28. August 2010 by Frank.

I’ve been moving furniture and am in a great deal of pain.  Which is normally what happens when heavy lifting is involved.  The problem for me is slightly more complex because I don’t know what caused which pain.

I have been feeling like crap all week.  The symptoms vary from day to day.  Some days I feel like I have some kind of intestinal virus but nothing ever develops.  Other days my head gets all plugged up and headachy.  Some days my back hurts like I pulled a muscle, other days it feels like some of my initial stroke related pain.  Still other days it feels like my guts or my kidneys are inflamed but there are no other symptoms indicating such problems.  And then the next day it feels like something else entirely.

This is Year 12 of this sort of thing.

I can hurt myself mainly on my right side without any indication that I did so.  I think I may have pulled a muscle when I lifted my wife’s TV about ten days ago.  It’s old fashioned, huge, and weighs about 80 lbs., very awkward to pick up.  But if I did pull a muscle, I didn’t know it until a few days later when it started getting harder to move my arm and my back started hurting.

Or I could have some kind of infection.

I just don’t know and I can’t afford to go running to the ER every time I have some real or imagined pain.  I can’t tell the difference.

When I first had the stroke, the pain in my arm that has never relinquished began that first day.  I never had any chronic arm pain before.  I sure didn’t have the bizarre agony I live with now.  So after it became apparent it wasn’t going away any time soon, I had them run some tests on it, including x-rays.

In typical “give this guy crappy medical service” fashion, they announced that  I had a massively bad case of arthritis.  How does one develop massively bad arthritis instantly?  This is not arthritis.  It’s a painful variation of paralysis from the stroke which left me still able to move.

Uh oh, contradiction of terms. 

So be it.  I am a walking contradiction of terms.

I am in more pain than most people, I guarantee it’s bad enough it would incapacitate a great many of you without the use of heavy narcotics.  But despite what I feel, I have more energy, more joy, more passion for living than I ever did before.  I am far more determined than ever.

Which is all a very good thing.

But it is a nuisance when I do something that hurts me more and I can’t tell that I did it.  I don’t necessarily feel more pain, I just become aware that something isn’t moving as well or something gets weaker inexplicably.

Phantom pain is quite strange.  There isn’t anything physically wrong with my arm yet I could easily give it a “10” on the pain scale.  This is aggravating to say the least.  I could have a serious sprain or pulled muscle and not know it until I try to move in such a way as to cause the muscle to fail.

So until something else confirms what’s wrong, I’ll just muddle on through.  The worst of the moving is over.  Everything will be back to normal soon.

Which for me is anything but normal.

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

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 »

21. August 2010 by Frank.

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of my mother’s death.  I found myself in a rather foul mood but I’m not sure if that was caused by the tragic memories or because I’ve been feeling quite sick all week.  Or maybe it’s just a combination of ingredients.

A very close knit family I’ve known for a very long time is having a bit of a stressful time.  The mother had open heart surgery yesterday.  She came through it okay.  This family is religious to an extreme so they were all gathered together praying for the mother.  20 – 25 people begging god to let her live.  How do I know this?  I have a reliable witness who was there and admired the family’s bravery in confronting the traumatic event.

My mother also had a fairly large number of people gathered together begging god to let her live as well.  She, obviously, did not.

Does god love this family more than mine?  Were their prayers more fervent or more persuasive?  Did their group have more actual faith than the ones praying for my mother?  Both women were roughly the same age; why was it my mother’s “time” but not this other lady’s?  Does god call people home arbitrarily?  What exactly is the difference?

It was god’s will.

I can’t believe how lame that sounds now.  I couldn’t believe how lame it sounded three years ago.  All the talk about how it was mom’s time and how god called her home and how she was in a better place now.  My mother died horribly in excruciating pain; they were giving her massive doses of drugs far stronger than morphine to try to ease her suffering.  How could anyone find comfort in thoughts of a loving god who couldn’t come up with a more peaceful way to call her home?

It was quite obvious god didn’t give a damn about my mother or my family.

Jesus suffered hell for three days, my mother got three weeks of hell, the entire time suffering the equivalent of third degree burns on the inside of her body.  Who do you suppose actually suffered the most?  Please, Jesus was god.  He only had to do a three day stint for all of eternity.  What exactly did he actually suffer that was so impressive?

