tuscan Sun, “It-tah-lee, fran-cis, it-tah-lee.”  Just like in the movie, once I’m there, I’m never coming back.

I’m sick of living in the real world.

Posted in humor, sarcasm, technology, communication, listen, wild guesses, emotion | Print | 3 Comments »

5. August 2010 by Frank.

After my incredible 12 cent raise I figured the financial screwing had reached a new low.  Naturally I was wrong.  Now comes a letter informing me that my insurance company wants to control what medicines we can take.  My wife’s anti-seizure med is a name brand but it is not on my insurance company’s preferred list.  So we were told quite bluntly that she can either switch to a generic or keep her name brand and pay more for it.  Tough titty if that doesn’t suit you.

Unbeknownst to them but “knownst” to me, we already tried that last year with disastrous results.  After a few weeks on the generic she started having seizures.  Quickly switching back to the name brand they stopped and have not come back.  For some reason the generic just doesn’t do the job.  Now I have a frigging insurance company telling me to use the generic or they won’t cover as much of it.

They have also changed to a mail order only plan that requires you order a 3 month supply in order to be covered or else they will only cover 50% of what you get any other way.  On top of that all the deductibles reset last month so there’s several hundreds of charges they won’t cover at all right now.  And they raised the premiums.

But this is the best coverage my company can find for its employees.

Meanwhile our fearless government is actually debating cutting Social Security.  We’re barely (and I mean that literally) surviving with my wife’s SSI disability check.  If that gets cut or goes away, we’ve had it.  We will be living on the street in our old age.

But wait, there’s more.  I just ordered my wife’s meds which will be well over two hundred dollars (with the deductibles and reduced coverage).  This destroys my budget at the same time I’ve run out of my meds (which are generics).  In order to pay for my wife’s meds I have to put off buying mine.  So up goes my blood pressure and Stroke2 City is just around the corner.

No matter what I do I’m screwed.

This five day respite has not worked out well.  There was no money and no relief from the heat and humidity.  I have to stay in my computer room (with my little AC) all day or sweat to death in a living room that gets up to a hundred.  I went out walking but that was it.

Maybe I’m just too tired and rundown.  Maybe the heat and humidity are just getting to me.  Maybe I’m just in my annual foul mood because Thursday is Stroke Anniversary Day.  Maybe living on the edge of disaster for so long has just worn me out.

I just feel like any decision I make is wrong.

I know that I’ve been griping about work for years.  I don’t know anyone who’s happy with their job.  A certain amount of complaining is normal and probably healthy.  But it has gone beyond that,

Several months ago they made what seemed like a minor management change, they switched the two assistant managers’ responsibilities.  The morale and operation of the store has gone downhill ever since.  It seems as if all three managers are working at cross purposes and are actively undermining each other.  Necessary work is not getting done, policies and procedures are not being followed, and employees are getting the blame and being dumped on.  Morale has never been this low even back in the days when they tried to scare us that the store was going to be closed.

The one hour I went in Sunday morning for the sales meeting put me in a near rage for the rest of the day.

It is now also officially Back To School season which is our busiest time of year.  It’s not likely that all the crap is going to get fixed now.  I dare say it will be getting much worse.

Immediately after that ends in the middle of September, two giant changes are going to happen.  The store will be remodeled into more of a tech-centric operation, quite extensive actually.  That part could be fun.  But the bad comes right afterward.  All assistant managers company wide are going to become hourly employees.  This has all the makings of a major disaster, especially for all the keyholders such as myself.  Since no one is allowed to work any overtime whatsoever, we will be stuck opening and closing far more often than we do now, which means even less time to do what we’re already responsible for.  It also means we have two more people that we’ll have to cover lunches for.  More time pissed away.  If just shifting the responsibilities of the two assistants we have caused the worst plummet in morale I’ve ever seen, I can imagine what this is going to cause.

Black Friday shows up immediately afterwards.  Oh, the humanity!

Plus we have the stress of my daughter and son-in-law moving back in with us next month because my daughter being out of work for a year ruined them financially as well.  Fortunately, we all get along great so it will be good.  But it will be a change.

No more sitting around in my underwear.

So why is this my latest blog entry?  Because it’s what’s on my mind and I just feel like bitching.

Posted in humor, sarcasm, technology, communication, emotion, wild guesses, stroke | Print | 1 Comment »

19. July 2010 by Frank.

As we enter our 4th week of 90 degree + very high humidity weather, a number of interesting events have taken place.

