Thursday, December 10, 2009

Grief

It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
is just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve...... for you
You leave....... me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on

The news that truly shocks
is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
it's empty, empty cage
and I can't handle this
I grieve....... for you
You leave....... me
Let it out and move on
Missing what's gone
They say life carries on
They say life carries on and on and on

Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that's out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Just the car that we ride in
The home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
As life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on

Did I dream this belief
or did I believe this dream?
Now I will find relief
I grieve

Peter Gabriel–“I Grieve”


There comes a point where one can think about the loved one and not break down crying. The wound is not as raw anymore. One can talk about the person and share memories without completely losing it. Food starts to taste again. Not taste good, just taste. One becomes a bit more focused in the here and now, instead of wallowing in the regrets of the past, as well as the happy times that will never be again. Colors seem a little more bright. One starts to take some pleasure in the simple joys of life again.

Much like any other injury, there are scars. They aren’t well healed. Something on televison might trigger a memory of a conversation that was once had. A family picture cuts to the heart of one’s memory, triggering a flood of mental images that crash down like tidal waves. Smells are the worst for me, having a somewhat sensitive nose. A smell can trigger memories like almost nothing else can. And when they do, the scabs are ripped right off the wound, and the pain is as fresh as the day it was inflicted.

It’s a little less agonizing, though. It recedes a bit more quickly; each time fading more quickly than the last.

The emptiness is still there, though one doesn’t seem to think about it nearly as much as what one did before. One can somewhat imagine that a an amputee feels something similar; a phantom pain from something should be there, but isn’t.

Time heals all wounds, I suppose. It's slow, though, moving at the Lord's pace, and not our own. Somebody told me recently that God is seldom on time, but he's never late....

Monday, December 07, 2009

ACES HIGH

More fun with lyrics. I started to look closely at the band Iron Maiden when I saw a show on the Military Channel that chronicled the top ten fighter planes of all time. Somewhere on the list was the British Spitfire. They had some guy on there who was singing the praises of the thing. He talked very knowledgably about its rate of climb, its manueverability, its speed, durability, armament, etc. At the end of the segment, it showed the guy's name: Bruce Dickinson. Odd, I thought. There's a metal singer named that. I never listened to the band, but knew from reading guitar stuff a little about the band. Not my cup of tea at the time, but somethig that got filed away amongst all the other useless trivia that occupies my brain.

It turned out that it was indeed the same Bruce Dickinson, leather-lunged singer for Iron Maiden. He's a pilot, and he owns a Spitfire. How cool is that? I give you the lyrics to ACES HIGH, a snapshot in metal of the Battle of Britain:

There goes the siren that warns of the air raid
Then comes the sound of the guns sending flak
Out for the scramble we've got to get airborne
Got to get up for the coming attack.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines
Remove all the wheelblocks there's no time to waste
Gathering speed as we head down the runway
Gotta get airborne before it's too late.

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live. Aces high.

Move in to fire at the mainstream of bombers
Let off a sharp burst and then turn away
Roll over, spin round and come in behind them
Move to their blindsides and firing again.

Bandits at 8 O'clock move in behind us
Ten ME-109's out of the sun
Ascending and turning our Spitfires to face them
Heading straight for them I press down my guns

Rolling, turning, diving
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Wasted Years--The Song

This is great song that I just discovered. It's only been out about 25 years or so. Better late than never, I suppose. The chorus is especially poignant to me, since I've certainly spent more years than I care to count searching for the lost ones. It's a particular fallacy of mine.

This is from the band Iron Maiden, which I admit I'd not given much thought to until recently when I saw a concert of theirs on late one night. Trying to find good music these days is kind of like trying to find a unicorn. As a result, I'm digging back into the 70's and 80's for artistic inspiration and something to listen to. Modern heavy metal sounds awful to me, with dropped tuning on the guitars and singers who sound much like Cookie Monster. I hate it. I'm finding more and more people turning to the older stuff, and I find myself turning with them. And not just to heavey metal. I spent a happy hour a few nights ago playing along to the Bryan Adams album RECKLESS. I shamelessly learned the guitar parts to Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" recently as well. I remember fondly the 1980's....

At any rate, this band is worth listening to, especially if you're a fan of bands like Rush, which incorporate cerebral lyrics and virtuostic instrumentals. Not everybody's cup of tea, mind you, but I dig it.

Here's the lyrics to the song, written by Adrian Smith. This is off the album SOMEWHERE IN TIME. Smith is one of the bands' three guitarists (how cool is it to have 3 guitars?). The song kicks off with a classical-sounding riff in E minor, then goes into a nicely overdriven guitar part. Worth a listen to, should you have the chance. The lead singer has been described as a human air-raid siren, and I don't know that I disagree. The guy has tremendous range, and somewhat of an oepratic quailty to his voice with a lot of vibrato. I digress, however.

[(Smith) 5:06]

From the coast of gold, across the seven seas
I'm travellin' on, far and wide
But now it seems, I'm just a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do, it isn't me but
someone else

I close my eyes, and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain't it funny how it is, you never miss it 'til it's
gone away
And my heart is lying there and will be 'til my
dying day

[Chorus:]
So understand
Don't waste your time always searching for
those wasted years
Face up... make your stand
And realise you're living in the golden years

Too much time on my hands, I got you on my mind
Can't ease this pain, so easily
When you can't find the words to say it's hard to
make it through another day
And it makes me wanna cry and throw my
hands up to the sky

[Chorus:]


Yeah. It's like that.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Unbridled Science

Here's an article from Michelle Malkin's site about Obama's new science czar.

