Indecision

Indecision

Cherished alum
Driven by the deeds of dowry
Value the entry of crazed cunning
Toward the plans of essence incumbent

Proud are many seeking value and thrift
Opening dreams xenophobic in wash
Smoking idle
Canine buried the last gnarled vault

Undulating flowers sparkle the great
Hail to the chief
Hail a cab
Hail on the rooftop
Veins of wild acorns strain the gutter

Sweet
The actions of family inside
Cherished
The boldness of thoughts held within
Hurt
The bombing of values we hold
Bonding
The frail crusts of a soul

Captions are read
From a cold hardened leaf
Blanket the sky with delight
Anger the child
Of a dank sullen scathe
Eloping delight of a dive

Torn
Are the frittered tales of a man
Building
The growing vines of disheartened
Stunned
Of the wicked thorn in the side
Blinding the vision of elders

The Gambit

Tried and true
Undulating garnish of soul
Pride of the dongle
Truth incarnate

Quest of a sundry
Palace of angels
Tempting common fog from the mouth
Relegating thyself to a gord

My move
Your move
My move
Your move

Only time will tell
Life recorded

Another Fine Morning

A morning for perspective

Tender water wily tether
Breaks the quark-set and bevel header
Endless false of gargled pen
Tries even the stubborn men

Ascend the crow
Plight of the naked anvil
Destined toward even ground
Only just haven jostles the ravine

The engine blossoms winding yet
Irked of having kiln and pets
Oppression harbors tiny baths
When sudden caverns signal aftermath

Grow the nave!
Plow the muster!
Cavort the prawn!
Zesty cavalcade has a dawn!

Onward flavors planetary dwindle
Ever on toward hooved gallantry
Butter drawn on toast
Delicate are the eggs

Kids and Dogs

The events described happened Saturday, June 25, 2011.  This is not a reprint or a second-hand story.  The events and characters are real.

As we often do, my parents and my family eat lunch together on Saturdays.  Typically, we frequent a Thai restaurant here in San Antonio called Thai Cafe.  My son, a lover of Thai noodles, as of this writing, is 28 months old and an advanced chatterbox.  He’s become quite good at describing in words what he wants us to know.  Although, when frustrated, he tends to prefer to demonstrate his angst with interpretive defiance.

On this Saturday, as a solo dad while my wife was at a wedding in Washington D.C., my son was in a good mood.  We had a pleasant meal and he even was good enough to let my parents and I talk for a few minutes.  Glancing at the clock, it was a little later than his typical nap time, and I hoped he would not sleep in the car on the way as this often interferes with his ability to nap once we get home.  The car ride home, he was talkative for about half of the 20 minutes back to the house.  Keeping an eye on him in the rearview mirror as we turned into my neighborhood, I was relieved to see he was still awake and alert.  With heavy eyelids, he was still actively looking at things as we drove by them.  Making the final right turn on my street and approaching our driveway, as I position the car to back into the garage, as I normally do, my son says excitedly “Who’s that, Daddy!?”

Stopping the car, I check all my mirrors and look in all my blind spots.  I see no one around the car, nor is anyone approaching the vehicle.

“Did you see somebody?” I ask.

“Who are those people, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, baby, what do you see?”

“Those people, right there!” he says straining against the car seat straps.  “Those people!”  He pushes his small finger against the glass.

“I don’t see anybody.”

“Why are they crying, Daddy?”

“Do you see someone crying?” I persist.

“Daddy, the’re right there!  Why are they sad!?  They’re crying, Daddy!  Who are they?”

“I don’t see anybody, baby.” as I keep the car going backwards into the garage.

Properly positioned in the garage, I quickly shut the car off as my son tugs at the straps of his car seat, trying to unfasten the straps himself.  Running around the car, I quickly open the car door, get him out of the car seat, and stand him up pointing toward the garage door, neither of us saying a word through the exit process, until I break the silence.

“Show me where the crying people are.” I demand, excited and creeped out.

He runs to the driveway, just outside the garage, looking to the same area of the yard he was pointing while we were in the car.

“Where’d they go, Daddy?”

“I don’t know.  Are they not they anymore?  Are the crying people gone?”