This weekend is/was the third big crowd event in town; the 4th of July fireworks, the art fair, and the Venetian Festival.  I have no interest in any of that but somehow or other I have managed to either be there or on the fringe of each of them.  I’ve seen all the crowds and walked amongst them unnoticed.  I’ve enjoyed some of the stuff while not actually doing any of the stuff.

Despite how uncomfortable it has been I have been outside walking more miles than I ever have in my life.  My feet are killing me but that hasn’t stopped me.  I’ve been sweating so much I should be only a pile of dust by now.  I really feel like I’m accomplishing something.  My weight has gone way down.  Except for my feet the rest of me feels pretty damn good.

My wife has friends visiting from Florida for the Venetian Festival.  Their original plans only included my wife and her girlfriend but the girlfriend got married last month and brought her new husband with her.  They only had three tickets to all the concerts and events so they have been off on their own and I have been left to fend for myself.  Which is OK by me, I have never heard of any of the entertainment they have down there and I will not eat outdoors in 90 degree heat.  That’s a real sure way to get deathly ill real fast.  I drove them down there and picked them up later and wound up walking around several miles two nights in a row.  I went and set up someone’s new high speed internet service in the meantime.

When we picked the friends up from the South Bend airport I couldn’t help noticing how much more empty it’s gotten since the last time I was there a couple of years ago.  Everything is now concentrated in one little area for boarding and exiting and they’ve moved all the security checkpoint stuff right up front.  The people manning this station looked absolutely bored out of their minds.  The airport is still functioning at threat level orange, a fact they keep repeating on the PA incessantly.  The staff all wear their little sanitary blue plastic gloves and the feigned disinterest which they scrutinize passengers seems rather artificial.  Air travel is pathetic.  Even if I had money, I would have no desire to fly anywhere.  If we give in the terrorists have won.  Guess what?  We gave in, the terrorists won.  I remember when this airport was a bustling, living enterprise; now, it’s just a shell.

Yesterday morning, my daughter and I went to see INCEPTION.  It was mind blowing as promised.  I’ll write up a review of it soon, maybe after I’ve seen it a second time.  I’m not entirely sure I saw what I thought I saw or that I interpreted what I thought I saw correctly.  You really have to pay attention, you can’t be texting or talking to your date.  The movie requires and demands all your attention.  And it insists your brain must be engaged and functional.  A trip to the concession counter would mean you should probably just go home because you’ll never catch back up if you miss just one scene.  If you want mindless, Summer, popcorn fare don’t even bother.  Highly recommended for serious, heavy duty, movie nuts.  I will say the special effects in this movie are absolutely awesome because they look real, so real that you’ll be wondering how in the world they did that.

Yesterday afternoon, however, was the real surprise of the weekend.

My friend, who goes on walks with me, got two tickets to some kind of event in South Bend and wanted me to go with him.  I didn’t know what it was supposed to be other than it involved a lot of walking so I went along.  He asked me to bring my camera.  It turns out it was a garden tour of an area they are trying to revitalize.  Strange but it was something to do.

Let me establish a few background details.  My friend is from Jamaica, he has a very strong accent, and he is very dark skinned.  He was wearing white shorts, white socks, white tennis shoes, white baseball cap, and a white muscle shirt.  And he is definitely into gardening.  I am pale white, silver haired, front toothless, wearing black tennis shoes, grey socks, black pants, a dark grey shirt (because all my light colored stuff was in the wash), and a white baseball cap.  No interest in gardens whatsoever.  So, essentially, a black man all in white and a white man almost all in black.  Felix and Oscar, if you will.

Bear with me, there’s a reason I mention this.

The garden tour took place in a rather rundown neighborhood that bordered on a somewhat ritzier neighborhood, a rather stark contrast.  There were many abandoned houses and old buildings, boarded up windows and many with shattered glass.  The sidewalks were frequently overgrown with weeds and littered with all sorts of trash.  Not the kind of place you would deliberately want to walk though.

The whole area screamed poverty.  My friend called it a ghetto.  In slang terms around here, it would be called “the ‘hood”.

Keeping in mind the appearance of my friend and I, we attracted a lot of attention as we walked around for three hours in the oppressive heat.  We’re both carrying our guide maps with the gardens marked on them and I’m taking pictures with my very noticeably expensive camera.  My friend thought the people were reacting to us like they thought we were undercover cops looking for drugs or something.  It was an odd journey.

But here’s where prior perceptions come in.

When you think of poverty or people living in slums or dying neighborhoods what do you expect those people to be like?  Do you think they’re all hostile or angry?  Do you expect violence or drunkenness?  Are you expecting drugs and prostitutes?  Would you be afraid of getting mugged or worse?

We did see some of that in evidence.

