4. March 2010 by Frank.

This is a test post.

There is no actual content here. If it works there will be later.

Just messing around with my Ubuntu dual boot system.

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15. December 2009 by Frank.

Pain hurts.

Toothache pain hurts more than some other pains.

Nerves running through your sinus cavities and directly into your brain from your teeth hurt more than other nerves.

In other words, ouch!

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Christmas music has rotted my brain already after only a couple of weeks.  One two hour shopping trip with my wife has driven me to the edge of Bah Humbug permanently.  I know that I should get out of retail if I can’t stand all the crap that goes with retail this time of year but I am stuck for the time being.  Why anyone thinks Christmas is a christian holiday is beyond me.

Christmas is an artificial marketing phenomenon designed to move as much unnecessary product as possible while liberating vast amounts of money no one can afford to actually spend.  It is a day of greed without equal.  Churches can whine about commercialism all they want but the truth is that the holiday has been usurped from them just like they usurped it from the pagans.

I have some old Charlie Brown paperbacks from back in the day.  In one of them I was looking at there was a routine with Charlie Brown upset about trying to buy a Halloween mask.  He was upset because they didn’t have any.  They didn’t have any because they were already putting up Christmas decorations.  This book was dated 1959/1960.

Think about that.  The same thing people whine about now was common fifty years ago! 

The Christmas season has been starting right after Halloween for at least the last fifty years and yet it is rehashed like it is a new phenomenon every one of those years.  It is probably a safe bet to assume it goes back even further.  Talk about keeping your traditions alive.

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I have encountered a few people who use the phrase, “Merry Christmas,” as if it were some kind of attack.  I think these folks buy into the whole fake “War! On! Christmas!” bullshit that Fox News likes to promote.  They get mad at me because I don’t offer any holiday greeting at all.  I personally don’t care and my store doesn’t require it, we’re supposed to thank people for their business and be friendly but that’s it.  I’m friendly enough but I don’t feel any need to give any kind of holiday greeting just like I don’t feel the need to say bless you when someone sneezes.  You do know the superstitious nonsense that’s based on, don’t you?  I just don’t see the need.  (Although I will return a holiday greeting to people just being nice about it.)

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It hasn’t been much of a season for big blockbuster movies.  2012 was ok but I have no desire to see it again.  I refuse to bother with teenage vampire romances even though I really like vampire movies.  I have high hopes for AVATAR because James Cameron does have an impressive history of great sci-fi.  SHERLOCK HOLMES has Robert Downey Jr. so that’s two major points in it’s favor but it also has Guy Ritchie directing which is a potential downer.  We shall see.

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Right wing religion in the news has been on the lame side recently.  Getting Rick Warren to speak out against anti-gay laws in Uganda is hardly of interest.  Why would anyone believe anything the lying bastard says?  And Uganda is hardly a bastion of human rights to begin with.  If you want to see where prejudice lives just look at organized religion.  Really how is this news?

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There haven’t been any really good church signs to mock lately so I’ll have to use a lame one.  “A man wrapped up in himself makes a small package.”  Sort of Christmassy.  All of you secularists are self centered, small minded people.  If you focus on Jesus, you’ll be a big package.  Less of me and more of thee. 

Except that doesn’t really work.  If it did why would the church feel the constant need to teach its people to be humble?  Why would there be so much focus on what is called brokenness?  Pride is a bad thing, it has to be beaten out of you.  The only ego to be fed is the big guy.

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It’s no secret I don’t get much in the way of comments here despite having pretty good traffic.  Lately, I’ve noticed that if I comment on someone else’s blog the thread immediately dies or my comment is completely ignored amongst all the others.  I have several examples of both.  Apparently I am death to conversation.  Even after much introspection and wringing of hands, I still don’t know why.

It’s really strange because I’m such a nice guy.