He walks into the grass, and turns 360 degrees.

“I don’t see them anymore, Daddy.  They were crying.”

Looking into the waning box hedges in front of the house, I presume as a last resort, he raises his palms as to suggest he cannot find the crying people.

“They’re gone, Daddy.”  He looks confused and a little sad himself.

I’ve heard it said before that kids and dogs see things us average adults don’t.  I don’t have a dog.

Thoughts on Texas’ Smoking Ban

Hi, I’m Moot and I’m here to beat the dead horse. Old age has really killed more people than anything else. Cars kill, too, but I digress, and I think you miss the point. Plastic, nuclear energy, and chemtrails? I can’t light up my polyurethane, nuclear reactor 3 inches from my face in public either. Chemtrails!? Really?

I think a comedian once said “Smoking is like peeing in a pool” but I’ll expand on that a little: You can’t make a urination section, urine smells, it’s unsanitary, it can make people really sick and die, and somebody, probably other than the urinating person, is going to have to clean up the mess, especially if someone got sick or dies, which in real economic terms is far more expensive than if the urinator hadn’t done it in the first place. Determining if the person had the freedom to urinate wherever they want to urinate? Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should. Go pee somewhere else where no one has to deal with it.

Just to be fair, we have to urinate, right? We don’t have to smoke, right? That’s where the analogy breaks down. But no one is saying you can’t smoke, nor that you can’t pee; you just can’t pee in the public pool.

—–Original Message—–
From: [Name removed]
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 4:05 PM
To: safun
Subject: Re: [SA FUN] Smoking ban passed in Texas

I find it funny that everyone complains about cigarette smoke, yet no complaints or laws are made regarding the banning of chem-trails, plastics that are harmful to humans, nuclear testing that has increased global radiation, or a plethora of other things that are far more lethal to the populace then cigarette smoke. Taking what is fed to you as the “most severe problem we face” and then running with it is only furthering the frame of thought that the select few are trying to push in to your head.
Call me crazy, (and some may) but if you are concerned with cigarette smoke, vs. the amount of ridiculousness that is put in to your water supply… Then you need to re-think your worry list.

Wahhhh, it smells bad… So do port-a-potties.. And they still use those… I smoke occasionally, and don’t really care either way if they put this type of law in or not… My main point is that this argument is of little concern in the bigger picture and it seems like it is causing people to get their shorts all bunched up.

[Name removed]
Linux System Admin I Cloud Support

C’mon Fear the Planking

Have you seen any of the hoopla about planking yet?  I don’t get it.  Well, I do, actually, but not really.  Someone died.  It’s a tragedy.  I get that.  If my son died, I’d be upset, too.  Seriously upset.  But as a global concern, the guy that died, an adult mind you, but someone’s son nonetheless died, do we need to be ringing the alarm bells about planking?  I realize the print business and news organizations are struggling to make money.  People grow tired of the deaths and destruction of tornadoes, flooding, and war.  The safest thing to do is to stay in your homes and watch more news programs to tell you what you should be afraid of so that you’ll stay inside and watch more news programs.  Nowadays, you don’t even really have to venture out of the house for the things you see in the ads they sell — those you can get hand delivered by the brave men and women of the United Parcel Service, or United States Postal Service, or whatever cheap shipping selection du jour.

Back to planking.  Just so you are aware, it is the phenomenon of lying straight as a board in places you wouldn’t normally lie straight as a board.  Observe:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

I’m sure I could even find some where people are planking in some stupid careless spots.  But, is this really a new threat to the world?  Has there never been a heinous act in act of photography that could be construed as dangerous?  People have been stupidly posing for pictures for decades, especially youth.  Should we end posing for pictures?  Is all posing bad?  Is all planking bad? Where have I seen this before?  I’ve seen people sit on balcony ledges, and I’ve heard of people falling off of balcony ledges.  Should we ban sitting?  Should we ban balconies?