Writing these thoughts down like this just makes the whole thing seem so much more ridiculous.  There is no way to explain these tragedies; why one lives and the other doesn’t.  You can’t compare to see who’s the most loved of god.  And just as obviously, you can’t determine god’s will.

So there’s all these variations of doctrine, guesses about what god’s will really is, worrying that you didn’t have enough faith or that you didn’t pray hard enough or for the right thing, or what else you should have done.

There’s no comfort in any of it because if you think about it very hard you realize that your god is an amoral monster.  He allows unimaginable suffering to be inflicted on human beings as part of his will, his perfect plan for your life?  He turns a deaf ear not only to your pleas for help but those of your family and friends as well.  He blames you because you either don’t have enough faith or you didn’t avoid sin.  All this sickness and disease is the result of sin and he’s already done everything he’s going to do about that.  God moves in mysterious ways.

The reason they’re mysterious is because they’re non-existent.

Shit happens.  To you and to people you love.  All you can do is deal with it and move on.

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

15. August 2010 by Frank.

I drove by a sign a little while ago that said, “Living for Jesus is the only life worth living.”  In other words, a life apart from god is worthless.  Which is not only insulting, it’s quite inaccurate.  Unfortunately the people who create these signs and slogans will never acknowledge they know not whereof they speak.

Another nearby sign said, “Miles away from Humdrum!”  I happen to know for a fact that Humdrum is nowhere near here so it’s at least truthful to some extent.  This particular church strives mightily to be hip and upbeat, obviously for the younger generation who respond better to nontraditional services.  I have no intention of going there to find out if they actually manage to accomplish that  goal.  I’ve seen quite a few churches with that same goal over the years, they all admit that tradition just doesn’t draw them in like it used to.  Usually the strategies include up-tempo music instead of hymns, drums, guitars, any instruments other than piano and organ, more socially conscious sermons, more family oriented activities, more spontaneity and less tried and true tradition.  All too often these youth-oriented efforts wind up offending  the older base of the church because they get pushed to the side.

Most places go for the middle of the road combo service.

Or they go for the multiple service model in which they try to appease different groups at different times.

But it all amounts to the simple fact that there is no such thing as the unity of the faith that the bible talks about.  If you think there is any kind of united faith in christianity then you have never been to a Baptist business meeting.  Knowing this, however, leaves me wondering how the religious right has such sway over current politics.  Obviously, something more than just the religion itself unites their causes.

Which probably explains why the atheist movement doesn’t seem to be much of a movement.  What, exactly, do we have in common?  We don’t believe in god.  That’s it.  But even that has variations.

Some say all it takes is proof to get them to change their minds.

Some say there’s no way we can be 100% certain there is no god.  So all we can claim is there is no evidence so it isn’t probable.

Some don’t like the word atheist so they call themselves agnostics, not willing to go all the way.

Some may renounce the christian god but leave the door open for some other.

Some are “militant”, whatever that means.

Some roll over an play dead rather than getting labeled by coming out in the open.  Many are atheist in secret for fear of their immediate society or culture.  Many keep quiet because of family.

Personally, it’s a pet peeve of mine, being told there’s no way to be 100% sure and that no “real” atheist makes that claim is as obnoxious as some christian billboard telling me my life is worthless.  I spent 18 years of my life absolutely certain god was real and was actively involved in my life.  I studied his word, prayed,and served far more than any ordinary pew warmer.  I was a total fanatic. Completely devoted.

But all that fell apart as if it were held together by wishful thinking.

In reality, that’s all it actually amounted to.  When you finally realize that you have an extremely convoluted rationalizing system in place to explain all the failures of your faith then you must finally be willing to admit that your faith and your god aren’t real.  Christians have so many excuses for their god failing to live up to his promises, it’s hard to see why anyone remains attached to him.

I know a deeply devoted christian who is in a bad financial situation similar to what I’ve been going through for years.  He is trying desperately to cling to his faith that god will provide.  By his own admission god isn’t providing and his job isn’t enabling him to live up to his obligations.  I tried to operate this way for many years deeply assured that god would indeed provide.  I borrowed and made deals with the world because god never came through but I continued making excuses for him.  I never once got any money in any manner that could remotely be described as miraculous or praiseworthy.  But, like the good little sheep I was, I continually offered up praises of gratitude.