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The baler was full at work yesterday so I had to make a bale.  All 4 wires broke when the bale hit the pallet.  There’s no way on earth to tip that back into the machine and even if there was you could never get the door to close again.  So I had to move it all by hand.  It was 30 degrees back there so I had on my sweater but I was sweating profusely.  And the Christmas music was blaring on its 4th or 5th go around.  So I spent 4 hours in frozen hell cleaning up the disaster.  You better believe I’m in the xmas spirit.  Ho Ho Ho, indeed.

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28. November 2009 by Frank.

In only one year and seven months this humble little blog just went over the 200,000 mark.  That makes me feel good.  Thank you very much to all who visit here.

Now if I can just figure out how to get some more of you to speak up and leave comments.

Then I would know for sure if some of those 200,000 were actual people.

Thanks, everybody, I really appreciate you.

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11. October 2009 by Frank.

Periodically, I have recurring nightmares.  They almost invariably take place in the factory I worked at for 23 years before I had the stroke and became a new man.  They always involve people I knew, whom I thought were my friends.  They always take place in the factory, which is quite recognizable even though it is always altered in some bizarre manner.  Tonight it was several thousand times bigger and employed thousands more bedraggled people.  It featured extremely odd material handling equipment including a spinning lift truck which shot out an enormous arm that grabbed objects with pinpoint accuracy before rapidly spinning back into a compact ball.

It was quitting time which was after midnight.  Everyone looked as if the life was completely drained out of them.  They were all dressed in shabby winter coats and other garb.  They shuffled past the time clock in a near zombie-like procession but then became incredibly nimble as they had to go to great lengths to dodge the aforementioned material handling machines in the parking lot.  These machines were moving every kind of container under the sun with completely disregard for the workers attempting to leave the plant.  Several groups were crushed under huge cargo crates but no one had time to notice because they were so busy trying to save themselves from the same fate.

By the time the workers made it to the far side of the parking lot there were only hundreds instead of thousands of them.  But they weren’t out yet.  The office building now had to be passed through.

This building was a labyrinth of featureless black glass panels.  People were crashing into invisible walls and being trampled to death when they fell.  The hundreds were reduced to tens and twenties.  These decimated groups made it up stairwells to a lighted section of the building.  At first it seemed empty but gradually there were signs of white collar workers in various cubicles.  They sat at computer terminals typing but they were all faceless.  Literally.

Then the remaining groups burst into an area that looked like a shopping mall.  It was almost entirely women’s clothing stores featuring pathetically bad clothing, brightly colored fabrics the were essentially just rags.  The women in the groups began ooh-ing and ah-ing and eventually started having orgasms as they hurried to touch the pretty fabrics.  They pulled all their money from their purses and coats and gladly threw it at the feet of the faceless minions who worked the stores.  Once they entered a store they never left.

The few remaining men took no notice of this but rushed on to the back side of the mall where there were several bars.  They rushed inside and began ordering beers.  They drank as fast as they could so they could order more.  They, too, spent every last penny they had.  They all drank themselves into a stupor which lasted all of five minutes before an alarm sounded and a voice announced that it was time for work.  They dutifully made their way back to the factory.

New workers were being brought in by the busload.  There were more familiar faces among them.  They trudged in and immediately began working, blank faced, glassy-eyed, and drooling.  Thus another workday had begun.

And thus I woke up unable to go back to sleep.  I used to wonder why I frequently woke up more tired than when I went to bed.  Vivid dreams like this are the reason; I’m far more physically active in the dream world than I am in real life.  This is what my brain is doing at 3 AM.

No wonder I’m worn out all the time.

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19. September 2009 by Frank.

This week I auditioned for
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at my local college.  I did not get the part I wanted (the lead naturally) not because I wasn’t good enough but because I stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the cast because of my age.  Most of the plays I have done there have had a healthy balance of the young college age beginners and the, shall we say, chronologically advanced old timers who still enjoy hamming it up now and then.  Not this time.  The old farts like me didn’t show up and that limited the character I would be believable playing.  So I’m not Trotter, I’m Metcalf and I only have 54 lines to remember.