But what blew both our perceptions out of the water were the people who were part of the garden tour.  There were over two dozen gardens on the self guided tour, many of which were quite elaborate.  Most were manned by the gardeners themselves who were exceptionally friendly, very informative, quite happy, and upbeat.  Not a trace of fear or apprehension about having strangers coming up to their houses and walking around their yards.  We were even welcomed into secluded, fenced in back yards that were like islands of beauty in empty fields.  They were genuinely delighted to have folks showing interest in their work.  It was interesting just to watch the behavior.  Such a stark contrast to what you would expect in such an area.

We were both exhausted after walking several miles but we both had to admit that were totally wrong about our original perceptions of the neighborhood we were in.  We both decided we had blinders on and that we made assumptions based on fears and prejudices.  Our worldviews are skewed to the negative and assume the worst based on certain visual indicators.  But, because we’re so different to begin with, our fears and prejudices stem from different sources, the results, unfortunately, are the same; we fear what we don’t know and we project that onto people whether they deserve it or not.

It was quite the eye opener on many levels and food for thought for weeks to come.

One last thing:  there’s one of those internet sites that takes a sample of your blog and awards you some kind of rating.  Like NC-17 if you swear a lot or talk about sex.  This new one that only seems to have just shown up this week promises to tell you what “real” writer you’re the most like.  I noticed a couple of bloggers did it and were informed they were like Stephen King.  Yeah, right.  So I did it, too, submitting my last two posts here separately.  The first one also got me the Stephen King rating but the second one earned me the H.P. Lovecraft award.  Which obviously means the website just generates random nonsense like every other website that gives these ratings “awards”.  Since I’ve read both King and Lovecraft, I’m quite certain I write like neither of them nor is there any correlation in my style to theirs.

The only down note to all of this was that the memory card in my camera failed.  Although it appeared to be working at first there are no photos to go with the story.  In six years I have never had a memory card fail under any kind of weather conditions.  I have been out in higher temperatures and extreme humidity before for a longer period of time.  So far, I’ve found no way to salvage anything off the card and I have yet to disprove that it was the camera that failed.  I’m worried that it’s the camera, I can’t fix it or replace it.  My dreams live or die with that camera.

Wait a minute!  Part of the premise of the movie was that you never know how the dream begins, you always just start in the middle.  It tells you to ask, “How did I get here?” and “Whose dream is this anyway?”  Maybe I just dreamed the camera failed.  Maybe if I wake up soon enough it will still be working. 

That’s it!  I’m still laying on the floor having a stroke in the factory 12 years ago and nothing I think is currently happening is actually happening!

I mean, seriously, Sarah Palin almost became the vice president of the country, christians feel the need to carry guns to church, George Bush got elected president twice, Rush Limbaugh is the head of the Republican party, the FCC decides you can say dirty words on TV, the Supreme Court decides corporations can make all the political contributions they want, a liberal, black, Muslim, law professor from Kenya who has no birth certificate and who’s a communist, socialist, Nazi all at the same time is the current president, and I went from being super-christian to atheist blogger?  Oh, come on!  What kind of sick, warped mind dreamed that up?

See, I’m right!

It is all a dream.

Wow.  I’ll have to write this down when I wake up.  I hope I can remember all of it.

Posted in communication, interpretation, technology, humor, sarcasm, wild guesses, listen, emotion, religion, education, hearing, signs, stroke | Print | 4 Comments »

27. May 2010 by Frank.

The series finale of LOST was one of the best, if not the best, finales of any movie or TV series I have ever watched.  Bob Newhart’s, “The entire series was a dream,” was the funniest.  MASH was easily the most sad and profound.  STAR TREK:  THE NEXT GENERATION’s, “All Good Things,” was grand space adventure at its best.  STAR TREK:  VOYAGER was movie quality extravagant but way too rushed.  STARGATE SG-1 died long before it ended but went out so low key it hardly mattered.  I didn’t watch THE SOPRANOS but it’s end would have pissed me off royally.

LOST had a considerable amount of religious undertone throughout its six year run.  That never bothered me, I don’t know why that sort of thing should bother atheists at all.  It’s basic good verses evil, the foundation of almost all fiction.  LOST rather thrived on it.

It may have seemed to be very christian with the characters gathered in a church and moving on to the light but the whole theme of redemption which permeated the finale was anything but christian.  Christian redemption is through Christ alone, it’s the free gift of god.  You are saved by faith/grace and not by works.  The characters of LOST redeemed themselves from their messed up lives by their decisions and actions.  They believed in each other not in god.

Ah, but god helps those who help themselves.  Right?