Stupidity goes way back

This looks like a bad idea

At what point can we all agree that not everyone thinks things through?  That some may not value their lives and yet we continue to create rules and develop overbearing social norms, for what?  Is it more compassionate to view these sort of things as tragedies?  I don’t think so.  I don’t think that young man in Australia attempting to plank should have lost his life, but when does bad decision making simply become bad decision making?  Have we lost all responsibility to our own actions that we point to a mindless fad as an excuse for poor decision making?  Or is the news a catharsis and a way to train others by the bad examples of a few?  Who knows, but maybe we just need to watch more commercials to find out.

What Were They Thinking?

Volume 1 : Episode 1

I want to start a weekly bit where I point out some oddities and ask “What Were They Thinking?”  Here is the inaugural class of so things I consider interesting items for your consideration.

5.  Rebecca Black ruins Friday, for all of us

It seems Ark Music Factory has machined a viral hit.  Unfortunately, it could be used by the FBI as a psychological weapon.  What I can’t decide is if it is a joke or a real attempt at making music.  Not that most pop music released today isn’t as disposable as a Bic razor, but I think the lyricist, whom my toddler son could probably run circles around (quite literally, I’m sure) was actually insulting my basic intelligence as a human being on planet Earth.  Now, I feel sorry for Rebecca Black.  Forever doomed with millions of people pointing and laughing from all over the planet.  Could this be considered hazing?

4. Jokes about Japan

Doh! My one shot at redemption...

Gilbert, dude, seriously?  You’re like the king of roasts.  Now, maybe getting booted from your Aflac gig will pay off in the long run.  Maybe not.  But, if anything good ol’ Double-G-fried should be a poster boy for all of the non-thinking public figures out there — don’t drink and tweet.  With tens of thousands of people dead, towns wiped off the face of the earth, it’s not the time to make light of this suffering.  We all deal with tragedy in different ways.  Dealing with your tragedy, as a public figure, on Twitter…well, whatever you get is your own fault.  But when is too soon?  Will we ever be able to tell jokes about the World Trade Center?  Why don’t you tweet and find out.

3. Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Savings Time costing us Billions?

Click on the image to see an article on how “Daylight Savings” could actually be costing us money.  I used to think that Arizona was such a rogue for not following the rest of the country/world in switching times.  I think, now, they might have been on to something.  But when President George W. Bush pushed through an advocacy to lengthen DST, I have to ask, what were they thinking?

2.  Nuclear Power in Japan

Beware the Ides of March

So, I just said, not mere inches above this, that joking about Japan is bad.  I’m not.  I have a legitimate concern, here.  My boss said something this morning that I had been thinking since the first explosion:  was the decision to put nuclear power plants on one of the most geographically unstable places in the world a good decision?  While it is the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, no offense to the Russians, but at least it was at the hands of Mother Nature and not faulty engineering.  Maybe just poor strategic decision-making.  This is the only real solace I can find as I watch these tragic event unfold to a population that doesn’t need another nuclear tragedy in their history.

1. Celebrity Train Wrecks in the Media

...and that's the way it is.

After the Charlie Sheen debacle in the media, we have to ask ourselves what we feel is good journalism.  Is the point to sell more soap or to tell us what’s going on in the world?   Well, while the media was busy going gaga over Sheen’s derailment in front of the camera, there were soldiers dying in Afghanistan.  Wayne Drash, from CNN does a better job than I ever could.  Read the whole thing, but just to get you started:

It started with a Facebook status update. Upset at the media’s coverage of Charlie Sheen, someone took up for American soldiers dying in Afghanistan.

“Charlie Sheen is all over the news because he’s a celebrity drug addict,” it said, “while Andrew Wilfahrt 31, Brian Tabada 21, Rudolph Hizon 22, Chauncy Mays 25, are soldiers who gave their lives this week with no media mention. Please honor them by posting this as your status for a little while.”

Talk that begins with “Back in the day…” is usually just reminiscent of scant memories, concepts of a better time, but, really, back in the day when the news was on, we knew that the people providing that news were telling us how it was.  We’re still in a war, Americans are dying every day, and while I don’t imagine a 10 year old war should drown out the very real tragedies in Japan for breaking news, it sure as hell ought to be able to beat out a drug-raging Charlie Sheen boasting ”The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them just look like, you know, droopy-eyed armless children.”

Indeed.

