When did you first realize a lot of it was propaganda?

IF I WON THE LOTTERY…

It is game people play when the idea of winning the lottery comes up.  A new house or a new car, a trip to some place they had always wanted to go.

I will admit that in general my winning the lottery would be kind of a waste.  I truly do not have grand dreams or desires, other than family, friends and the neighbors.  No one would know anything had changed, no one would be driving by the house real slow saying a millionaire must live there!

But one thought that come and it is mainly this time a year.  If I had the money there would be such a Christmas for parents and children of those who can not afford gifts!

And yes it is because of a personal story:

Since moving back to Kansas life has not been all that good, low paying jobs and living just below barely getting by. More Christmas then not the two of us have not given a gift of any kind to each other.

So the kids would at least get something.

One of those Christmases, it was another year of tight money and if not for family choosing to have Christmas diner here there would not have been one for us.  The kids had only the toys we could afford and those were mainly out of the cheap bin.

When it happened, I was under the kitchen sink.  Some how it got clogged and I ended up on Christmas Eve soaking wet and squeezed under the sink taking apart the pipes.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door; I ended up crawling out to be the one answering the door.  There on the front pouch were several black plastic trash bags?  I looked all over the yard but no one was there and I did not see any cars leaving?  To make it even odder, our outside dogs that normally would bark at even leaves blowing by.  But they had never made a sound and were just ten feet away on the patio!

I opened one of the bags and there were toys inside, every bag had toys in them.  Toys suitable for each child and their age!  To this day I have no idea who it was that left those bags on the front pouch.

But if I were to win the lottery, that is what would be happening tonight for every parent who can not afford to make their children’s Christmas bright. And one that they will not be going to school and listening to all their friends bragging about getting the latest toys while they got a dollar doll or cheap plastic car.

And like those parents that Christmas Eve, suddenly the thought of there really is a Santa Clause and perhaps a better world to them that they awoke to that morning.

 

SIR BARRY AND THE ORDER OF THE LEO

Sir Barry had been given the honor of being the chief champion of the people. This high honor came with such weighty responsibilities as being the chief defender of all people, along with the high lord for the welfare of all the villagers within the realm.  He was anointed with the best and most shiny armor and a white charger of the finest lines and strongest flanks. Blessed with total say on the roads and all the crops to enable him to provide for the people.

Oh but he did have his nay sayers.  Sir Barry was of the order of the Leo the Lion but within the court was also the Order of the Dracula the Dragon which was a rival Order of knights.  For as long as any could remember the two Orders had been arguing between themselves as to who was the finest of knights and the best protector of the people.

The last champion of the people had been of the Order of the Dracula and he had been measured and been found wanting. As such the people had chosen from the Order of the Leo for their new chief champion of the people.

The Order of the Dragon could not stop Sir Barry, but could muddy the roads and taint the wheat so that it did not seem as healthy or be as tasty. But still Sir Barry would have the rights to order what shall be best for the people.

With a free reign as to what to do, Sir Barry and his Order decided that everything the people needed would be gathered together in a great box of huge size and bestowed upon the people.  The box was such size that once placed it blocked the center meeting of the roads of the village, and of such weight that it would take several years to be unpacked.  The people would have to wait for the benefits from such a large and burdensome box.

PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

“To take action before something occurs or to prevent something from happening rather then waiting till it happens to deal with it.”

Under the laws of the land, it is not an acceptable defense to say that you have committed a violation of the law in order to prevent a criminal action against yourself or another. A simpler way of putting it is that you can not kill someone that some time in the future may kill you.  Since the future is often written as life moves through what is happening right now.  You can not justify self defense against some one who has at the moment not done anything to kill you.  At the moment they have not put your life in immediate danger, so you are not defending yourself.

The following is based on an actual case where the person did kill his best friend with the claim that he knew that sometime in the future the victim without warning would kill him. FOR THE MOST PART, the authorities did not doubt that this truly was the case. The names are not the true names of the actors involved:

Tim had grown up in a area where the general opinion of the Police was one of distrust.That the Police did not do their job to protect the citizens and more was a occupying force. It did not help Tim’s opinion when he made the decision to get involved in crime.  A younger life of committing crime, getting arrested and serving time.