Wrong, you can’t find that in any bible.  That’s one of those things that gets thrown around so much that you begin to believe it’s in there even though it isn’t.  

Jack Shepherd’s father, who figured prominently from the first season but was hardly ever seen, was named Christian.  When Kate puts that together in the finale she sarcastically says, “Christian Shepherd?  You’ve got to be kidding me!”

The whole business with Jacob and his brother, The Man In Black (they never gave him a name), personified the good/evil theme but Jacob wasn’t actually good and his motives weren’t pure.  His actions created the smoke monster (evil incarnate) much as god admits to creating Satan.

For that matter, the light at the center of the island which we were warned if it went out there it went out all over the world, wasn’t exactly representing good.  When Jacob threw the MIB into it, the smoke monster came out.  So what exactly did the light represent?

Then there’s the matter of what the island actually is.  Was it purgatory?  I tend to think the sideways world was closer to being purgatory.  The island was adventure, it was mystery, it was a place with its own rules.  It’s one of many completely unanswered questions.

I didn’t mind that they didn’t explain any of it.  As Mary Poppins once said, “I never explain anything.”  I think a lot of fans who want it all laid out nicely for them miss the whole concept of mystery.  They wrapped up all the personal, human, stories.  Which is what made the show work; these were well developed characters who grew through their shared experiences.

The mystery is still the mystery.  The adventure still awaits.

So the religious symbolism and all the actual religious symbols that permeated the finale didn’t bother me.  It was the most satisfying, heart wrenching, tender, tear-jerking, emotional, exciting, nerve wracking, tense finale I have ever seen.  Best ever.

Good and evil isn’t necessarily a religious concept.

LOST never really referred to them being physically lost anyway.

Posted in humor, sarcasm, technology, interpretation, emotion, wild guesses, religion | Print | 2 Comments »

25. April 2010 by Frank.

Forgive me the tech metaphors I tend to employ but that’s the way my mind works.  Maybe I should use the onion metaphor from Shrek or perhaps I should search online for some new ones.  Or maybe I should just say, “layers,” with the assumption you know what I mean.

Nope, interface is the right word.

I have relationships with a number of christians, I talk with them quite a bit.  Some I have known for many years which tends to let us be quite casual and open at times.  Some of these people I know well enough to know what the real person is really like underneath all the layers of conformity they present to the world.

(My own layers are rather thickly applied because no one seems to understand who I really am.)

Nevertheless, there are few examples of the christian persona that I would like to discuss.  It shows up most noticeably when someone lets slip something they are really thinking that doesn’t fit the holy mask they wear most of the time.  It frequently involves letting a swear word slip or an attitude show itself that contradicts the accepted religious requirement.

There is a small button on the Windows 7 taskbar that, when you hover the mouse over it, makes all the open windows become transparent to show the desktop underneath.  It’s called Aero Peek.  It really isn’t terribly useful but it illustrates what I’m getting at.

There is an interface layer that is what you’re working with but there is a hidden layer underneath it that is the actual system that runs everything.  In the old days DOS was behind the shiny new Windows 95/98 surface.  Way underneath that is the actual binary machine code that the hardware actually communicates with.  Whatever program or browser you’re working with is on top of a phenomenal amount of underlying technology.

It’s the same way with people in general, not just christians.  Christians have an additional interface layer, however, that causes them to mask their true feelings at times.  With all their emphasis on sin and holiness there are a great many things they really can’t admit to liking or indulging in. 

This can go to ridiculous extremes as illustrated by anti-gay preachers who eventually get caught with their pants down.

But it can also be as minor or as simple as wearing makeup or jewelry, playing cards, watching TV or movies, or swearing.

Certain situations occur which make it clear that people I know like or do certain things but their religion keeps them from admitting it.  They pretend that they haven’t let it slip but they know that they did.  This causes guilt and a need to repent.

Repenting for things that really aren’t worth the effort.

You’ve probably encountered people who get terribly offended if you swear.  But have you ever caught them at a bad moment and listened to what they spew forth?  Why doesn’t that offend them?  True, they might repent afterwards, but if it wasn’t there to begin with, where did it come from?

The Jim Carrey movie The Mask comes to mind.  “We all wear masks,” says the Ben Stein character.  The big difference in this movie was that the mask brought forth the real person underneath, instead of hiding the underlying layer – it revealed it.  Most masks in real life are designed to hide the truth.

What does your interface layer reveal about the real you?  What does it hide?  Is it there to protect yourself?  Or is it artificial because you want to fit a constructed image that your church or organization wants to promote?

Or is what I see what I get?

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11. April 2010 by Frank.