This is not much of a challenge and that disappoints me.  I do these things to force my memory to function better.  The only thing difficult is faking a British accent.

At the same time I volunteered to host the Humanist Symposium on September 27.  That is only one week away.  So far I have 3 submissions, two of them by the same person so essentially I have two submissions.  The Carnival of the Godless I hosted several months ago was similar, all the submissions showed up at the very last minute.  Literally.  This is hardly encouraging.

I haven’t written it yet but I have a great big idea for a theme to tie it all together (assuming I get anything to tie) that will be quite the opportunity to show off my wacky side.  It should be a great way to increase traffic here.

A couple of nights ago I was at my friend’s house to help with his incredibly feeble computer once again.  (He’s going to buy a new one but I convinced him to wait for the new machines with Windows 7 preloaded.)  Despite my protestations he insists on claiming I am a gift from god.  Nobody has my computer knowledge and my patience (which is very Job-like) and could possibly be as good as I am at it.  So the only possible explanation is that god sent me.

I’m mean shit!  I’m a flaming atheist, aren’t I?  How can I have any street cred in the computer or atheist worlds if this guy goes around singing praises to god for me?

He had the radio on to a religious news station that was reporting the teachers who illegally took kids to a church function had somehow won their case.  He was amen-ing that like it was a good thing.  Of course it was good in his worldview.  Not so in mine.

Why do these people think it’s all right to cram their religion down everyone else’s throats?

I don’t want a world without religion, some people obviously need it, but I do wish I could live in a world where declaring yourself an atheist wouldn’t get you ostracized from all your family and friends.  I’ve been on Facebook for awhile now but I have no intention of linking it to here.  Mention atheism there and I would be instantly ruined and then some.  Everyone on your friends list gets to see everything about you and what you post instantly whether you want them to or not.  I like to be me but I have to keep some things anonymous for my own well-being.

In the meantime, I have purchased a new 1TB hard drive for my soon to arrive free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.  I wanted a Western Digital that was on sale until I discovered it didn’t come with a cable and that the warrantee was screwy.  A couple of things have turned up lately with odd warrantee protection; you must register it in a certain time or you don’t get the 3 to 5 year version, you only get one year.  Not a total deal breaker but very strange nonetheless.  My old drive with XP is definitely showing signs of imminent failure.  I have nearly 60,000 photos on that drive (and backed up on the second drive (backed up on the external drive (and backed up on DVD’s))) and I do not want to risk losing them.  Having suffered severe hard drive failures before (and learning the hard way) I am department of redundancy department certified crazy about backing up my system.

The play does have one other thing going for it.  One young woman is so drop dead gorgeous that she’s worth the price of admission all by herself.  As Jim Carey once said, “Smokin’!”  I’m quite sure she will never even give me the time of day.

So not only am I an old closet atheist who’s a blessing from god, I’m an anal retentive dirty old man with delusions of grandeur and self importance to boot.

Aren’t you glad you know me?

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14. September 2009 by Frank.

You will risk missing the latest edition of the Humanist Symposium.  And that would be tragic, pure and simple.  Besides, it’s going to rain all day and even a cup of hot chocolate won’t cheer you up.

So make every effort to be right here for the very best (atheist, humanist, free thinking, joy of life without religion) writing you can find anywhere online.

You’ll be so happy after you read you won’t even miss the hot chocolate.

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7. September 2009 by Frank.

You could have seen the opening of the new fountain that you can play in.

You could have had some water up the wazoo.

You could have risked your camera getting wet.

Or you could have gotten hosed again.

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5. September 2009 by Frank.

This has been the mildest (coldest) Summer on record here in this part of Michigan.  Outdoor beach activities and business have been way down but the weather has been beautiful overall except for a few really stormy days which only occurred on weekends.  Basically, if you want to deny global warming this Summer just screamed, “See, there ain’t no stinkin’ global warming!”