But with his last prison time, he finally came to believe this was not the life he wanted.  He learned a trade in prison and if you ever took a look at the choices of trade that are available to learn while locked up, it might make you wonder just how anyone could really make it on the outside.  But Tim did, he worked hard and soon his life had changed with a family and working daily. His life was more like that of middle America, a nice house for himself and his wife and children. Nice things to enjoy and a pleasant and comfortable place to live.

His life long friend and someone he had grown up with was Fred. They had hung together, laugh together and even done time together.  Each had the others back and were just a call away from the other.  If one had done time in prison, the other would be there when they were released with new clothes and a place to stay till they got back into the swing of things. Fred was Tim’s only real friend and likewise, it had been that way since the beginning. When Fred had gotten out the last time, it was Tim )though by then had straighten out his life) who was there with the new clothes and brought Fred to his home to sleep on the couch and fed him.

While Fred had been locked up the last time, Tim had bought the family a new large color TV. One day when Tim and his family were out shopping, they came home and discovered the TV missing.  The house had been broken into and the only thing missing was the TV. When Fred came back he seemed to also be confused and angry that someone would have done such a thing to his best friend. He said he would try to find out who it was along with Tim was going to try to find out.

WHITE PRIVILEGE

Take some time and think back over your personal life, list the times that the color of your skin has been a personal privilege? And the times the color of your skin has been a personal disadvantage?  Not another persons privilege or disadvantage, not some story you have heard of others.  Yours personally, some you may qualify as a guess or perhaps a could have been so.

But seldom does anyone actually have someone else say I am giving you privilege or disadvantage because of the color of your skin!  You can state that you could not see it, you were one out of a hundred people that applied for the same job. You did not see the other 99 so you have no idea who they were or the color of their skin. You might have got the job, but would have been the only white out of the hundred meaning the other 99 was a minority.

So, that means you should feel guilty of being the beneficiary of racism right?  You should be recognizing that there is white privilege and that is a point made by a guest on the Dillon Ratigan show.  Now since looking back, you personally, of all you have or had was it in your mind because of the color of your skin or because of your efforts?

On a personal level, I can not imagine anyone actually saying that the car in the drive or the roof over your head was because you are white. There is the problem that Torne said is the stumbling block to an understanding between the races.  The refusal of the whites to acknowledge on a personal level that they benefit from ‘White Privilege.’  But like the guy who asked me if I felt guilty for what my people did to his people? When everything he could list is something I had not done and knew no one who had.

One of my best friends grew up in a family of five children, where each day one member had to not eat a meal and their mother only ate once a day because there was not enough food for everyone to eat.  Over the years they lived in houses that were not much better then what people house their chickens in or store the mower in the winter.  It is vulgar, but is the truest example of how poor this family was:  “My friend’s family was so poor when he was growing up that if he did not wake up with a hard-on, he had nothing to play with the rest of the day!”  For his third birthday, his mother gave him a broken alarm clock as his birthday gift.  The rest of the story and one that is true of the rest of his life.  He took it apart and made it work!  And the alarm clock is an example of everything that life has given him.  Whenever life has given him a broken alarm clock he has taken it apart and made it work.

Therein lies the problem, few if any of us can look back and point to any time that white privilege has worked in our favor. We have seen the story of our life from the inside out not the other way around.  To tell my friend that because of being born with the color of his skin he has he was privileged. You would be expecting him to believe something that is invisible to him.

The same problem a Christian would have with a non-believer.  Without an example in his life to point to, you can not convince him that he should recognize it being there!

The same goes with me, never have I ever felt like because of the color of my skin that I have been privileged.  It was not until KAKE TV said it that I knew I lived in a “Socially-Economically depressed neighborhood”.  Only on  rare occasions did I ever feel like the color of my skin has been a disadvantage. In a life time everyone can and will feel that as an explanation for the outcome.

That your age was a matter, the color of someone else’s skin was a deciding factor, the gender you are was the matter.  Sadly like the stories you hear of, it is the truth.  Defecation occurs and life, people and society is far from perfect.

And like history, it can not be charged once written only the blank page of the future is write-able.