In a vaccum, perhaps this outlook on humanity as a ecological problem that needs control might make sense. The problem is that no aspect of our existence on this Earth can be taken in a vaccum. Whether it is our politics, our marital relationships, our business dealings, or anything else that we do on Earth, everything we do leaves us accountable. To our fellow human beings, and most importantly, to God.

A government without accountability to a higher power is tyranny, pure and simple. Science unchecked by morality, or goverened by a warped morality, is evil. Ask the victims of the Holocaust on that one.

A government that would institute a man with these sorts of beliefs as the overseer of scientific progress in this country is immoral. Pure and simple. This focus on global warming and other "green" bunk is simply a front to advance the agenda of a totalitarian, socialist, morally corrupt facet of society.

This health care plan that Obama is pushing? The state will decide who gets care and who doesn't. And with a science czar like this to help determine who is fit to live and reproduce, have you any doubts about where a political conservative is going to end up on an organ transplant list? Probably pretty low as a recipient.

But as a forced donor?

I'm just saying.....

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Journey and the War

As a preface to this post, let me say that my bible study group just kicked off a study on spiritual warfare, which is a really interesting topic, in an EXORCIST sort of way. The basic premise is that if you believe in God, then the converse also has to be true. There is a Devil, and it’s a malevolent being that is pretty powerful here on Earth. This entity’s job is to take down as many souls as he can by making their lives miserable, breaking their faith in God. There's an active war between the two entities, with mankind right on the front lines.

OK, that sets the stage nicely for the next four days.

DAY ONE

Last Thursday, I was in court in a different jurisdiction as a special prosecutor. On the way back to town, I received a telephone call from my sister. My dad was in the hospital. They weren’t sure what was wrong, but he was too weak to move. Somewhere in the middle of a canyon, the call drops. I hate cell phones as a general principle, but they are handy when they work. I went overboard and ended up with an Iphone. Very nice, very convenient. The GPS is handy for navigationally challenged people such as myself.

Anyway, the situation sounded bad. The flight schedule was such that I wasn’t going to be able to get out until fairly late the next day. That seemed unacceptable.

I was scared, worried, etc. Things didn’t sound good, and his condition has deteriorated from a back injury, as well as Parkinson’s, diabetes, and a heart condition. Smoking doesn’t help any of it, either. Also, he’s still grieving for my Mom, whom we lost less than a year ago.

It seemed like the best solution was to take off driving. I cleared stuff up as best as I could at work, and hit the road around 5:00.

I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in about a month. I can run ok on no sleep for awhile, but everything has its limits. I have no idea why I can’t sleep, other than insomnia kicks on big-time with me if I’m under stress, and there’s been a lot of that. A couple of hours into the trip, I realized that driving straight through simply wasn’t going to be an option. I was too darn tired. I had driven about 31/2 hours that day already traveling for work. I decided to strike out for the Metroplex, since I have friends in the area. It’s about ½ of the trip home, so that seemed like a good option. I could get a bit of sleep and get rolling early the next morning.

DAY TWO

My body apparently decided that sleep could no longer be avoided, and I crashed hard. So hard that I slept through the alarm, and woke up around 10:00 the next day, which is about the time that I planned on being at my destination.

In the scramble to get out of town, my cell phone went swimming in a glass of water. Since Iphones aren’t naturally aquatic, this was a disaster. No cell phone, which is somewhat essential to keeping up with what’s going on the world. “Angry,” is not an adequate description of the emotions that I was feeling at the time. Were gamma radiation present, I would have gained 500 pounds and 3 feet in height, turned green, and smashed the hell out of everything around me. So those of you in the Metroplex got off light.

I make it into town finally in late afternoon. Dad is diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, and they’ve done some fixing on it during the test. He’s able to get some food down, which was a big part of the problem, and was getting stronger. He was still having problems from the back injury, which included atrophy in the leg muscles on that side. His weight was down slightly below 130 pounds, which is pretty light for my dad. He needed to lose a bit, but not that much, and not in that manner. We have a good visit in the hospital. He decided that he needed to get some intensive rehabilitation to get stronger, and thought he probably needed to go to a rehab/nursing home for awhile.

That was heartbreaking news. He didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want him there. I felt guilty as hell for not being able to take him in or be there to help him myself. I made the offer to have him move in with me, which I’d do without hesitation. But he didn’t want that, to say the least.

His mood was improving, though. He was looking at it in the right way. He was planning on using the time to build himself back up to where he could go back to work and home again. That’s a healthy step and a healthy attitude.

Late that night I head to the old house. It had been vacant a day or two, and it was dark and foreboding when I arrived well after midnight. Once I got in the house, I felt like I had stepped into a horror movie. I killed no less that five scorpions within the first few minutes. They were active and feisty, which is not the way I prefer my scorpions. However, they were no match for the old trusty 3-wood, which is as fine a scorpion killing device as I’ve ever seen.

I then had to clean the nasty little buggers up. While trying to vacuum their smashed, chitinous little bodies up, the vacuum cleaner decided it would be great fun to bog up on one, and spit it in the air directly at my face.

