Cleaning Out The Closet

Roll Call


Time to make your voices heard....at least by me. I am once again in the process of cleaning out my blog list, but this time, I will be doing it a bit differently. If you want to stay on the list, you need to let me hear from you and in so doing give yourself a little promotion.

I have been trying to figure out my new Android Smartphone for the past 3 weeks. One of the things it does (very well) is totally synch with my online Google Account (contacts, documents, reader, maps, email, you name it).

One of the new options on Google Documents is an on-line response form that dumps responses into a spreadsheet. After experimenting with it for a few minutes, I hit on the idea to survey all of you to get a better idea of the demographic of my readership.

So take the plunge and fill out the form. It is only seven questions and there is no math involved. After a set time frame (about 2 weeks for all you slow readers and Holiday travelers) I will dump the responses to an HTML file and post them on my blog for all to see, and to aid me in cleaning out the blogs I follow and comment on.

So promote yourself and make your voices heard! The survey can be found by clicking the blog title or by clicking here.

Alone in the Sandbox

That Warm Feeling


This goes way back, to my earliest childhood memories. I assume that everyone has origins like this, and they must vary quite a bit. They are one of those core values / feelings / memories that follow us all through life and create the foundation of who we are. They are more like memories and feelings that keep resurfacing, they are a constant throughout our entire life.

For me, it was being lost in the fog. Not so much being lost, but alone. This isn't a scary feeling like some sort of phobia or nightmare. It is more of a dreamlike state. A waking dream where all your senses come into play and everything is a mystery to be discovered.

Every time I have come across these situations in real life, I am thrown back to that constant feeling from the first time I experienced it.

The first time was probably during a blizzard in North Dakota around 1962. It was nighttime and you couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of you. I was all bundled up and walking back to my house in the dark. But I was so disoriented, I had to walk up to each house to see if I recognized the door, and then stumble to the next one, and the next, before finally finding my home. I knew it was there somewhere, and when I found it, there would be warm blankets and coco waiting for me.

Fast forward four years and we had just moved to southern California. It was in the spring, and there was still a bite in the air. I saw ocean fog for the first time that spring, as it drifted through the groves of Eucalyptus trees behind our house. As I walked through the forest, the aroma of the trees mixed with the coolness of the fog. Eventually the morning mist was countered by the warm rays of sunlight struggling to pierce the canopy of the trees and chase the fog away. It was surreal.

A decade later in College, my friends and I rented a beach house on the Oregon Coast for a weekend. One morning after a heavy night of college partying, we awoke to a dense fog bank hanging over the coast. I walked down to the beach and headed toward the surf. I could hear the crashing waves all around me like a roaring freight train, but the sand was still dry and I couldn't see more than 10 feet in any direction. After walking almost a half mile toward the ocean, it sounded as though a wave would materialize out of the mist and swallow me. I slowly retraced my footsteps in the sand back to the beach house.

I left college in 1982 and moved to Arizona. On my road trip from college student to adulthood, I stopped in the Redwood Forest of northern California to sleep in my car before heading toward San Francisco the next morning. During the night there was no moon and low laying clouds moved in through the trees to block out what little starlight there was. I awoke in the middle of the night to experience total and complete darkness for the first time in my life. That lonely night in the middle of nowhere, the forest enveloped me. (A more detailed account of this night can be found in my blog entitled Deep Woods.)

It has been a while since then and these images have become fewer and farther between but their memory has not diminished in my mind. They are those periods of wonder and reflection when you have to question the world around you and also question who you are.

The last one was in September 2009. I was at Burning Man in northern Nevada. Burning Man takes place on a huge dry lake bed 70 miles from the nearest town. When the wind picks up (which is often) it creates huge dust storms that the participants have to weather. It sounds worse than it is. The dust is like a fine powder and is hypo-allergenic, there are no spores or pollen in it. So everyone always has a handkerchief and goggles at the ready to ride out the 5 to 30 minutes of zero visibility.