After awhile you know deep down that you’re just kidding yourself.

But you keep on anyway.  Because the concept of living without faith has been presented as such an abhorrent method of living by every pastor you’ve ever submitted yourself to, that the very idea is repulsive.  Atheists are such depraved, miserable, pathetic excuses of humanity that there’s no way you’d ever want to become like them.

I’ve heard a religious fellow use the word atheist several times recently.  He puts so much absolute disgust into pronouncing the word you get the feeling he thinks they are the worst form of life on the planet.  But if you challenge him on it he admits he has never even met one.  He’s been trained to believe the worst.

Without a shred of evidence or a real encounter.

So the church signs continue to imply that life without Jesus isn’t worth living.  Somehow, without their god, you are less than human or, at least, less than they are.  The thing that is really truly bizarre about all of this is, except for those pious individuals born and raised in the church, all christians were at one time or another unbelievers.  Maybe they believed in a god but they didn’t believe in “the” god.  If they didn’t believe in any god, they were atheists rather they admitted it or not.  I get the feeling atheist has such a negative connotation in our society that even raging atheists don’t want to be called atheist.

It seems as if we need to show them otherwise.

But I often doubt that will ever happen either.

Posted in interpretation, humor, sarcasm, wild guesses, listen, education, hearing, signs, religion | Print | 2 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 »

4. August 2010 by Frank.

Unbelievably, another anniversary is upon me.  It’s time for my annual “Life After Stroke” report.  Curiously enough, Pandora just played Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, which I’ve mentioned before says a lot about me.  Obviously the song isn’t about my life but if I had any talent it might be something I would say.

(Songwriters: David Jon Gilmour & Roger Waters) “Relax

I’ll need some information first

Just the basic facts

Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding

A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon

You are only coming through in waves

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying

When I was a child I had a fever

My hands  felt just like two balloons

Now I’ve got that feeling once again

I can’t explain you would not understand

This is not how I am

I have become comfortably numb.”

I realize a song can mean different things to different people but something about this one really connects with my experience.  Comfortably numb truly describes how I am with my pain.  I have been suffering with this for 12 years now and it’s the only way I’ve been able to handle it.  I could ask my doctor for a prescription for some heavy duty narcotic pain pills and he would gladly oblige.  He did that back at the beginning which is when I discovered that being doped out of your mind is no way to live.

All I got from a neurologist was more prescriptions for even stronger narcotics and the knowledge that I have a “fluffy” brain.  Supposedly that meant my brain looked normal for someone 10 years older than I was at the time.  Which probably means that right now it’s most likely dead already and my body just doesn’t know it yet.

I have done everything I can over the last 12 years to keep my mind active.  I read everything under the sun (except novels I used to love) and constantly try to learn new things.  I keep up with technology.  I plow into things I have no experience with just to keep my mind actively engaged as much as possible.

And I have learned how to ignore pain most of the time.

Unfortunately, I was never able to afford the kind of care I actually needed to overcome the effects of brain damage.  My doctor had little or no experience with stroke survivors and the neurologist I had was of the drug them into a stupor and forget it variety.  I had two pastors at the time and neither of them had any counsel or wisdom beyond keep praying and god will fix you.  My wife told me she wasn’t going to support the family and my “friends” proved to be nonexistent.

So I did what any self reliant brain damaged survivor would do, I studied everything I could get my hands on that described anything remotely similar to what I was experiencing.  My doctor kept insisting that stroke didn’t cause the things that were happening to me but the more I studied the more convinced I became that it did.  When I made contact with other survivors I found out that my experiences were not that unusual and that my doctor wasn’t the only medical idiot out there who denied it.

I have a very dim view of the medical profession.  The most they ever offered me was stronger drugs.  Drugs that essentially made it impossible to function in normal everyday life. 

My religion failed me at the same time.  The love of god was a joke.  How can you be a member of two churches and have no one from either ever call, write, or visit after you suffer a life-altering stroke?  The healing power of Jesus?  Yeah.  Whatever it was that I thought I felt from god all those years was gone in an instant.  I searched diligently for it afterwards but I could not find it.