I saw a professional documentary last night about “The Adventists” at the local Seventh Day Adventist university.  It was not so much about the religion as it was about their medical practices on the cutting edge.  Robotic surgery (or remote surgery), premature infant heart transplants, longevity, and what they called the Adventist Lifestyle.  It was not made or financed by the SDA church.

There was more emphasis on being vegetarian than there was on being religious.

The film did touch on the failed expectation of Christ’s second coming back in 1844 and acknowledged that it was referred to as The Great Disappointment.  It even alluded to Ellen G. White’s visions in a manner of fact way that showed them almost as seizures.  Neither of these events seemed to bother anyone.

I found it interesting that they don’t treat spirit, soul, and body as something separate like a great many other denominations do.  You are your body, there’s not some separate spirit thing that is not completely connected to it.  They use the word holistic as if it were a good thing.  Thus their emphasis on what you eat, plant based food only.  No smoking, no drinking.  No meat.

No smoking is no problem, I never liked cigarettes.  (Weed, that’s a different story.)  I do like drinking but not anything like I used to do.  All it takes is 2 beers or one strong drink to put me under the table nowadays.  So it’s no longer a problem (I do it for medicinal purposes – laugh if you must.)  It relaxes my arm.

I gave up salt 12 years ago – I won’t put that stuff on anything anymore.  But I have no desire or interest in giving up meat.  I also had to give up dairy, that stuff is rat poison to me.  Although I do admit I have grown tired of beef, ground beef, hamburgers.  I used to live on burgers.

I just do not see myself becoming a complete vegetarian.

Nor do I see becoming religious as a necessary part of my life.  Several senior citizens interviewed in the documentary attributed part of their longevity to being involved in the loving atmosphere of their church.  The relationships there uplifted them and encouraged them.  One guy was 98 years young and demonstrated more energy than I’ve ever had even when I was a kid.  Another particularly spunky 80 something lady said she had one cardinal rule for life, “I never eat anything that has a mother.”

I never fit in back in my religious days.  I was not part of the social community.  My wife, on the other hand, thrives on that aspect of religion.  People always regarded me as if I were set apart somehow.  They reacted to me most peculiarly.  It always seemed to be a matter of them knowing I didn’t believe the same as they did.

So the whole religion as a social support mechanism never worked for me even when I wanted it to.

I doubt I’ll ever be completely free of religion.  Everyone I know is religious to some degree.  I’m married to a very social religious woman.  I’m certainly not going to give that up just because I might have to go to church once in awhile to keep peace in the family.  But there is a side benefit in attending these events within differing denominations.

Christianity is not all the same.

The most obnoxious and vociferous religious speech and activity that makes it into the news is not necessarily representative of every religious person you meet.  The religious right and those who speak for them do not speak for the vast majority of the godly.  I could tear apart SDA doctrines just as easily as I could those of the Pentecostals, Baptists, Catholics, etc..  But I think we’re wrong to dump all the religious people in our lives into one big category and denounce them all.

You can’t put all of us under one label and describe what we’re really like, either.

Posted in interpretation, technology, listen, hearing, education, religion | Print | 1 Comment »

27. March 2010 by Frank.

This past week has been a real pain in the ass.  My ‘02 Malibu which I paid off last year has been a money pit almost since the day I bought it.  I have wasted nearly $2000 on repairing it since I finished paying for it.  $800 of that occurred just two weeks ago when I had the engine repaired because antifreeze was mixing right in with oil.  I was warned it could fail again but that it should probably run fine for a few more years.  It barely made it for a couple of weeks.

My budget would not allow for even considering to buy another car.

I knew I was screwed when the temperature gauge shot up to the maximum instantaneously on the way home.  I put some antifreeze in it the next morning so I could make it to work.  It was all gone by that afternoon.  It wasn’t on the ground.  I almost didn’t make it to the garage a few miles away before it belched a huge cloud of back smoke and died.

You need a new engine, says the mechanic.  Only $2800!  Yeah, right.  No way is that worth it.  The Blue Book value of the car if it was in good shape was several hundred less than that.  I didn’t have that much money anyway.

So I did my taxes (I had been deliberately waiting as long as I could because I figured something would happen and I’d need money).  Thanks to Obama and the Democrats I got back more than I put in.  So now I have enough to either buy a new motor or try to find a cheaper newer car.

So I drove around to all the dealers on Sunday to see what was available in late model used cars.  Not much, it turns out.  Unless you’ve got $13000 or more.  I was thinking $6000 maximum.  So then I fired up the internet and shopped online.  After a couple hours I found the perfect car, an ‘04 PT Cruiser with only 52,000 miles and in excellent condition for $6000.  Putting $3000 down, I was able to get financed for a pretty reasonable payment.  The only problem with that is simply that I’m back to extreme belt tightening with nothing to fall back on again.