This is not funny. At all. I am deathly afraid of those things, having had a pair of them in my sleeping bag on a camping trip. I’m all about sharing sleeping bags under the proper circumstances, but definitely not with arachnids. After stomping the corpse into its component atoms and using words I didn’t think I actually knew, I re-holstered my little Model 60 .357, and set about trying to find a defib kit. I think the revolver was called for when zombie scorpions take to the skies to attack. That crap is terrifying.

Once the adrenaline had finally dumped, the major organs were functioning again, and all the corpses disposed of, I finally got to bed around 2am. The only scorpion free room appears to be my mom’s room, which is unchanged since she died. I camp down there for the night, with an odd sense of peace.

DAY THREE

Nobody in town sells replacement Iphones. They’ll only do it with a 2 year contract extension, which I already signed a few months ago. No amount of cajoling or legal threats gets me anything else. They’ll sell me a Blackberry, but the data plan is different from what I had (read: more expensive).

Dad’s decided that he’s feeling well enough to smoke again. The suggestion that he’s feeling better because he isn’t smoking isn’t met with enthusiasm. The cigarette, as expected, makes him a bit sicker.

After much waffling, I get a Gophone from the local Wal Mart. I also found affordable pistol ammo, which is a good thing as well. The SIM card from the Iphone seems to work, especially after I finished drying it off. Sometime around 8 that night, I have cell phone service once again.

No scorpions are found in the house that night. Prayer and pesticide have done their work, apparently. Prayer from me, and Dad says they sprayed the house earlier that week, which must have stirred all the critters up.

DAY FOUR

I helped to move Dad into the rehab home around lunchtime. I can’t bear to call it a nursing home. I ran him over there from the hospital, having gotten there around 8:00 that morning. He’s looking better, gained a little weight back, and seems to have a positive attitude about the whole thing, which is good. Based on that, I decided that I needed to get back north for work the next day. I’m looking at 9 hours of solid driving. I figured that if I stock up on protein bars, diet Dr. Pepper and water, I can make it quite a ways before having to stop. This is not counting bathroom breaks, of course. I plan to get to the house no later than 11:00pm, which is quite acceptable. I hit the road around 1:00pm.

All is going according to plan, when the tire blows. I am on the middle of the new loop around Austin, basically in the middle of nowhere. Traffic is moving at a minimum of 80 on that thing, and there’s not much room on the side of the road to change the tire. To top it off, these tires are less than a month old.

Several years ago, I had a cousin killed while changing a tire on the side of I-35. So I’m again a bit nervous. I wait for breaks in the traffic to loosen lug nuts, put the jack under the car, etc. It’s a slow process, because I stop when there’s traffic whizzing by three feet from my head. If I’m going to get run over, I want to see it coming.

After awhile, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Traffic is heavy. There’s a point where my faith in humanity is shaken. A few people wave as they sail by at 80mph. Again, I offer up a small prayer to get me out of this and back to my son alive.

I’m in the middle of popping a lug nut off as a prelude to jacking up the car, when a voice asks me if I need any help. It scares the thunder out of me. I never heard the car pull up. Apparently, the guy went past, pulled over, and backed up. He’s a tall, older guy in a Ford pickup. I tell him much appreciated, and ask if he has a hydraulic jack. I hate the little weenie jacks that most cars come equipped with these days. When I had a truck, I made sure to have a good solid floor jack in it.

He says no, and asks if I was nervous about the traffic. I admitted that I was. He asks where I’m heading, and offers to stand guard while I change the tire. This is exactly what I need. I get the tire off, get the little doughnut on, and get everything back on. The guy asks if I’m intending to drive on through. He says there’s a tire place fairly close, and offers to pilot me in. He does. I’m now off the main road, and at least into town. Before he leaves, I give him my business card, and tell him to look me up if I can return the favor if he or his family are in the Panhandle. He asks if I have a church home where I’m from. This is a neat moment. I remember my prayer on the side of the road.

However, they don’t have my size tires at this Wal Mart. Discount Tires, where my set came from, is not open on Sunday. There’s an NTB on I-35 that I limp to. Almost three hours after the blowout, I’m on the road again, $127 dollars poorer, but happy to be rolling.

I make it home around 1:00am. I am worn out, sick of protein bars, tires, the highway, and swearing never to touch another Diet Dr. Pepper, but feeling pretty good, all things considered. A lot of obstacles were thrown in my path, but the trip seemed to have the desired effect of helping my dad a bit, physically and emotionally. Therein lies the glory.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

An Open Prayer For Mom

I didn’t write this on Mother’s Day. I should have. Truth be told, I just couldn’t make myself.

This is the first Mother’s Day without Mom. It’s not the same, and the day has a bittersweet tang to it that doesn’t make it something that seems worth celebrating, despite the fact there are other mothers around who deserve the holiday. Holidays are personal, and with her gone, my personal connection to it seems somewhat muted.

I miss you, Mom. I miss my number one fan. I regret the times that I shut you out, knowing that you just wanted to touch a part of my life, and to have that connection with me. I regret holding a grudge against you for so many years due to the drinking. Nobody is perfect. I was holding you to a standard that is impossible for anyone to meet. I regret moving away in the midst of your illness, in the mistaken, arrogant belief that it would help my marriage. I regret not being there for Dad, when I know that your main focus as you were dying was to make sure that he’s taken care of. I regret being such a selfish jerk, and not making more time with you in your final years.