I did not know how to walk after the stroke, I had to be retrained.  Now it is my favorite thing to do.  I’ve lost at least 20 lbs just from walking the last few months.  I still have problems keeping my balance at times and my feet hate me.  I got in nearly 3 miles this morning before the heat, humidity, and rain ruined the day.

I feel miserable.  That’s my normal condition.  You would be curled up in a little ball, sucking your thumb, and whimpering for your mama if you felt like I do on one of my good days.  You would shoot yourself if you felt like I do on a bad day.  No brag, just fact.

I don’t get any sympathy and I really don’t want any.  Compassion might be nice but I seldom get any of that.  Most of the time I just prefer to be left alone.  I can deal with what I feel like but it takes to much energy to put on a show for people who want me to be happy, bright, and cheerful.  Actually, considering my normal pain level, I am the most cheerful man alive.  I can make other people happy and I can make them laugh.  I just wish someone would make an effort in my direction once in awhile.

And now I live my life just one disaster away from total disaster.

Like the song concludes:  “When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown the dream is gone

I have become comfortably numb.”

Posted in interpretation, humor, sarcasm, wild guesses, listen, emotion, hearing, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

2. August 2010 by Frank.

The sign says, “A smile is a curved line that is the quickest way to straighten someone out.”  I think they think that’s clever and witty or perhaps maybe even pithy.  Personally, I think it’s rather lame.

But then I’m grouchy and having a lazy day.

I was fine until I had to go to work for an hour for the weekly sales meeting.  Since I am on a 5 day vacation before the start of Back To School, it was more than a bit of a nuisance to have to go in.  Apparently, no one felt like working yesterday so nothing got done.  Whoever did work thought it was all right to throw trash in the cardboard baler.  None of us at the meeting were scheduled to work today but the boss figured the only way anything was going to get done was to make us do it before the store opened.  So I got to clean out the baler and take out the trash.  I was not dressed for such activity and was more than annoyed.  My vocabulary descended to it’s lowest depths with great volume.

I really hate that damn store.

Yesterday I watched The Princess Bride to start my day off on the right foot.  Then I went to see Salt, the new Angelina Jolie movie.  It is a non-stop action movie, much more serious than expected, and quite exciting.  I would almost call it an old fashioned cold war spy movie.  I enjoyed it.  Afterwards I solved someone’s computer problems.  As soon as I got home it was time for my weekly three mile hike with my friend followed by a visit from my daughter and son-in-law.  My wife was gone for the rest of the evening so I had to place to myself and got rather mellowed out.  It was a good day.

It wasn’t a good night.  At 4 AM my little cat buddy leaped on my stomach twice.  Right after the second leap she started making noises like she was about to hack up a hairball in my face.  This got her thrown off the bed in a hurry.  I managed to go back to sleep for a couple more hours.  Woke up in a fairly good mood.

But then my hour at work ruined my attitude for the day.

My wife came home from church and announced that she had a meeting with the deacons because she joined the church.  That’s fine for her but it will be thrown in my face somewhere down the road because I should join, too.  It’s just not right that I don’t go.  But I told her before that I would never join that church even if I still went to church.  I read their constitution and there’s several passages in it that I would have been unable to agree with even back when I was super-christian.  Basically, there were several anti-Pentecostal statements which not only contradicted what I used to believe but were also direct contradictions to scripture.  Agreeing to those statements would make me a hypocrite.  Shit like that was important to me but it never phased my wife.

We were never on the same page when it came to religion.

After I left work I drove by a poorly attended church that had a new name on its sign.  Now it is called (something or other) Grace Temple.  For some reason, the word Temple jumped out at me.  I have been noticing quite frequently lately that many religious words seem to be much more superstitious sounding than I ever realized before.  Temple (at least this morning) seemed to have a rather pagan connotation to me.  Images from pseudo Greek mythology popped into my head (maybe because I had just seen a poster for Clash of the Titans a few minutes earlier), but I just had a sense of primitive people afraid of a thunderstorm bringing their offerings to appease their cruel gods.

