E-mail to a friend...

I write my friend in Ca from time to  time, and then realize it could be a post, so...

I'm sorry to hear about you losses.  Sadly, we are the age where that becomes more frequent.  It's weird being the 'elders' at family gatherings now.  I'm glad to hear that your parents are still with you.  Why is your mom in hospice?  And, how is your dad?  Tell them I said "Hello", please.

I'm doing OK.  Met a nice lady on line... we've gotten together a few times in the last month - 1/2 and enjoyed it.  Just hangin' together, but it's been fun.  No rush to take anywhere in particular, which is nice.  I finally found a decent MD, and I'm back on NSAIDs for arthritis in my hands, so I haven't been hurting so much since the first of the year.

Working at two schools as an adjunct, looking for more class hours, or, better yet, a full time gig w/ bennies.  The new doc wants me on Lipitor, but I can't afford it right now, what with the head and hand meds.  He does have me on low-dose aspirin, and I'm generally in good shape.

Arrgh!  Sound like an old guy, talking about all this health shit.

Going to make a business proposal to my lady friend - she has been very successful in sales, and I'm going to ask her if she would try to sell me as a consultant to local small businesses.  I'll go back to being a computer geek whore, and she can be my pimp.  I got a call out of the blue Friday... someone in the DC area code wanted to know if I'd like to be a UG drafter for him.  Going to call back Monday.

Well, that's about it.  Did I send you the link to Eric Raymond's political manifesto?  If not, it's on the blog.  You guys ought to take a look at it.

Say "Hello" to your lovely wife for me!

Cheers!

I've long been a fan...

...of Eric Raymond.  I first discovered him when I picked up a copy of his New Hacker's Dictionary at the MIT Press Bookstore many years ago.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and I enjoyed his comments in the film Revolution OS, about the early history of Linux.

But this is amazing.  He's captured pretty much everything I've thought in the last 11 years.  Go read =>, or click the AIM button on the right.

200 + people...

...just having fun!  (Ignore DougM's atrocious pun, tho...)

Just... dumb.

OK.  I finally figured out that I wrote about and to Lifelock, rather than Carbonite about Rush.

I hate when I do stuff like that.

Sheesh...

Reading List

I got a comment on the old post about the NPR reading list, and responded back with an e-mail.  Then, I thought to my self, "Self, post your own reading list."

I enjoyed the movie "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", based loosely on a comic book of the same name.  What tickled my brain about it was that all of the main characters were from various 19th and early 20th century novels:  Alan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Tom Sawyer, Mina Harker, Ishmael, "M", Dr. Jekyll/Mr Hyde, Dorian Grey, and the Invisible Man.

Up to that point, I had read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Tom Sawyer, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Moby Dick.  So, in the summer of 2004, I hit Amazon for the titles I hadn't read:

King Solomon's Mines (Alan Quartermain) by H. Rider Haggard

The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

And, for completeness, the ones I'd read (in italic, just to be different)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne

Dracula, by Bram Stoker,

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Which ones have you read??

Sluts Everywhere!!!

Rodger has this up at his place, which prompted me to send this:

Hi, Tami,

I assume that, since MSNBC's Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a "slut", that you will not be sponsoring his show, if it  does come back on the air?.  I can only assume so, based on  Mr. David Friend's 3/2 statement (and 3/3 update) about the use of the word by another talk show host Lifelock sponsored.

Will Mr Friend be scheduling a "face-to-face meeting" with Mr. Schultz as well?

Thank you,

That's the name on the e-mail I found at Lifelock:  tami@lifelock.com

 I'm just curious to see if Mr. Friend is consistent in his application of outrage.  No one the media should ever call anyone a slut.

Among our other burdens, we need to better behaved than our inferiors.

(See also sondrak for the text of Mr. Friend's statements.)

Twiddling...

...added a couple of new comics and web sites to the lists, and changed what gets shown on the lists.

Enjoy.