That’s my tale of mirth and woe.

God didn’t enter the picture until I told one of the women at work my sob story.  It was amazing how fast she worked all those events into a “god arranged it that way” rationalization.  You see, god knew the old car was going to fail months ago so he planted the idea in my head that I should hold off on my taxes.  And naturally, he had picked the perfect replacement car already and had set into motion the events which would bring the car to the dealer exactly when I needed it.  He also arranged for the original owners to be good christian folk who knew how to properly care for god’s assets.  He did all this to demonstrate his great love, wisdom, compassion, and provision for such a wretched sinner as me.

Did I call bullshit or compliment her for her creativity?  Fortunately, I was spared doing either by the boss who wanted to talk to her right at that particular moment.

If god really wanted to show me all that, why didn’t he stop me from buying that piece of crap years ago?   I wasted a hell of a lot of money on that car, money that could have been used for much better things.  God sure goes to ridiculous lengths for some half assed results.

I probably should have stuck with a skateboard for the foreseeable future.

Posted in humor, technology, listen, hearing, religion | Print | 7 Comments »

19. February 2010 by Frank.

My memory is full of gaping holes since the stroke.  Large parts of my pre-stroke life are completely gone.  My current short-term memories are rather limited, to say the least.  I generally have to rely on some random stimulus to get access to some forgotten memory.

I realize there’s nothing particularly unique about that, it works that way for pretty much everyone.

But what do you do when detailed events, including names, don’t elicit any response at all?  I believe I mentioned it back when it happened, but my father was reminiscing about my early teen years in the neighborhood.  He was rattling off names and describing how the whole neighborhood came over to our house to play football and other games because we had quite a bit of land out back complete with a pond full of fish.  I recognized a lot of the names because they were neighbors for many many years.  But I couldn’t come up with a single memory about doing anything with any of them.

Nothing.

My dad covered several years but I drew a blank for the entire period.  It was as if he was talking about the experiences of some other person.  It was an awkward conversation.  And it was weird.

Especially weird since I do think of myself as a different person than I used to be.  That guy I was as a teenager doesn’t exist anymore. (Big surprise.)  That guy I was up until the ripe old age of 43 doesn’t exist anymore.  (Here’s where the weird comes into play.)  I have some similarities to him but I’m not him.  Why should I expect to be able to access his memories?

That’s why I tend to use the same stories over and over, I’ve got limited material to work with.

It’s also why I tend to go in random directions with this blog.  Often I’ll read something which triggers memories which I tend to write down before I forget them again.  Kind of like LSD flashbacks to the 60’s and 70’s.  Of course, I try to encourage that by having random PINK FLOYD songs come up on Pandora while I’m trying to write.

Music is one of the few things that my memory gaps don’t seem to cover.  Although I have to admit I really don’t understand why I used to like URIAH HEAP so much.  Similarly, I’m not sure if it’s memory or maturity which makes me wonder how I could ever have thought BLAZING SADDLES was actually a funny movie.  I guess that’s not really abnormal.

I used to read a couple of hundred books a year but in the last 12 years I’ve only read a handful.  (I still read a lot but it’s almost all online.)  Music is still important but I used to buy two or three albums a week.  Now I might buy a disc every year or two whether I need it or not.  Movies have remained the most consistent from the old man to the new man.  I still prefer science fiction/fantasy/action/adventure to everything else although I indulge in quite a few musicals and (gasp) chick flicks.  My taste in TV shows is the same as movies but I don’t have a clue what night or network anything I like is on.  I don’t watch TV on my television, I watch a few shows on HULU.

The thousand pound gulley cat in the picture, however, is religion.

I was fully planning on becoming a full time preacher.  I was even convinced that in order to do that I might have to start my own church.  Gung ho doesn’t begin to describe my attitude.  I was a fanatic of the first degree.  Nothing could stop me including multiple setbacks thrown in my way by other preachers intimidated by my style and passion.  I was so into living by faith that I nearly killed myself by refusing to take essential medicines to control my blood pressure.  I was an all or nothing type.

I still am.

I don’t understand this wishy-washy, agnostic, I’m not quite sure, stuff.  You are either a believer or you’re not.  Hot or cold.  Lukewarm will get you spit out, read your bible.  You don’t actually think that you can believe just a little just in case and be able to fool god into thinking you’re the real deal?  You don’t actually think just saying the magic words without any real conviction will get you in and keep you in without requiring all the other obedience necessary?