Of course, what’s true here isn’t necessarily true anywhere else.

This is also back to school time which means all our local retailers are getting trampled by massive hordes of back to school shoppers looking for deals.  We sold 12,000 paper folders for a penny each in 3 days.  Do you know how many people brought 5 or 6 little kids with them because there was a limit of ten on the folders?  Each little kid comes through the line with ten folders and a dime.  The company does it to get shoppers in the store but it backfires on them because these people only come in for the penny items, they never buy anything else.  The corporate greed is bad enough (they’re even going to stay open until 10 PM Monday night) but the greed of the customers is just as repulsive.  The sense of entitlement and the outrage when we run out of the penny junk is ridiculous.

The shoplifters are also out in force because us just giving stuff away isn’t enough for them.  They have some incredibly complex scams and they work in teams.  My primary job is inventory control so I’m usually the one who discovers what’s been stolen.  I can’t help it but it feels as though these people are stealing from me personally.  It makes me very sad.

Speaking of something for nothing, it does pay to be in tech sales.  Take some training and pass a few tests and Microsoft will give you Office 2007 Standard and Windows 7 Ultimate.  I’ve already got my copies reserved.  Norton does the same thing with their products but unfortunately none of their stuff will run on Windows 7 yet.  A few hours of my time has netted me over $1000 of free top quality software in the last couple of weeks.  Of course, I also run mostly open source and beta software which doesn’t cost anything (except potential computer disasters) and the only thing I buy is an occasional game from the bargain bin.  Computing can be frugal.

Today is the dedication of a huge new fountain down by the beach.  It’s laid out like a giant compass and the artist renderings of it make it look like it creates some pretty impressive rotating walls of water.  I’m going to go take photos of it.  The museum/convention center complex being built next to it won’t be ready yet but they are supposed to have some of the carousel horses on display.  There used to be a very popular amusement park on the beach up until the 1960’s and it featured an old fashioned merry-go-round.  There is a local group that has been working for many years to get the horses back and restore it to it’s former glory.

This weekend is the Tri-State Regatta, an annual sailboat race featuring hundreds of sailboats.  I’m also going for a photo shoot of that today and tomorrow.  Beautiful, low humidity, mid seventies, abundant sunshine weather is scheduled.

The end of Summer is the beginning of Fall which, as you may have guessed, is my favorite time of the year.  Some trees are already changing colors and it potentially can get very gorgeous here.  The last couple of years have been marred by really weird weather which seemed to bring down the leaves way too fast.  Hopefully, this year will be different since we already had the weird weather for the Summer.  Many weekend photo excursions are amongst my plans.

I bought myself a little pedometer the other day because I really want to know how far I’m actually walking.  I used it at work yesterday and racked up three miles which is what I had estimated.  The instructions for the thing recommend you take 10,000 steps a day which I also accomplished even though my feet are blistered and are killing me.  I’m curious how much ground I cover when I’m out taking pictures for hours at a time.  It looks to me like I may be walking 20 – 25 miles every week which I think is a very good thing.  When I consider that I didn’t even know how to walk eleven years ago right after the stroke, I feel that I have really accomplished something very worthwhile.

I know all of this is off topic and probably of little interest but it’s a three day weekend, it’s beautiful, there’s some really fun things going on, and I have the time and enough money to enjoy it all for a change.  So it’s the end of Summer and the beginning of Fall.  It’s wonderful to be alive.  Life is good.  I’m completely peaceful and full of joy.

I don’t feel like this very often.  I’m going to indulge and revel in it.

Woo hoo!

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12. August 2009 by Frank.

If you don’t eat meat for religious or other reasons why on earth would you make a faux meat meatloaf or a meatless hot dog?  Why would recipes for these things even exist?