I'm getting pinged lately...

...or, "Context is Everything"

It's been my experience over the years that God does, in fact, talk to us.  The problem for any one of us being talked to is  noticing that it is happening.  I think the communication channel used is syncronicity.

Wikipedia has a pretty good definition:

 "Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner. The concept of synchronicity was first described in this terminology by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.^[1]
The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead it maintains that, just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by meaning. A grouping of events by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.
In addition to Jung, Arthur Koestler wrote extensively on synchronicity in "The Roots of Coincidence" ^[2]"

 Seems to me that syncronicity falls between absolute random chance, and events that have statistical probability.

F'rinstance, suppose my birthday is August 30.  A friend invites me to go with her to a concert.  It starts at 8:30.  We get there, and pick up our tickets.  We are seated in row eight, and my seat happens to be number 30.  That's syncronicity.  

But, what about the meaning?  If this were to happen to me, I'd be surprised.  I'd probably say something to my companion about the Universe (a.k.a. God) wishing me happy birthday.  And that would be that.

No context, really.

Context:

Here are some numbers:  12345

What do they mean?  You might say "The first five digits."  But since we are at the Post Office, I would say, "It's zip code for Schenectady, New York." (Really!)

If  it were an arithmetic class, your answer would have more meaning than mine, based on the context.

Context shapes meaning. 

So, the pings that I'm getting lately are about Catholicism.  Ever since the Obama/HHS decree that all health care providers *will* provide all "reproductive services"  (birth control and abortions), many of the blogs I read have been discussing it from a Catholic perspective.  The new friend I'm busily making is working her way towards Catholicism.  A couple of my college buddies have returned to it over the years.  I didn't think I would ever go back, and I'm still pretty sure it's a low-probability bet, but lately I'm becoming not so sure I won't.

I turned away from the Church (yes, I still capitalize it...) when I was 20.  I had concluded that I was agnostic.  (The fact that not being Catholic reduced the course requirements for Theology and Philosophy might also have figured in to it.)   About ten years later, I met wife #2, who was a practicing Christian Scientist.  We would discuss it on the drive to and from work (it's where we met).  It started to make sense to me.  About a year and a half after we met, I signed up for an EST-like training.  I knew that it included some exercises that would let me fiddle a bit with some of the theories I had learned.  I did, and they seemed to actually work.  Fast forward a few years later, and I was playing with first, the Church of Religious Science, and then with another church called Teaching of the Inner Christ.  After about 10 years of metaphysical study, I gave up any formal association with a church, and went my merry way.

There are some things that will have to be reconciled somehow if I am to return to the fold. In no particular order:

•  While I am a firm believer in evil and sin, I don't believe in "the devil". 
• I believe that, because we are made in the image and likeness of God, we are already perfect.
• I think that salvation is a matter of becoming the perfect expression of our perfection.
• Original sin?  Choosing to live in this physical state, apparently separated from God.
• I believe that we have chosen the life we live, and the experiences we create.
• I believe that sin is simply turning away from God.
• I believe that evil, like darkness, not something in itself, but an  absence of something.  As darkness is the absence of light, evil is the unwillingness to hear and respond to God, or, our absence from God.
• I believe that what we call God's Laws work in a way that is similar to gravity.  Hold something up and let go of it, and it will fall.  Do something contrary to one of God's laws, and it *will* come back to bite you.  Because of Divine Law, God doesn't need to micro-manage things.  (This leaves God more time for important things, like managing the outcomes of NFL and college football games based on teams' prayers...) 

I'm still on the fence about birth control.  I think "family planning" is a good thing.  My take on the Church's view is that they see it as the peak of a very dangerous and slippery slope that leads to sin and depravity.  They may be right.

Abortion is murder.  I think the Church and I are pretty much in agreement there.

I've gotten a pretty good handle on patience.  I fear my next lesson is humility.  I can see it coming, and I can't stop it.

Cheers!
 