I was caught in one of these storms as I roamed the far reaches of the playa, thousands of feet from any structure. The dust engulfed me and I put my bandanna over my face and lowered my goggles to wait it out. As I knelt down on the ground, ghostly images of fellow Burners came and went on the fringes of my sight. Riding bicycles, walking, laughing, dressed in bizarre costumes. They drifted in and out of my world in another waking dream, and then the dust dissipated and the world was normal again.

I sometimes feel that this is what my life is really all about. In our day to day lives, we are just waiting for something to happen. But once in a while, we get a glimpse of what it is like to pass to the other side.

Grains Of Sand On The Infinite Beach

Climbing to the Mountain Top

I don't do too many video links. I consider this more of a writing / image media, and not a substitute for television. But life is full of exceptions, so I wanted to share this one. It is on You-Tube and you can watch it at your leisure.

It seems that as I get older, the one thing I end up having to battle more and more is stress. Stress from work, money issues, politics, general incompetency from all sides. Life is not that simple anymore.

When I was going through my divorce in 1997, the stress level went way past the red zone. During that period of my life, I could actually contemplate what it was like to go postal and see the value in it.

Thankfully, I found a way to releive the stress. It was a mountain. It is still there and it was called Squaw Peak. They renamed it to Piestewa Peak recently and it sits in the middle of Phoenix, Arizona. It is a 1.2 mile hike to the top, and the view from the summit is pretty spectacular.

I hiked that mountain a lot during my divorce. I learned a long time ago, that when you get far away from your troubles and look back at them, they appear relatively small in comparrision to the big picture. The big picture being your life. On top of Squaw Peak, everything below me finally looked in perspective. Small and inconsequential with the only really important thing ontop of the mountain. That was me and my ability to figure out the world around me. I have hiked that mountain a lot since. I need to hike up it again.

For those that can't hike the mountain, watch this video. To say that we are insignificant in the overall scope of things would be an understatement, but the fact that we can understand our place in the vast expanse of the cosmos, is truely astounding.

Take A Pill

Shut The Fu@k Up!

A short comment here. I have been having some problems with people recently. Not a particular person, but a mass of people that are starting to really un-nerve me. There is the possibility that I have been subconsciously avoiding them in the last decade or maybe I have just been really lucky in not running into them. Then again, maybe it is the holiday season, the economy or global warming that is bringing them out of the woodwork. But there are sure a lot more of them recently.

These are the hyper-talkers. Folks that don't talk 'too' you, but talk 'at' you. They are not engaging in conversation, but instead are venting a lot of pent up emotion, anxiety or anger.

In the past month or so, I have had to deal with several of these people who have verbally assaulted me. I usually know within 10 seconds what their problem is, but can not get a word in edge wise for about 2 minutes while they drone on about their frustration.

SHUT UP! People. If you can't control yourself, and act in a calm, responsible, ADULT manner, you only make the problem WORSE!!!

Here are a few pointers:
1) -Ask a direct, short question, keep it to less than two sentences.

2) -Close your mouth and WAIT for a response.

3) -Ask a follow up question (if necessary) AFTER you have heard and processed the response.

4) -If you still don't get it, request a later meeting to go over the issues in-depth. Don't assume people have time for you when YOU want it. We are all busy!

It is called 'dialogue' and has to do with each member of the conversation contributing to the exchange in equal parts. No one wants to hear you babble on about emotional twaddle and side issues that have nothing to do with the task at hand.

If you want to spew forth all sorts of garbage, you need to find someone that is called a "Psychiatrist". They will listen to you babble on incoherently for hours (for a fee) and then probably prescribe some medication for you that will 'shut you the HELL up'.

For some reason, folks seem to think that I am the free psychiatrist that does pro bono work for the masses. NEWS FLASH.......that isn't the case!

Is This Societal Evolution?

It Takes Two To Play


I have been watching the whole Tiger Woods drama with a mixture of humor and apathy over the last two weeks. I really don't feel for the guy, nor do I think all of the media hype surrounding him is all that justified. It appears to be more of a feeding frenzy by the media and the public to get a bird's eye view of how the mighty have fallen.

One of the issues that has kept bugging me about this whole sordid affair is that most women who have made comments regarding the actions of Mr. Woods seem to state that he got what was coming to him, and that he deserves to be dragged through the mud. While I am not here to defend Tiger in any way shape or form (I blogged my views about him a week ago). There does seem to be a bit of a lop-sided media slant to this whole story.