I went downtown intending to take a walk but there were several hundred people down there because of the chalk art on pavement event.  No place to park so I headed home passing several more churches.  A couple only had a few cars in their parking lots but most were full.  The two biggest churches probably had about a thousand people in attendance each.  That’s more people than you normally see in one place around here at any given time.  I kept wondering why none of these churches had services at 1, 2, 3, or 4 in the afternoon?  Does god take a nap after lunch?  Is god an early riser?  Every one of these places has a 9:30 & 11:00 service and maybe an evening service at 5 or later.  But never anything right after lunch.

I whipped up a ham & egg & cheese sandwich for brunch and then I took a nap.

I awoke grouchy as hell and feeling quite the curmudgeon.  Unfortunately, I haven’t got much fresh material to work with.  I could rip on the reports that the Jordan River is too polluted to allow baptisms.  That brings up the question of just how the water in that particular river is any different from the water anywhere else.  I am quite sure the water that Jesus got dunked in is not the same water that is there now.  So how is it “holy” today?  I read some nutcase that thinks contraception is morally wrong and that people should let god decide how many children they should have.  Doesn’t sound like a wise plan to me; where’s those statistics on unwanted pregnancies?   Another report was a bit more interesting at first in that it covered the rise of some of the spiritual guru nonsense of the 60’s and 70’s.  Because of the Beatles.  Unfortunately, the writer is still looking for more of the same enlightenment.  Sarah Palin used the words on the hand trick again. 

Nonsense up one side and down the other. 

In case I wasn’t clear at the start: the sign was at a church.  At least it didn’t say that a smile is just a frown turned upside down or that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.  Those slogans make me throw up a little in my mouth whenever I hear them.  Smile, it will improve your face value.  Ugh!  I have to concentrate to be able to smile and then I have to be careful because I don’t want anybody to see my missing teeth (which would be quite the feat, I must admit.)  Although I will admit that all it takes to brighten my day is to be smiled at by an attractive woman.

But straighten me out?

Not very likely.

Posted in communication, humor, sarcasm, interpretation, wild guesses, emotion, hearing, signs, religion | Print | 3 Comments »

26. July 2010 by Frank.

Toothache.

Pain.

Ice pick in the eye.

Oh, yeah, I’ve been having a wonderful time.  What’s really disgusting is that yesterday was the first truly decent day in over a month; mid-70’s, low humidity, sunny.  I did go out and walk two miles despite the pain.  I am rather proud I can go two miles without the least bit of trouble even when I feel like crap.  I was feeling quite ill at the time but I didn’t want to let a perfect day go by.

Although I have dental insurance, I’ve got nothing left for the co-pay so I can only hope this passes like it has before.

**********

My sister was here visiting last week.  I picked her up at the airport Monday and then didn’t see her until Friday.  She actually came to my house on Saturday and stayed all of an hour before she had to rush off.  When asked if she wanted to go with us to a concert at the band shell last night she said no, she had to pack for her return trip.  She brought one small carry-on bag.

My family could be the poster children for dysfunctional families.

My parents always treated my sisters and their revolving families differently than they treated me and mine.  This sister has been married 5 or 6 times, has seven children and thirteen grand children.  My parents raised her first two daughters like they were a replacement family during the time I was raising my daughter.  They never once offered to take care of my daughter at any age, they wouldn’t even come to most of her birthdays.  They never came to see any of the events she was involved in.  They didn’t come to her high school graduation or her college graduation.  I’ve been married once for 29 years with one child but somehow I’ve always been the black sheep of the family.  It makes no sense.

I don’t know if I should say these visits are painful for me but they make me feel bad.  They dredge up these memories and feelings that I really have no use for dredging up.  It does make it painfully clear to me why I never had any self confidence when I was younger.  Nothing I did or was good at interested my parents in the least.  The most I ever got from them was, “that’s nice, IF you’re interested in that sort of thing.” It was painfully obvious they weren’t.

**********

Although I am sick to death of politics, I keep up with the latest bullshit.  Watching the whole Shirley Sherrod fiasco unfold was quite painful.  The absolutely blatant racism on display from Fox News is rather disturbing but not unexpected.  What’s really pathetic is the Obama administration’s fear of Fox News and Glen Beck and their pathetic attempts to placate them.  So, instead of being a story about a lying sack of shit “reporter” making up a racially charged lie in order to promote right wing fantasies, we get a story about how the white house has no backbone.