I can’t tell you all this now, but I hope that somehow, God lets you see in my heart, and lets you see how much I love you, and how much I miss you. Now, more than ever. I can’t tell you how much I want to know that you’re ok, that you’re free of all the misery and pain this sorry world of ours has to offer us. I feel just like a little boy who has lost his mother, instead of an adult who ought to be handling this better.

Lord, take care of her up there. She had her faults, but loving her children certainly wasn’t one of them. I just pray that we’re all reunited one day again, and that she doesn’t hold my faults and failures against me.

Happy belated Mother’s Day, we all miss you.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

All That We Can Do

Sometimes, you do all that you can do. And it isn't enough to stop the evil from happening.

A suspect beat his baby’s momma within an inch of her life. He was stopped by a witness who came to her rescue with a shovel. The police were unable to arrest the suspect when they found him, much later. They didn’t get there when the assault was happening, and the Defendant didn’t appear to be an immediate threat of continuing domestic violence when they made contact. That’s one of the deals about arresting people. It has to be done within the scope of the law, and the law said it couldn’t be done. Any conviction obtained if that arrest had gone down would be thrown out, and the suspect free to do it again.

A warrant for his arrest was filed. That’s all that could be done. The rest depends on the suspect getting arrested. Hopefully, an officer will see him on the street and make the arrest. Maybe a traffic stop ends up with the suspect getting flagged because the warrant shows up in the computer. Maybe he’s caught in the act of another crime. Maybe he dies of a drug overdose, or is killed by one of his buddies in a drug crazed fit of rage. Maybe a detective gets lucky and finds him after a diligent search.

Maybe the Defendant slips under the radar altogether.

The same suspect this weekend broke into a house where his baby momma had taken refuge with a nice couple. She made it out the window and lived.

Her rescuers didn’t. They were murdered. Horribly. They were in their 20's. Their life extinguished because they chose to love their neighbor, and shelter a domestic violence victim.

It’s sad, and senseless. But the fault does not lie with law enforcement. They did all they could, all the law allowed them to do. It wasn’t enough.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Dad

It's been awhile since I posted. I was inspired by the incomparable Brigid to write a bit about my Dad.

I remember my first golf tournament. I was scared to death, no real clue about what I was going to do out there, or how to do it. I remember thinking that I was out of my league, out of my mind for being there, and just flat out of my element.

The tournament was out of town. My dad was self-employed at that time, so he could pretty much do as he pleased. He never missed a single sporting event that I participated in that I can recall.

Golf is a pretty solitary sport. Even though you are competing against others, you are really competing more against yourself. You are fighting your swing, trying to make it do what you want it to do. It's easy to get discouraged, to feel alone and helpless out there when your ball shanks off somewhere, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? I wonder what the heck I actually see in this stupid game? What the heck does that say about me? Anyway, I digress.

Somewhere about the fifth hole, I picked up on the fact that somebody was watching me. I couldn't quite figure out who, or where they were. This was different than being watched by the guys I was playing with. There was somebody out there looking specifically at ME, and I didn't know where they were.

Somewhere about the 9th hole, I caught a glimpse of somebody about 75 yards away, watching from behind a tree. They were taking great pains to keep out of sight. Not in a weird way, just trying to be unobtrusive.

I knew it was my dad. Even though I couldn't see him, I recognized his silhouette. I was even more certain when I saw the faint puff of bluish smoke form his ever-present cigarette.

He was there for the rest of the tournament. I did horribly, but I played better after I knew he was there.

He was watching me, offering support in a different sort of way. He knew that I was out there alone, and he knew that I had to be. He knew that he couldn't help me, but he wanted to be there just the same.

He never told me he was there. When my round ended, he headed home. He even pretended that he wasn't there. And to this day, I haven't told him I knew. I think he does know, though. It's a Dad thing.

It wasn't the last time he was out there, clandestinely.

Every thing I've ever done, I knew that Dad was somewhere behind me, offering quiet support and strength. He knew I had to do it alone, but wanted me to know that he was back there, ready to do what he could to help. He also knew that failure taught more than success, and that I had to take hard knocks just like everybody else.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Ugly, But Effective...Redux

I’ve always liked the nice sports cars. I think it would be an absolute blast to run around in a Ferrari every day. It would turn heads, look spiffy, and probably attract a lot of attention from law enforcement, car thieves, and people who like to drag their keys down the side of somebody else’s nice, new car. So that’s why I don’t drive one. Never mind the fact that a cheap new Ferrari is probably north of $180,000 or so.

Even though it’s nice to have a flashy sports car, it’s not really all that practical. You can barely get a sack of groceries in one, much less a car seat and two passengers. It’s lousy in bad weather, which this part of Texas tends to have. Rear-wheel drive vehicles don’t do well in ice, for the most part. You can’t go to Home Depot and load lumber in the back of one. You can’t pull a trailer with one. It’s utility is actually rather low, in that light. Which is why I drive something a bit more practical.

I’ve noticed the same thing about my personal defense weapon. Sure, I love to shoot a nice 1911 .45. The triggers are great, the design is actually rather pleasing to the eye, and it’s about the most accurate handgun platform that I’ve had the pleasure of shooting.