Seriously, folks, according to the bible, god has shown up in undeniable ways before and people still didn’t believe in him.  Study out some old testament Hebrew history.  If god were to show up today all over the earth at once, billions of people still wouldn’t believe he was really god.  Because if any little preconceived notion about him proved wrong, you would reject him; you would not automatically accept any new evidence, no matter how powerful.

Quite a few atheist bloggers like to claim no real atheist isn’t willing to be persuaded by some real proof.

Nonsense.  Jesus was god’s best statement to mankind.  Here’s a guy wandering around for three years speaking a few words of wisdom and performing some relatively minor magic tricks.  Supposedly the religious leaders didn’t recognize him but the common people did.  Those same common people turned right around and called for his condemnation when stirred up by the priests.  Those same common people did not rise up and save him from the Romans. 

Do you really think if he appears again that all the atheists, Hindus, Muslims, etc., are going to rise up and proclaim him king?  Now that there are actual explanations for how things work and technology has reached a point that it would appear godlike to any primitive person, do you really think any of god’s simple tricks are going to be sufficient proof?

I look at religion now and all I see is superstition.  Primitive fear.  Ignorance.  How could I have devoted myself to it for so long?  I first accepted the message when I was at the absolute lowest point in my life.  I had no resistance to the appeal of someone who would forgive me, cleanse me, make me whole, and become my best friend.  Why do you think they use funerals to preach their salvation message?

How can so many people be so blind to the fairy tale aspect of their holy word?  God gets so disgusted with sin that he wipes out all life except an impossible collection on an ark which includes people who are still sinners.  It took no time at all for sin to reclaim the world.  Bad plan there, god.  But we are also told that Jesus was the lamb slain from the beginning, he was the eternal plan for salvation.  If that’s the case what purpose did the flood serve?

Or how about the tower of Babel?  Do you really think they could have built a skyscraper taller than anything that exists now back in those days?  God was so threatened that he came down and confused the languages of men to stop them.  We have probes going to other planets and my computer can operate in multiple languages.  You can carry a little device in your pocket that will let you translate languages.

That may have impressed some primitive goat herders but what’s the big deal now?  I’ve been on the moon Pandora which was cool as hell, but it was all technology.  Think about it, we have moving pictures (with sound!) that come right out of thin air and we think absolutely nothing of it.  It’s perfectly normal and no big deal.

God would have to pull off the biggest stunt ever to convince the whole world and even then it would not do it.  But read your bible.  God doesn’t work that way.  His miracles and his power keep getting smaller and smaller in his own book.  His followers keep getting more and more simple minded.  God makes appearances in grilled cheese.  That’s not exactly big time proof.

I look and I wonder.  Why didn’t these things jump out at me back in the day?  Why didn’t the absurdity strike me?  Why didn’t I question the things I was taught?  The man of god said that god’s word said that’s how things are and I believed it. 

If only I could remember why I was so gullible.

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8. January 2010 by Frank.

This is the fifth post I’ve written in the last two weeks but it is only the first post I’ve posted out of all of them.  Why?  Because I didn’t like the direction they were going. 

That direction was “nowhere”.

Not that they weren’t interesting, mind you.  They were just too much a reflection of my curmudgeonly anti-holiday / anti-tradition rantings that I do every year at holiday time.  In other words, I was following my own tradition of griping about other people’s traditions.  And, somehow, that just seemed wrong.

I do expect to get an earful of new material next week when I attend an “end of the world” seminar with a friend.  I’ve never heard of the speaker at all but I do know he’s Seventh Day Adventist so I have a pretty good idea of the direction he’ll be heading.  Yes, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment, but sometimes this sort of thing can be amusing if not informative.

I was always a fan of end of the world science fiction and that didn’t change when I became a christian.  I just traded mankind, aliens, and natural disasters for god, the devil, and demons as the cause of worldwide destruction.  The christian variations on the theme weren’t nearly as entertaining as the science fiction stories but I gave them more weight because they were based on the bible.  And since the bible was the word of god they had to be true and accurate.

Yeah, right.

I read multiple dozens of such books back in the 1980’s.  They were full of all kind of dire warnings and predictions stated with much bravura and unquestioned certainty; after all, god’s prophecies never fail.  Well, that was 30 years ago and hardly any of those declarations came to pass.  In fact, the average science fiction story by some hack writer was far more accurate in its predictions than anything the christian hack writers ever came up with.