In the same way, what is the purpose of non-alcoholic beer?  Or decaffeinated coffee?  Both of those are acquired tastes in their natural form, they aren’t for everyone.  But take out the alcohol and there’s absolutely no justification for beer, same with caffeine and coffee.  Who needs it?  For what exactly?

I’ve had the misfortune of being subjected to all those unnatural things at one time or another and my response is always the same, “WTF is this swill?”  I guess the faux meat thing gets me the most especially when the vegetarianism is because of religion.  Eating meat is sinful and unhealthy so why would you want to make something look like meat and sorta kinda taste like meat?  Are you fooling god?  You’re not fooling me.

If you drink a whole 12 pack of faux beer and still don’t have a buzz but smell like an unflushed urinal what good is that? 

I like coffee but it sure isn’t because it tastes great.  Why would I subject my taste buds to that if I wasn’t going to get an early morning energy buzz going?

(OK, I admit I like fake (SOY) ice cream but that’s because of medical necessity; “real” ice cream or milk is like drinking a can of Drano to me.  The Drano would hurt me the least.)

For that matter, what’s the deal with christian swear words?  You know; darn for damn, shoot for shit, geez for jesus, golly for goddamn, freaking for frakking.  (Well, actually I like frakking since I’m a big BSG fan and it sounds cool.)  Christians use these words in the exact same manner and for the exact same reasons everyone else uses the real words.  But somehow or other these substitute words are soft core instead of hard core and god doesn’t frown on them as much.  Why not?  They have the same intent and purpose.

I didn’t use the real “F” word because my wife hates the real “F” word and throws a fit anytime I use the “F” word.  But if someone says it in a very funny manner in a movie she still laughs at it.  What The “F” word is that about?

So why the substitutes?

Christianity is all about substitution.  A substitute punished for your sins.  An all powerful enemy who makes you do things you don’t want to do instead of owning up to your own desires and behavior.  A fear of hell and eternal punishment instead of actual morals and ethics.  An ancient book written by primitive men instead of reason and thinking for yourself.  A pastor/preacher who tells you what to think and believe instead of studying for yourself.  Watered down words instead of what you really want to say.

I’m not sure why a substitute is more acceptable than the real thing.

All I know is that if I could score some butter pecan soy ice cream I would be in a substitute for heaven.

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23. June 2009 by Frank.

Conventional wisdom says I was supposed to be a mass of blubbering emotionalism on Saturday at my daughter’s wedding.

I am anything but conventional.

Oh, there was pre-wedding hysteria right and left so I felt obligated to be the voice of calm reassurance and reason.  There had been an incredible amount of completely unnecessary drama during the planning of the event already.  I tried to be calm and supportive the whole time.  I did what I could.

Saturday morning was densely foggy but it cleared up into a beautiful bright sunshiny day.  Fridays’ storms had dumped 3 inches of water on the area and knocked over a great many trees.  So there was no choice but for Saturday to be as gorgeous as Friday was damaging.

Things started going wrong after I picked my wife up at the hairdresser’s.  We were walking back to the car when she stepped in a hole, tripped, and fell, severely skinning her knee and elbow.  Blood everywhere but her hair stayed up.  Fortunately the hairdresser had a first aid kit.

The wedding was at 3 and we got to my daughter’s apartment at 2:15.  She and her bridesmaids were getting ready all except for one noticeably missing.  At 2:20 she calls in total hysterics because her dress doesn’t fit her, shouldn’t get it to zip up at all.  It seems her mother altered it 2 days earlier but she hadn’t bothered to try it on.  Her boyfriend was providing the sound system for the bandshell and he was still at her house with her.  My daughter put up with her wailing as long as she could and told her that her freaking boyfriend had better get the bandshell right that minute.  He made it before the wedding started but the bridesmaid didn’t.  My daughter of course had a panic attack and started hyperventilating.

By then the temperature had soared into the high 80’s.  The city had refused to block off the street for us because a World War II re-enactment group was having a parade that started lining up right beside the bandshell at about 2:45.  Fortunately, it was an awful small parade and they were gone before 3.  The turnout of people seemed awfully light for the wedding but that may just have been because there is seating for several hundred and everybody was trying to sit in the shady areas.