But what weapon am I choosing to rely on to defend my life, and that of my family in the direst of circumstances? I’ve carried a nice 1911, but it wasn’t really comfortable to me. I like Sigs, but there’s not really a big caliber Sig Sauer that is concealed carry friendly. Sure, you can hide one under a coat, but I can hide a shotgun under a coat if I really wanted to.

I keep coming back to a Glock, time and time again. The Glock subcompacts are proving best compromise of an easy to carry, easy to conceal weapon with large capacity, big bore stopping power, durability, reliability, and easy maintenance.

I’ve been going with the Glock 27, by and large. It fits in a pocket holster, belt holster on the cold jacket days, or in an ankle holster when I really have to hide one. .40 caliber is nothing to sneeze at, and ten rounds of it in a relatively tiny pistol is nice. I am not the biggest proponent of the .40, mind you. I think it’s somewhat snappy in recoil.

Shooters all have their personal preference. And I have always liked .45 automatic as my caliber of choice. It’s big. It’s accurate. And its recoil characteristics are fairly pleasant, even as large a bullet as it fires. It’s just hard to find a small .45 that conceals well.

It appears my small .45 has arrived. The Glock 36 is just about a quarter inch longer than the 27. It’s thinner, since it has a single-stack magazine. The frame is actually a bit thinner than a normal Glock as well. People griped about how fat the grip of a Glock tends to be, and how blocky they are. Well, Glock decided to listen. Best of all, it’s a .45 automatic. A REAL .45 automatic, unlike the .45 GAP Crap that Glock has inflicted on the shooting public in the past. It holds 6 rounds of happy .45, with one in the chamber. That’s the equal of most small 1911's.

It appears to do what Glocks do best, which is put bullets downrange with a minimum of fuss and bother. It’s small enough to conceal in the same manner as the 27, which is nice. Though the slightly longer grip makes pocket carry impossible with some types of pants, it still manages to conceal nicely. It fits in all the other Glock holsters that I have, which is a good thing.

It’s not a nice-looking weapon. Nobody can say that it’s as pleasing to the eye as a 1911 or Browning Hi-Power. It’s not as point-friendly as a Sig Sauer, but it does point the best of any Glock I’ve ever picked up. It doesn’t have the great triggers the aforementioned pistols have, but it’s got the exact same trigger as every other factory-spec Glock on the market.

And it works. I don’t worry about scratching it up, because it wasn’t pretty to begin with. I don’t worry about it functioning when it needs to, because that’s what Glocks are known for. I don’t worry about the thing not hitting to point of aim, because it will hit whatever I’m aimed at. If the round misses, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. The sights aren’t going to get out of whack.

It fulfills the purpose of a weapon, which is a tool just like a screwdriver, hammer, or tire iron. It helps to keep me and mine secure. In the end, that’s all that matters. It’s not a Ferrari. It's a pickup, and not one of those fancy, nice ones with satellite radio and leather seats that cost more than the truck itself. It's a plain old truck that goes on down the road with monotonous reliability. Not pretty to look at, but it works.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

That's The Kind of Dad I Want To Be

Brigid gives a moving tribute to her dad.

There's some great writers out in the blogosphere, but this lady has a gift like none other.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Mouth of Madness

Having today observed a very mentally ill person, I can well imagine why people used to think they were demonically possessed.

This person chanted in an indecipherable tongue. The look in his eyes was absolutely chilling. This person could (and I believe would) have killed anybody he might have laid his hands upon. He stood there smeared in his own blood, and resisted multiple people who were trying to get him under control. At one point, he lifted up four people who were on top of him. His strength was almost supernatural. We’ve all heard about the strength of crazy people. I’m here to tell you it’s real. There was no recognition of where he was, or what he was doing. There was no hint that he had a shred of humanity left. Think Hannibal Lecter looked evil in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS? This was far, far worse.

When he was finally subdued, things changed. You could suddenly see the humanity back in his eyes. There was no recognition of why he was suddenly being restrained by a bunch of big people, or why there was Taser darts sticking in him. It was like the madness had suddenly passed, leaving a suddenly normal person in a horrible situation that he could not understand. Maybe that priest in the EXORCIST could have saved Linda Blair a whole lot of agony had he simply shot her with a Taser a few times. I can just hear the demon screeching, “Don’t tase me, Bro!!!”

Very, very odd indeed. I don't mind saying this guy scared me on some sort of primal level. There's a difference between being scared of something for a good reason, and a visceral fear of something that you don't understand, yet you know when you see it that it's very, very bad. There persists a line of thought that madness is a demonic possession of some sort. I’m not prepared to rule it out.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

TOLERANCE OR DIE

There was a great story on the news last night. Well, it wasn't really great. It was awful, actually. A man beheaded his wife because she was seeking divorce.

One thing our local forgot to mention was that the killer was a Muslim (though it wasn't a huge leap to arrive at that conclusion, based on the guy's name), as was his wife. It also failed to mention that the guy ran a television network called BRIDGES TV, which is about polishing up the image of Muslims to mainstream America.

Here's a link to Glenn Beck's monologue on the story, which I heard today traveling far into the wastelands of the panhandle for a court hearing. This was more information than what the network news was willing to give out.

I'm not drawing any conclusions here. I'm just throwing it out there for the reader's consideration.