One such book I remember was “When Your Money Fails” by Mary Stewart Relfe.  Not that it was a good book worth remembering.  It was a book full of all sorts of actual photos of diabolical mark of the beast money fantasies.  Well, at least, they were actual photos until you got to the last page where the author admitted they were all fakes (in very very very small print) designed for illustration purposes.  What’s remarkable is that there’s a website for this right here.  I only looked at the first page but can anyone say conspiracy theory?

Be very afraid of those embedded microchips.

Something far more plausible and disturbing is the retina scanners that deliver up tailored to the individual advertising in the movie MINORITY REPORT.  One of my blogs back in the day allowed for advertising so I put Google’s Ad Sense on it (this was when they first started promoting it).  It scared me to death when it started displaying ads that were about the exact same subjects as my current posts.  It didn’t take long to understand the technology behind it but it was quite eerie at first because I had never seen anything that uncanny.  Tailored advertising is here; tailored to the individual isn’t that far off.

Be afraid of that.  Especially if advertising works well on you.

Conspiracy theories seem to abound these days but they are really nothing new.  It’s when they are tied in with religion and right wing politics that they become really scary.  Because, unfortunately, otherwise ordinary people eat this stuff up.  The last time I went to one of these seminars there were over a thousand people there.  The one next week is in a much bigger building.  Even though I can’t remember the guy’s name I fully expect the place to be packed.

Don’t worry about me.  I am already practicing my eye rolling and covering my laughter with sneezing fits.  Not sure what to do if snoring occurs.

Posted in communication, technology, humor, interpretation, listen, education, hearing, signs, religion | Print | 4 Comments »

22. December 2009 by Frank.

With an 83% rating on RottenTomatoes, AVATAR, James Cameron’s latest masterpiece can best be described as awe-inspiring.  In 3D.  I don’t know if it has the same impact in 2D (apparently it does, a friend tells me he thinks it is the best movie ever made and he only saw the 2D version).  I wish it was convenient for me to go see it on an Imax screen in 3D, I would probably be trying to think of more superlative words than mere awe-inspiring.

I’ve seen 5 or 6 digital 3D movies and while the technology is impressive (very mild headaches instead of bleeding eyes) the movies themselves really gained nothing by the third dimension.  Cool but hardly worth the extra expense.

AVATAR is completely different.  It is what you would expect 3D to be, real depth and actual physicality.  The movie takes place on the planet Pandora which is the most real, super detailed, living, breathing sci-fi/fantasy world ever created.  I never once felt like I was not in a real place.  Pandora is real, fantastic, and totally alien.  The overwhelming size of everything, from the towering heights of the Hometree to the seemingly miles deep vistas of canyons, waterfalls, and floating sky islands, staggers the imagination.  The incredibly vibrant colors of the various flora and fauna are beautiful to behold.  I saw one review mentioning that he/she thought Cameron had invented some new colors, I think that’s probably true, I’ve never seen anything that looks so breathtakingly gorgeous.  Did I mention how real it was?

I never once thought I was looking at computer animation, I was completely immersed in the planet Pandora.  Nothing seemed to be just a gimmick like every other 3D movie ever made.  There weren’t any sharp pointed objects leaping out at you just to startle you.  The film uses 3D like it was natural, it’s just how you see things.  It created incredible heights and amazing depths, none of which seemed forced or faked in any way.

The story is very simple.  There isn’t anything wrong with that like some critics imply.  It’s simple and powerful.  I don’t think a complicated or convoluted plot would have been appropriate with the sensory overload the lush gorgeousness of the planet produced.  Consider the basics of any epic fantasy and it’s all there.

It works because the Na’vi are real characters.  They are real people with intense expressions and emotions which are beautifully portrayed by their facial expressions.  One of the big complaints with computer animation is the eyes, until now no one has gotten them quite right.  You’ll never even notice in this movie which means they look entirely natural.  I never felt I was watching special effects moving around.

I bought everything that was happening as if it were all real.  Filmed on location with some great native actors.

I’ll have to see the movie several times before I get all the words and the names figured out.  I definitely want one of those flying dragons for my very own even though it would try to kill me to let me know it chose me.  Again, I never thought of them as special effects.  The Na’vi’s relationship with the animals was very intense and personal.  Once bonded, no one else could ride it.  They were equally bound to the forest and all the other life that abounded there.  Very native American in many ways.

To say that the final battle is spectacular is a vast understatement.  You will not be cheering for the humans and their advanced spaceships and weaponry.  Their motive is simple greed and that greed justifies what amounts to genocide.  It’s disgusting, watch their faces when they get their marching orders and then watch closely when they realize what they have done.  Truly epic.

Best movie ever made?

Yes.

Posted in humor, technology, listen, hearing, emotion | Print | 3 Comments »