Is defining faith in government, freedom?

Let’s be clear — every decision comes with compromises.  There is no perfect system as long as there is self-interest, free will, and there are people who are incapable of helping themselves.  This cannot be ignored.  People who tell you that they protect our country’s freedom, and then, for example, tell you who you should or should not marry, are not advocating freedom.  People who tell you that true freedom is built only on their worldview and their values are not advocating freedom.

On Monday, March 7, 2011, Newt Gingrich, among a slew of up and coming right-wing hopefuls, quote the Declaration of Independence to defend positions on belief, I think Jacques Berlinerblau‘s Washington Post article, while in its entirety certainly more polar than my own convictions, lays out some poignant views of the matter:

“…to say these conservative Christians believe that: 1) the Constitution is infallible and inerrant, 2) they can discern its “original intent,” 3) this original intent always synchronizes with their political worldview, and, 4) all other attempts to understand that original intent put forth since, let’s say, 1791 are misguided and perhaps satanic if they diverge from aforesaid political worldview.”

Everyone wants to be able to live their life without someone telling them how to do it.  But, in what part of your life are you making those decisions?  Everyone makes decisions based on rules.  When the rules of values come into play, can we assume a particular standard of rules?  Who says those are the right rules?  Who says your values are better than someone else’s values?

In the end, you see what you want to see

When the time comes to make decisions about the direction of our country, take a step back and ask yourself “If someone who didn’t have my exact same belief was doing this to me, would I like it?”  It’s the Golden Rule, after all.  Do unto others as you would have done to yourself.  Again from the Jacques Berlinerblau Washington Post article:

“If an American Muslim cleric advocated taking over the government by force and disobeying the tax codes I think it is fairly certain and entirely understandable that a visit from a certain governmental agency would not be far behind.”

If we fail to recognize that each other’s truths are self-evident, or that all of us are created equal, endowed by our Creator, whoever that might be to them, with certain unalienable rights, that among these you shall too find Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  The Declaration of Independence cites prudence as a requirement, and Despotism as the enemy — not ourselves.  In our country, you posses the freedom to speak of your unhappiness, you maintain the power to make change, but it has to be the right change — not just to the right!  If you want freedom, make it, but don’t make only a freedom for your life, for your liberty, and your pursuit of happiness, because, Fellow American, while we may not believe the same things, we all deserve the same things.

If you feel you are losing control of your country, you probably are, but it’s not a lack of faith, it’s the corruption of money at every level and a double standard.  You want to balance the Federal budget?  Do you want less taxes?  Perhaps a redirection of your concerns to the tyranny of the growing oligarchy in this country would be more appropriate.

But I digress…

I’m Baaack!

Everyone has a point in their life where they stop doing something.  Some call it a vacation, hiatus, sabbatical, holiday, or time-off.  I call it ‘life’.  That’s just how it is.  Sometimes, the things you enjoy doing, you wait until you find some time, readjust, and keep going.  It’s been a year since I last posted anything of any substance.  Not that what I post here is really substantiative by any means, but I think you know what I mean.

I don’t make any beans about it, this blog is for me to get some things off my chest.  I’ve been taking care of my family and working by butt off, so now it’s time to re-add a little something for myself back into my life.  I loves me to write.  I love to examine the word and expose it for what it is to me.  That’s all we can ever ask for ourselves.  Even though we are all simultaneously monologuing, hopefully, someone might stop for a moment and see something in a way they might not have considered before.  While I might not change minds, tweaking them a little is just fine too.

Playlist – Feb 26, 2010

Harry Longshanks Show
February 26, 2010

Song Title	Artist
Say You Will	Postulat
The Zookeeper’s Boy	Mew
Underwear Goes Inside the Pants	Lazyboy
Superheroes	Esthero
4 Be Be (feat. Ming Xia)	Chali 2na
The Renegade	Zeus
I Can Try	Sambassadeur
Somewhere Only We Know	Keane
For God Sakes	Absentstar
What I Didn’t Know	Athenaeum
A Girl Like You	Edwyn Collins
Wisdom	Gran Ronde
Americanarama	Hollerado
Not my song	Divide & Kreate