Monday, February 02, 2009

The War Comes Home

It was late at night when the demons came. They attacked in the darkest hours of the early morning, at that time when the human body is at its lowest ebb. When the insomniac suffers under the most intense, painful, part of the condition, yearning for the blessed relief of sleep, yet completely unable to achieve it. When one can actually feel the body dying a little from the strain.

The demons started their attack off quietly. They nibbled away at the walls built to hold them at bay. They were quiet, insidious. They moved stealthily until they overwhelmed the defenses. And then they hit with full demonic fury. Fighting them required more effort than was humanly possible.

I'm not talking about pointy-horned, fire-breathing clawed, physical demons. I'm not seeing things here. I'm not crazy enough to think they are real, in the sense that one could actually see, feel, or hear them. The ones that I'm talking about are worse. These are the ones that are personal. I believe that everyone has them.

You know what I'm talking about. They probably hit you a little differently. They're the ones that tell me that I'm not worth anything. That I'm a horrible attorney, a horrible father, a lousy husband. I'm not nearly as smart as I think I am. That I'm a sorry excuse for a son, moving away from my immediate family when they needed me the most. That I'm talentless, classless, and pretty much useless. That I'm now out of shape, old, and good for nothing. That my health is going downhill, and there's no good years left in me. That I've done horrible wrongs to those who loved me. That this sorry state was the best my life had to offer, and it was more than I deserved.

They whisper to me that my marriage is doomed to failure. That I'm going to be penniless and good for nothing for the rest of my life. I'll never get ahead. That I'm raising my son wrong. That I'm standing in church, playing guitar as the biggest hypocrite in the place. That the place would turn on me in an instant if they knew what I had done. That I have no business being there.

Yes, I struggle with self-worth. Every day. The devil hits you where you live, where it hurts the absolute most. And those demons had me right where they wanted me, in the wee hours. At the point where doctors tell us people pass away the most often. Three o'clock a.m. had just struck, and there I was. Lying in bed alone, I could hear the sound of a far away train. Wracked with guilt, with sadness, with shame. With all the pain and all the weight of the world on my shoulders, I sat alone in the darkness. I have never been able to say that I felt the darkness before. But I did that night. It was cold, but I could feel within it something that burned with hate.

I've been laid low in the past year, about as low as a person could get, so I thought. I didn't think it could actually get any worse.

I was wrong.

I have never felt worse. I'm not sure if I ever could. This was utter, hopeless despair.

I almost didn't hear the little footsteps coming down the hall. Under siege as I was, I almost didn't hear the quiet, cloth-padded feet. It didn't really register until I heard the door open, and that small, wonderful voice say, "Daddy?"

He came in, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and dragging his little pillow behind him. He held his arms out for me to pick him up. The minute his head hit my shoulder, he dropped fast asleep in that wonderful, miraculous way that only small children can manage. Blissful, restful slumber. The kind that only comes from the knowledge that he is safe, warm, and loved. The kind that indicated he had no idea of the terrible battle that was being waged in my heart and mind.

I felt a peace settle in, as though a great weight had lifted off my chest. I knew at that moment that everything was going to be all right. I knew that better days lay ahead, and that I was worthy and loved, especially in the eyes of one little boy.

I have heard about spiritual warfare. I don't think I ever understood it until that very moment. It's real. There was a war going on that night. There was a crisis of faith and purpose that I cannot even describe. There are powerful weapons at the enemy's disposal, that work on the places where a person is the most vulnerable. And it had me on the ropes, absolutely.

But there's a power at work that's far greater than anything that can be brought to bear against us. It can be subtle, but there's no mistaking how truly powerful it is. It is absolute power. It is the power that shaped the world. It is the power that sent a being that we don't fully understand to make the ultimate sacrifice for mankind. It is the power that allowed an infant to save his father from an ancient evil that had all but crushed his spirit that night. I don't think the timing of my little boy was the least bit coincidental.

I slept peacefully for the rest of the night, the demons utterly defeated and destroyed by the love of a small boy in Cars pajamas, and the power that sent him there.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Oh, That Worked Out Well....

Yeah. Good times will be had by all when Gitmo closes. Check this out. Morons. What did they think would happen? Why can't people understand the way to fight people like this is to hurt them until they don't want to fight anymore?

And Mr. Wonderful decided to give his first television interview to an Arab television network.

We're sending a message to the terrorists, all right. It's something along the lines of: "Go ahead and have your way with us." When's he going to just break out the white flag?

I still blame the Republicans. Mostly for putting McCain on the ticket to begin with. Barney Fife would have been a better choice.

Bring on 2012 and Sarah Palin.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Deport Handy Manny

If you don't have kids, chances are you haven't had to watch Handy Manny. This is a good thing.

I have, unfortunately. Handy Manny is a computer generated cartoon. He has little animated bilingual, intterracial tools, and everybody in his town of Sheetrock Hills speaks English with random Spanish words thrown in at odd points. Everybody is deep into the Hispanic culture. The main woman on the show owns a hardware store. All the white male people are stupid. Everybody is helpless to do anything, until our little Hispanic hero shows up to perform manual labor and make everything ok.

We never hear about his immigration status, do we? Is he illegal? Here on an expired visa? What's the deal?