Who cares if some innocent person’s life is ruined in the process?

**********

Tell me something.  Why is it national news that poor little Lindsay Lohan is suffering?  In the VIP section of the county jail with hot tub and other amenities?

**********

And while you’re at it, tell me how I’m supposed to smile through this toothache at work today after I just got an incredible 12 cent raise last week?  I mean really.  A 12 cent raise is like your boss pissing in your shoes while you’re still in them.

**********

Where’s the three stooges with a great big mallet to your head for anesthesia?

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

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 »

10. July 2010 by Frank.

Take a look at this:

There is a verse (Romans 2:24) in the bible that says, “….. God’s name is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you.”  I think this video is a perfect example of that.  It’s certainly one of more ridiculous religious extremist events I’ve ever seen.

It’s things like this that cause some of the gigantic rifts between Pentecostals and everyone else in christianity.

If you are at all familiar with Pentecostal, Charismatic, Word of Faith denominations you surely recognized Kenneth Hagin, the bestower of holy laughter, and his disciple, Kenneth Copeland, Mr. holy excitement himself.  Several other people in this looked awfully familiar as well but I couldn’t put any names with the faces.

Hagin wrote a considerable volume of books and booklets which cover the holy spirit fanatic branch of christianity rather thoroughly.  I read almost all of them.  But this is the first time I have ever seen a video of the man.  I left this religion back in 98 and YouTube wasn’t around then, all I had ever seen of Hagin was still pictures.  I had read about so called holy laughter but that was one experience I never managed to participate in.  Looking at this piece of tripe, I’m glad I didn’t.

The absolute absurdity on display here almost caused me to have some LSD flashbacks. 

While I was of the gifts of the holy spirit are for the church today persuasion, I was deadly serious about it.  I was all for joy and freedom of worship but this sort of thing embarrassed me because of it’s excessiveness.  I had been at conventions and services where the bizarre behavior was in evidence but it had never gone quite this far. Unfortunately, my calm practical spirituality was not what the church I was involved with wanted.  The pastor wanted Hagin’s level of nonsense.  He wanted to “dance” in the spirit.

I never understood why people wanted to act like idiots and claim it was the holy spirit making them behave that way.  I tried to teach what I considered a more “rational” method of behavior.  I failed miserably.  Somehow or other the word “holy” in holy spirit did not make me want to behave like I was having seizures.  Perhaps because I have to deal with my wife having real seizures from epilepsy, I don’t find that something worth mimicking.

People seem to me to be perfectly able to make complete fools of themselves without any spiritual influence at all.

The apparent involuntary muscle spasms on display are not isolated flukes.  I saw one young woman who could turn it on and off with such ease that I got the impression she practiced the behavior in front of a mirror.  She was perfectly controlled until the worship service started then she would begin convulsing and genuflecting spasmodically.  As soon as the worship time was over, she would stop and become serenely calm again.  Instantly.  While not as good at it as she was, I have witnessed hundreds of people exhibiting the same behavior.

Mass hysteria, I think is the proper term.

The extreme presented here obviously isn’t representative of mainline christianity in the least.  The vast majority would rightly condemn this sort of thing but there are untold millions who eat this stuff up.  I pretty much agreed with most of the related teachings of these people but I was convinced you could do it without the bizarre behavior.  I thought it was some clever plot of Satan to keep the rest of christianity away from the real power of god.  They might want that power but they don’t want to act like idiots to get it.

If you’ve never seen anything like this before I imagine you found it rather shocking.  I wasn’t being facetious about the LSD flashbacks.  Watching this clip did cause me to flashback to those days quite vividly.  I participated in more services with this sort of excess than I care to admit.  The affected behavior disturbed me but the underlying sense of power compelled me to remain.  I wanted that power so much so that I was willing to ignore the surrounding stupidity.

So all this wretched excess helped drive me away from christianity.

But the other side, the mainline side, is even more the reason for leaving.  My bible scholar side, my no emotion side, is even more convinced of the delusion of christianity because of the cold hard facts.

Put them together and the whole house of religion collapses on itself.

Excuse me while I head down to the Methadone Clinic.

Posted in interpretation, communication, humor, sarcasm, wild guesses, listen, emotion, education, hearing, religion | Print | 3 Comments »