 

Unclear...

...on the concept.

Lowe's wants you to fill out a form and fax it to the to get permission to link to their site.

In other news...

...I got a clean bill of health from the dermatologist. No interesting blemishes.So it's been about 7 - 8 months!!

I think I've Found...

...my true patron Saint:

Saint Dymphna,
Patron of Mental & Spiritual Afflictions,
Pray for Us

The last two lines from the website tell all:

"Gheel (where she lived and was martyred) has long been known as a place of pilgrimage for persons seeking relief of nervous or emotional distresses. In our century, the name of St. Dymphna as the heavenly intercessor for such benefits is increasingly venerated in America."

Amen.

(By way of Zilla of the Resistance)

Who's in Control??

I drive about  8 hours/week to and from my teaching gigs, which gives me a fair amount of time to, essentially, meditate  Not to worry, not the closed-eye, unresponsive, belly button lint gathering kind, but the contemplative kind - by which I mean exploring and chewing on a an idea or two or three.

What got me started last week was a TV show the Doc had on.  A crime drama, this episode about a college kid who was helping a local bar promote itself and make money by holding weekly wet T-shirt contests. He got murdered by someone, and, as they say, we're off.

The thing about it was the one young woman who threatened him with a lawsuit for putting a video of her topless on the internet.  She protested to anyone who listened that she was forced into participating in the contest, so should not have wound up shirtless on the web.  She described being forced to drink then forced to go on stage because she had been picked up bodily, and passed up to the stage. She never said that she felt she would be safer on stage.

To which I responded, "Show me the damned bruises."

Here's why...

There is one, and one thing only that each of us has control over.  That is ourselves.  I may not like the circumstances I find myself in and I may not like any of the apparently available options that I have, but I do have control (another word for it is "choice) over what I do.

Now, before you go all sputtery and "Butbutbut..." on me consider this parable:

You wake up in a 8x8x8 room.  Metal walls, nt apparent door, window or other means of entrance or exit.  You feel OK, but have no recollection of why or how you arrived in such a predicament.  You are clothed, but have nothing about your person that could be used as a tool for escape - no belt, no shoes, empty pocket, no smartphone.  Nada.  Zip.

You notice, in your examination of the room, that there is a 3 foot diameter hole in the center of the floor.  Upon investigating, you discover that it is full liquid cess to within 18" of the floor.  (Cess - as in cesspool.  Contents of a septic tank or outhouse pit.  You get my drift??)

As you make this discovery, you notice something else - two of the walls have begun to advance toward each other in a way that, if unchecked, will absolutely squish anything (or anyone) between them to a very thin smear.  As the walls continue their advance, it increasingly apparent that this is going to happen  in the next couple of minutes.  To you.

Now, you have two choices.  Ponder for a moment, and then tell me what they are.  (Hint - one is fatal, the other just really, really unpleasant.)  Assuming that you are not generally given to suicidal ideation, and that you brain chemistry fall into the statistically abstract range called "normal", I'm betting that you choose the un-fatal but highly unpleasant option available to you.

As you jump in (feet first, of course), you discover two things.  Well, three, actually.  One - you can stand up without crouching or bending.  Two - the liquid poo it just up to your chin.  Three - the walls have slammed shut, so you are now trapped in the mini cesspool.

And, once again, you have two choices - one may easily lead to an unpleasant drowning death, the other again is highly unpleasant, but not immediately fatal.  what do you do??  Hint - it you hold your breath long enough, you will pass out.  Most likely, you will collapse, and submerge yourself in the liquid poo.  Worst case, you will drown, not quite so worst case is you will come to, completely submerged in the liquid poo.

Or, you could continue to breathe and not pass out.

Ponder and/or discuss.

More later.

Yes, I've Been Fiddling...

...and I think I like the way things look now.

Thoughts, comments??

I Wonder...

...how may of the "Occupiers" would even begin to get Muir's comic today?