I want to write and direct an episode for this show. I'd like to show a slightly different perspective on undocumented workers than what this show gives us. One that's based on living in a border state, and performing a job in law enforcement. Because about half of the cases I deal with are perpetrated by illegal aliens. A majority of the insurance defense cases I worked were illegal aliens suing after a car accident. Our health care problem is driven in no small part to illegal aliens jamming our ER's up because they know they have to be treated, whether they pay or not.

I'd like to show Manny consoling a nice family whose son has been hit by an undocumented worker driving DWI with no insurance, who's drunk off his butt on firewater, has no driver's license, and no way to ever compensate them for the loss of their youngest son. One that maybe shows the aftermath of Kelly getting robbed at knifepoint when she leaves the store. Or where all the friendly tools are stolen and sold at a pawn shop. Or one where we see Manny's gang tattoos and hear how wonderful La Eme or MS-13 had been for him. Or where Mr. Lopard's car is stolen and cut up for spare parts. Or we find Abuelito selling dope that his relatives who sneak across the border brought up to him.

Handy Manny shows you lovely little things the Hispanic culture has brought into America. The music is by Los Lobos and Carlos Santana. Wilmer Valderrama from THAT 70'S SHOW voices Handy Manny. Yeah. That guy. The man whose major claim to fame is that he dated Lindsay Lohan and turned her gay. Thanks, buddy.

You want Hispanic culture? Let me do a show about some of the poor girls whose lives have been ruined by their father because he's been sexually abusing them since the age of 5, because that's what happens down in deep Mexico. That's a cultural thing down there. Illegals account for the MAJORITY of the child sexual assault cases that we work.

Let's see a Hispanic riot at the school because they can't afford an English as a Second Language program, and because they won't print the textbooks in Spanish. Let's see a school shut down because the majority of the children in it are illegal, and can't pass Bush's no child left untested program if you gave them the answers. Let's show the hospital closing because they are going broke treating people who can't and won't pay with no insurance. Let's show the taxpayers in Sheetrock Hills having to pay for it.

My episode would end with the Border Patrol showing up to deport Abuelito, or running a security checkpoint on the edge of town. We'd see all the little brown people running for the hedges, as fast as their little stubby legs could carry them.

You'd learn a new Hispanic phrase. "Pinche! La Migra!"

I'm not saying that all Hispanics are bad. Far from it. I'm saying illegal immigration is bad. I'm saying bringing a morally bankrupt, corrupt culture into ours and expect us to like it, that's bad. I welcome anybody who comes here legally. I welcome the influx of anybody's culture who comes here the right way. Keep in mind these poor people who sneak here for a better life bring the crap that is Mexico here with them. They're escaping that cesspool for a reason. Other than the beach resorts, the place sucks. It's a third-world country. Yet they end up here, and want to bring their culture and language with them. They want us to assimilate their culture. If they want that culture, stay there. Don't drag us down to their level.

Every person sneaking across the border is a criminal once they reach the other side. They start off breaking the law. Why do we want more lawbreakers here?

The Conquerer

I just love watching my son enjoy the world. Everything is so exciting and new to him. I took him to my parents’ house this weekend. Just him and me alone. It was great. We had a wonderful time. He met some cows, and a couple of donkeys, and saw a few nice deer. Yeah, the season’s over, so maybe next year....

I introduced him to the absolutely fascinating sport of throwing rocks into water. He did this nonstop for about an hour, and every rock thrown was pure magic for him. He laughed delightedly at each splash, and really got into finding the perfect throwing rock for each throw out of the millions of rocks that were laying around. There’s an art to it, you know. You can’t just throw any rock.

He played for at least an hour in a dried up stock tank. For you Yankees, a stock tank is a man made pond where the critters drink. We’re in severe drought stage in South Texas, the worst since the 1950's, so the almanacs say.

It was a whole world for him, better than any stupid McDonald’s playscape ever thought about being. It was Mount Everest, K-9, El Capitan, and the Alps all rolled into one. Without any prompting from Dad, he searched around and found a suitable stick, which immediately was used to squash bugs with, and also acted as a combination lightsaber, broadsword, and general poking device. He climbed high atop a pile of dirt that served a retaining wall, and waved his mighty sword, daring any and all challengers to bring it on. He was Alexander, Ghengis Khan, and Ceasar all rolled into one.

It’s amazing to me how boys operate. This is a kid that has seen no violent movies in his two years. He doesn’t get to watch much television. Yet a stick is instantly a weapon to him. Tell me that’s not hard wired into males and I’ll call utter bullcrap.

It was one of the most magical days that I’ll ever experience. I thanked God right then for the chance to share this time with him, and for all the wonderful things he’s brought into my life.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

"The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living..."

There’s a tendency in mankind to imagine that He(we) is the be-all end all. We’re the coolest, the most enlightened, the boldest, the best, the smartest, etc. For example, this new administration is touting itself as the most moral, responsible, so much better than the last, etc.

Fine. Maybe that’s true. Maybe not. Taking that attitude completely blinds folks to the painful truth that no matter how good it actually is, it’s still not perfect. It might look nice and shiny, but there’s a dark interior. And it’s not only on our society, but ourselves as well. Are you following this one?

Let me explain a bit better. How much better do we perceive ourselves than the Roman Empire? We’re so far advanced, right? How much better did the Romans think they were compared to the Greeks, the Middle Eastern cultures running around, the Druids, etc.? They were the top of the heap, so they thought. They figured it just didn’t get any better than what they had.