THE MALE PSYCHE AND POWER TOOLS?

Power tools, a saw-all, hammer drill and the like are nothing truly new they all do exactly what the human species has always done with the tools they have. Saws to cut the materials that need to be cut and drills for making holes in things.

Other then I have wanted a saw-all since the first time I got to use one it still does not do anything that I could not have done with one type of saw or another. It does make it easier and that would be a valid reason to have one. But I am still saying and telling with a real sense of pride that I now have one!

As if being able to state that I have a saws-all is a true sign of achievement! It is something many men have simply bought on a whim or because they needed it for a special job so it was to the local hardware store and putting down the card. No more special achievements than that, yet somehow this has caused me great joy?  I have not done anything that I had not done with any other type of saw, hand saw, hack saw and the like.  Yet here I am feeling somehow more special or notable since I have a SAWS-ALL!

Is it just a male thing?  Our love of power tools and the feeling of accomplishment for having some special tool?  At times when I do as much brag about having one, I afterwards feel a little silly.  As if somehow this is a badge of male hood, “I might not be able to impregnate half the twenty-something’s women of the world…. Or fix a car or even get changing the oil right the first time…. I may not be the Kung-fu champion of the world, but I have Testosterone flowing through my body because I have a SAWS-ALL!

What if a woman owned a Saws-all, do they just have Penis envy?

But there are, are there not, many things that we do not need or could be accomplished with things we already have that are badges of accomplishment? Only those who have wealth or special status have the things we long for. Oh but it does a better job right?

Lessons learned from a novel

To Kill A Mockingbird was published on July 11, 1960.  The book was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1962.

To  Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee. It was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author’s observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936 — when she was 10 years old.  The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality.

The book has valuable lessons about an evil that needed to be brought into the open and defeated.  I’ve heard it said of this time, “We liberated not just black people, we liberated white people.”  Surely, Harper Lee contributed to this liberation with her book.

What defeats evil?  Is it kindness?  Could it be knowledge which seems to tame, if not defeat, fear?  Is there a lesson you learned from To Kill A Mockingbird?  How do the lessons the novel offers relate to problems in our world today — immigration, embracing the different cultures of all countries, fears of the unknown?  What other current issues could we relate to this timeless novel and the lessons it offers?

fnord

SHALL I TAKE YOU ON A JOURNEY?

( What can I say, Will’s topic inspired me)

SHALL I TAKE YOU ON A JOURNEY?

And what shall that journey be?

Shall we sail across an Ocean or wander about in a forest green?

Shall I speak of an idiot or someone that seems an idiot to me?

Should it be about world peace or simply a good piece of Apple pie?

It is not easy being your tour guide, when I do not know which tour you had in mind?

Should I lambaste a Conservative which is something that many here would agree.

Or simply explain the theory of time travel which would leave many say what the Hell?

I may rig the ship and plot the course only for you to show up wearing your hiking boots and carrying a canteen. Than oh then what shall I do, run the ship aground and start walking from the sea?

Oh I guess in the end it is what tour I wish to guide since I have chosen to be a guide and to take you all on a journey.

And that is what I do when posting a new thread, load the gang plank or point the path through a forest glen. As has been seen it does not mean that you will be following me.

The path does change and the voyage sets for a port that was not on the course I had plotted.

But that is OK, for on this journey it is not the travel but the opportunity and where it would lead.

A voice is heard and it need not be solely my voice that sounds and declares what it shall be.

For here is the place of voices and not all speak in the same degree.

So you may sit back and enjoy the journey or change the course and direction as the feeling need be.

Perhaps the intent is not to invite it is the journey I wish it to be?

Than you may come or never set foot on the vehicle I have chosen to journey in.

One day we may go hunting a Bigfoot in those woods, or simply sit beside a brook and enjoy the sun.

which ever is more enjoyable to me.

A WILD THOUGHT OF THIS MORNING.

I had a wild thought this morning when I woke up, I missed an anniversary no not a wedding. It was the anniversary of Truk Lagoon or it is said the day we served our own Peal harbor on the Japanese.

Now the back story: To be married soon and newly to a job at of all places a Bible warehouse.