Finally, the wedding started and still no one had a clue what the pastor was going to do.  Everything went the way we planned it.  I took the pictures of the girls coming down the aisle, then my carefully selected but uninformed assistant photographer took over.  I hightailed it to the back to walk my daughter down the aisle.  She was a nervous wreck, the missing bridesmaid had really got her upset.  So I went into damage control mode to keep reminding her to just breathe.  She was bawling by the time we got to platform.  I had to lead her to one side to avoid a puddle of water that refused to dry up.  Then I headed back to my camera because she wanted a picture just before the ceremony started.

That was when the idiot pastor pissed me off.

I had no idea what he was planning but he started shaking his head at me, pointed at a spot on the ground several feet away from my camera, and started wagging his finger in a clear “NO!” manner.  I dutifully moved back near my daughter as he started droning on about some standard marriage verses from the bible.  It seemed to take a very long time before he finally asked who gives this woman.  Clever fellow that I am, I knew the answer was her mother and I.  I asked my daughter beforehand if she wanted to do that because it’s old fashioned and traditional but not necessarily politically correct.  She was OK with it but we didn’t know for sure he was going to do it.  Then I went and sat with my wife and forgot about the pictures.

He used all the standard verses and admonitions but he seemed very scatterbrained and wandered all over the place.  He then asked if the bride and groom knew of any reason they shouldn’t go through with it.  My daughter replied, “No, we’re good.”  So then the vows and the rings which were both worded oddly (I think he forgot what he was saying.)  Then he momentarily forgot their names just before introducing them as man and wife.  Then he definitely forgot the obligatory, “You may kiss the bride.”  I was back at the camera as they headed back up the aisle.  My wife’s sister hollered out, “Go ahead and kiss her!”  So we got a great shot where everybody could see clearly.

I could have performed the ceremony much better.  But the retired (it’s easy to see why) pastor was an old World War II buddy of the groom’s grandfather and had performed the ceremony when his parents got married.  A symbolic gesture of good will, so to speak.

Then there was the congrats line as the temperature neared 90.  All of us men were in black.  We were all soaking wet by then.  But everybody was ecstatically happy.

Then we decided wedding party pictures on the beach were in order.  I had a small panic attack just as we got there when I realized I had left my camera bag with two other cameras and a very expensive lens at the bandshell.  It was fortunately still there.

We got some goofy shots that were an awful lot of fun.  There were hundreds of people down there but we used the sand dunes as a backdrop and also the lighthouse.  Some of the poses were hysterical.  One of the groomsmen, who really is quite a character, walked up to a very good looking girl in a very skimpy bikini and told her she was a very sexy lady.  The other guys had dared him.  The shore of Lake Michigan is a very cool place to be in the Summer.

There was another bridal party there at the same time.

By then we were getting some serious sunburn and it was time for the reception.  We all entered to the theme from Rocky.  There seemed to be a whole lot more people at the reception.  The food was generally good and the bartender was excellent.  I had a rum and coke that knocked me on my ass because of the overexposure to the sun.  It was perfectly mixed.  My daughter knows how to arrange a party.  The dancing started and I switched to video because it was really too dark for still photos.  Several women told me my dance with my daughter was so beautiful it brought them to tears.  I danced several slow dances with my wife (who had recovered fairly well from her fall.)  But the bridal party were dance maniacs.  I don’t ever remember having that much energy in my entire life.  They were having a blast and I was having a blast taping them.  This was literally the most fun party I have ever been to.

It is so nice to be a part of pure joy.

The guy who taped my daughter and my dance could be heard saying, “That is one rock steady man.”  Maybe he couldn’t see it but I have never been happier.  That was the most emotion I have felt in eleven years and it was all good.  Pure joy.

Euphoria.

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