Pretty shortsighted, isn’t it? Through the passage of time, we see the faults. We see the shortsightedness. We see the debauchery, the insanity, etc. At least, those of us who actually learn something from history do. And we’re all blind to our own faults, for the most part.

Man’s perspective on the whole universe is a bit shortsighted, honestly. We fall into the trap of thinking that we’re the best, the brightest, can’t get any better, etc. (Lots of etcs., in the post, I’m noticing. Oh well. You weren’t expecting Shakespeare, were you?)

We ignore our own faults, and have no idea of how bad we actually are until we see somebody that is better than ourselves in some area. Whether it be our personal relationships, our golf game, the way we treat our dog, etc. We’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

What will a future society see when they look back on us? What flaws will they notice? What Achilles’ Heel will jump out at them as being what did this society in? We probably can’t even imagine it. What flaws does someone outside our own skins see in us that we can’t see ourselves?

No matter how good any of us think we actually are, there’s room for improvement. No matter how advanced we find ourselves in whatever area we choose to examine, there’s a greater perspective that we are unaware of, and a complete inability to appreciate how low we actually are.

Only time will tell, I suppose. But it’s something to think about.

Wow. I’ve got to lay off the C.S. Lewis.....

Monday, January 12, 2009

Mulder? Scully? A Little Help, Here.

I’ve noticed that my socks keep missing. Except that it’s only one sock. I have no rational explanation for this. I know that I put two socks in the laundry pile. I even know that I put two socks into the wash at the same time. Yet somewhere between the washer and dryer, one sock vanishes.

One sock vanishing in and of itself would not be a problem. The problem is that eventually the wayward sock will find its way home. And that messes with my mind. Given its fragile state, my mind is not a good thing to mess with.

There are explanations for all this. It could be that one of the machines eats the sock for a short period of time, then regurgitates it later, optimally timed to jack with my tiny little mind. There could be small elves in the house that take one sock and hide it, for the same reason. The little bastards also mess with my ballpoint pens, and from time to time steal one of the remotes for the tv or dvd player. If I manage to catch one, I will both prove the existence of malevolent supernatural beings, and create a moral dilemma for whatever taxidermist I take it to in order to have it stuffed.

A friend of mine once postulated that dimensional rifts appear around object from time to time, throwing that object into a parallel dimension. At what is probably only an instant in the parallel universe, several days or weeks might pass in ours. Then the dimensional rift will re-open, throwing the object back into our world, often at a slightly different point than where the object originally fell through the portal. This theory makes a lot of sense.

I have ruled out human error by a simple experiment. I have been throwing the orphan socks into a bucket. Every once in awhile, I add socks and check to see whether or not one of the new socks matches up with what I already have in the bucket. One night, I went through the bucket and sorted socks by type and color, getting the ones that were close together, and then matching them from there. On the first night, no matches. I then hid the bucket in the fireplace.

The very next night, without any additions on my part, I removed the bucket from its hiding spot in the fireplace and repeated the process. There were three matches. One match was for a set of socks that has been orphaned for at least a year.

This is not natural.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Bye, Bye, 2008, You Bag of Crap, You....

I have to say that 2008 was pretty much the worst year of my life. So far, anyway. General unhappiness reigned.

So yeah, 2008 sucked. CS Lewis’s book THE PROBLEM OF PAIN has helped a bit. He’s pretty phenomenal at putting a decent spin on this sort of thing. It’s been fairly easy for me to wonder why in the world this stuff seems to be happening to me. So why has God just abandoned me? Why wouldn’t he help me through all of this? Why no magic want to fix the problems???

Well, he hasn’t abandoned me. And eventually I came to my senses, or at least had a moment of clarity about it. A lot of this has been the result of my exercising free will. If I hadn’t opted to do certain things, I wouldn’t be suffering. Sure, God could have exerted miracles and pulled me out of it, but I learn best the hard way, unfortunately. It’s the product of a low IQ, I have no doubt. I’ve got to be knocked to my senses sometimes. So he’s let me experience the bad stuff, and used it to his advantage to better me. Sometimes as a parent, you have to allow your kids to do stupid stuff in order to learn better. And sometimes those lessons hurt. It’s kind of like jumping off the house when you were a kid, and discovering the hard way that gravity’s law was not going to be abolished just for you. (What, you never did that? Maybe it WAS just me.)

But I also have a peace about things that I didn’t have before. A lot of it comes with the realization that much of what has happened is now out of my control, if it ever was to begin with. I’m not necessarily asking for what I want to happen to come true. I’m more asking for peace about what is to happen. There’s mention in the bible that man cannot add a single hour to his life by worrying, and that’s true. So the trick is to be at peace with what God has in store. Nothing I can do can affect what anyone thinks or feels about me. Instead, I need to just be at peace with what is to happen, since there’s not a darn thing that I can do about it anyway.

It’s just no fun waiting, sometimes. And it’s relatively easy to want my will to be done, as opposed to his. But my perspective is pretty much narrow compared to his. But the thing that keeps me going is the promise that good things are in store for me down the road.

“I’ve been stumbling through some dark places, but I’m following the plow. I know I’ve tumbled out of your good graces, but it’s all right now....”