The term is “eclectic” which in this case means that the people there were oddballs and mixed as to personalities. Most were young, in their late teen or early twenties and from differing backgrounds.

One was the son of an ambassador from Bangladesh has some of the greatest hash to be found! And told me what he said was a old folks tale from Bangladesh.

Those it is questionable as to whether that is the truth.

The King was blessed with the birth of a daughter and he decreed that everyone of his subjects were to come to view her. As they passed they more complimented him instead of actually saying what they thought of the girl.

“She is an extension of your greatness!”

She glows with your Royalty!”.

The list went on and on till finally the last person to view the King’s daughter was the Royal Jester.

He look down into the crib and said “She made him feel just like he did after taking a really good healthy crap!”. well comparing the King’s daughter to a Bowel movement seemed quite an insult!

The King ordered that the Jester be put to death! But he was a fair King and said he would grant the Jester a last request.

MARY ANN IS A LESBIAN

( this is part of a short I have been working on. Still dressing up and rewriting, combing the hair on and the like)

Mary Ann walked from the bathroom into her bedroom, her shower and a cursory applying of makeup done.  She had brushed her hair and was pleased with its style, though it might be time for a new one maybe a little shorter?

She stood at the foot of the bed then announced out loud ….. “I am a Lesbian!”  There she had said it; the outburst was a realization, recognition, and an affirmation!  Words that had been whirling in her head for years but never allowed to be expressed.

She had a date tonight, a real date with an advance call asking if she would like to go out.  Planned and thought about, before it was always the happenstance meeting at a club.  Encountering another woman, a conversation would start and it would begin.  The awkward dance around, looking for clues and interest.  Talking is a sign of interest, but women talk anyway.  But unlike when a man and a woman talk, a woman just suddenly talk to another woman does not mean she wants anything sexual. In fact quite the opposite, women talking to each other is safe.  A woman talking to a man is often taken by the man that she is expressing she want to strip him naked and throw him on the floor. The mating rituals, smile, talk and then go.  But talking to another woman is more like a sister -ship, they have an understand that a man could not.  Some of the same experiences that only another woman would have.  And women like to talk while few men truly do want to at least not in great detail.

So the simple fact a woman talked to another woman is not a sign of interest.  Besides Mary Ann in the back of her mind always wanted a level of deniability.  She was not there looking for another woman to have sex with, it just happens every so often!  Never wanting to be too forward on the chance she had misread a clue or interest in talking to her.  Fighting the awkward impulses, taking moving closer as a sign of interest but it may have been the woman was simply moving so someone else could pass.  She listened for those hints of interest, never sure exactly what the hint would be.  But all the time she kept telling herself that was not what she wanted.  But the reality was it always seemed more natural to her to be with another woman then a man.

****

I miss having only one pair of sneakers.

The two lives I have led came together, looking back at the music that long ago meant something to me.  And two of the tasks of today was picking up the room and doing the dishes from the weekend.

It did not help the matter when I hunted up a picture frame for a long ago picture of my wife. I had found the picture in a box while looking for something else and it also takes me back to another time.  One of those School pictures of her while we were dating, reminiscing of the style and period of the mid-seventies and her as the teenage love of my life.  She of course hates the picture saying it is ugly while to me it is an image of the most beautiful of all creation. She will surly hate to see it hanging on the wall now but to me it is the girl now the woman that caused me to Love more then I thought possible.

The picture, the music and the picking up around the house, it started me on a journey of looking at the two different lives I have lived in this lifetime.  At times seeming like they are of two different people.

While cleaning up the family room, I came across two pairs of sneakers; both pairs are mine,  One, the whenever I need to do something that is dirty or may cause harm to my footwear.  The other, the newest and a beautiful and pure white for those occasions when I need to look less like white trash.

Seldom are the newer ones worn, generally when going out in public and my wife wants me to be presentable to the world. But otherwise they are to be hidden away so as to not become dirty and scuffed.  Dirty and scuffed is the job of the old and beaten up pair which if not on my feet end-up just under the coffee table in the family room. Well within reach and always looking like they were used to wade through a swamp.

I miss the days when I only had one pair of sneakers!  When there was simply my current pair of shoes and the world just had to be happy or sad in the same pair.

A New Shakespeare Play Discovered?

New evidence that Double Falsehood was, as 18th-century playwright Lewis Theobald claimed, based on Bard’s Cardenio.  According to The Guardian, it has thrills, spills, sword fights, violent sexual assault and – to modern ears – a terrible ending, but the little-known 18th century play Double Falsehood was propelled into the literary limelight today when it was claimed as a lost Shakespeare.

Write letters — to incredible kids!

Last week I learned that the third Thursday in March — the 18th this year — is set aside as “Absolutely Incredible Kid Day.”  Camp Fire USA began this annual, award-winning, national call to action, asking adults to write letters of love, encouragement and inspiration to the children of America.  What a worthwhile idea!  At their website (linked above) Camp Fire USA gives letter-writing tips and encouragement on this day set aside to offer positive reinforcement to the incredible kid(s) you know!

The Darkness

I guess…I guess I could have been one of those that contributed to the end of America. If I had known how it was going to end, though, I would have been one of the first to start fighting! But I didn’t see that by remaining silent, by clinging to my misguided belief that the government would not, could not, turn against the people of this nation, I was helping them do just that.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Now, of course, Benjamin Franklin’s words are a haunting warning. But by the time we realized that, it was too late.

Our leader has asked me to write down what happened, in the hope that someone in the future will find it and learn the truth. As I look out into the darkness of two o’clock in the morning, I can see the shapes of the APCs and tanks in the distance, rolling towards our hiding place. After chasing us with fighters and bombers for most of the day, they were finally able to pin us down in this valley. What we thought would be a place of safety from the air strikes has instead left our troops cornered in a dead end.

“Dead-end.” My God, never have two words sounded so final, so deadly.

I am wasting time getting philosophical. Just write the facts, John, I tell myself!

I shift my weight to the other side of my buttocks, and take another glance toward the east. There is no light except the moon; by its soft glow, I can see the approaching armor and troops of the Joint Task Force. It gives me a renewed urgency to finish this journal. I turn back to the notebook in my lap, and start writing again:

“In hindsight, I can now see when it started, or rather, how it started. What seemed like totally unrelated occurrences, then, can now be seen quite clearly as parts of a larger plan. Most were in the name of ‘safety,’ while others were such small acts they didn’t seem to matter one way or another. But taken all together, they did what no invading army could ever have done—disarm the American people, take away their means to put up an effective defense, and enable certain factions of the government to control them.

“I’m sure anyone who may someday read this will have been told we were rebels, traitors to the American way of life—assuming any mention whatsoever of our fight hasn’t either been erased or forbidden by then. So I guess I should tell you of the circumstances that led us to take up arms against our own government. I’m not going to list the causes in order of occurrence; the sequence is not nearly as important as the effects, and to try to recall all of the dates would take too long. Time is running out; I hear the sound of the approaching armor on the wind.”

The Biggest Hole in My Pocket

Like many of you, my personal health insurance is going up in November by a factor of over twenty-five percent. I’m caught in the aging baby boomer dilemma of needing to keep myself covered, because at my age, I’m just a walking pre-existing condition.  But I have to wonder how long I can continue paying almost half of my income for health insurance.  And all the while, a hell of a lot of the remaining half needs to be dedicated in reserve for taxes, including taxes that are health care related.

I’ve been thinking lately that while most people say they are “worth more dead than alive” as a joke, for me, it’s rapidly becoming a reality. I wonder if I’m not better off just dropping my health insurance now and facing the future without it.  I mean, why pay another year of half my income when the health insurance companies tell us it’s going to get worse, not better, before I reach Medicare age?  If I’m going to be forced, because of cost, to drop it next year, is it really worth it to continue it this year?  I could maybe hold on and hold my nose and write the obscene checks for another year if I thought health care reform was going to help people like me.  But it doesn’t sound like anything being considered on Capital Hill is going to help self-insured people like me, and even if it did, it won’t take effect for another four years.  And now they’re talking about mandatory insurance? Does anyone up there realize that’s like a mandated tax of at least fifty percent of my income? Does anyone care?