As of this writing, there are 10 to 11 women that have come forward and laid claim to having bedded down Mr. Woods. Everyone from bar hostesses, to escorts, to reality TV stars to porn stars have raised their hand and screamed into a microphone, "I was one!".

Yet there appears to be no media attention directed toward 'their' indiscretions. These women knew he was married and also knew he had children and they also KNEW he had gobs and gobs of money. I don't think any of them have come forward with the lame story of, "I thought he was going to leave his wife and marry me!". They knew what they were doing, and they knew it was immoral. But they had no reservations about tempting him, seducing him and then bragging about it in the media.

But these women are left unscathed, and the public is 'instructed' to scold Mr. Woods for his inability to control his libido.

It takes two people to have an affair and there should be blame on both for not knowing or caring about the situation of the other.

My wife and I have been engrossed in the AMC television series "Mad Men" for the past couple of months. The series is set in the early 1960s in New York City. One of the reasons I find the show fascinating is the spot-on set design and social behavior of the period that the producers of the show strive for. Having grown up in the 60s, I recall all of this.

In the early 1960s, men were EXPECTED to have affairs and it was considered the job of the women to be the first line of defense in shaming other 'loose' women from seducing the hapless men in the world.

John F. Kennedy had numerous affairs, but it was the women that he dallied with who were scorned, shunned and silenced (some say Marilyn Monroe was even killed), because they soiled the reputation of 'good' women by sleeping with JFK. In essence, to be a woman was to be pure and forthright, and loose women dragged society into the gutter. Those men...well, they just can't help themselves.

I don't seem to recall anyone tearing down Wilt Chamberlain in the 1970s when it became known that he had slept with over 10,000 women during his NBA career and fathered countless illegitimate children.

But now, the pendulem has swung the other way and the women are almost held up on pedestals as having been 'victims' of Mr. Woods, when in reality they are loose, immoral, gold-diggers looking for a big paycheck. What I would like to see, is each one of these media 'whores' go on camera and apologize to Elin Woods for having seduced and screwed her husband and shamed their children.....but I doubt that is going to happen.

If blame is to be shared equally here, Tiger only has 1/12 of it to bare. Am I the only one that sees it this way or do I just live on a different planet?

Educating The Emotional Pygmies

Lessons from the Road


Once upon a time when I was still feeling my way along my career path, I had a part time job to make ends meet. I wager that a lot of men have these jobs during their lifetime. It isn't a job you can build a career on, it is a job to pad your wallet with a few extra bucks. These are jobs that don't require a lot of brains or skill to perform. They are jobs that exist because science hasn't come up with a cost effective robot that can do it cheaper than a semi-intelligent human.

The last job that I had in this genre was at Budget Rent-A-Car of Arizona. It was back around 1995 and I was a 'driver' for Budget. When rich people rent cars, they don't always return them to the main distribution facility, or the company will move 'blocks' of cars to specific areas in a city to cover spikes in demand. In order to so this, they have employees that do nothing but drive their cars from one place to another.

This usually meant sitting around a picnic table in the early evening, until a supervisor came out and picked five of us from the group, and stated that drivers #1, #2, #3 and #4 need to drive four Nissan Sentras out to the Glendale facility. Driver #5 would be the 'van' driver. The van driver follows drivers 1 thru 4 to Glendale, and then gave them a ride back to the central staging area.

That is it. That is all you do, for 8 hours, between 6pm and 2am in the morning. Sit around, drive cars and ride in a van. In retrospect, it was probably the best job I ever had. You couldn't get any less stress, and all you had to do was drive around brand new cars, on someone else's dime, and listen to whatever radio station you wanted.

However, this isn't a story about the job, it is a story about a ride in the van back to the central staging area. Much like the sitcoms 'Taxi' or 'Mash', whenever you take four to six individuals and put them in a van over and over, strange conversations and fellowships develop. This is a story about one of those van rides.

Jobs such as this tend to attract some pretty eclectic individuals. Besides myself, there was an interesting cross section of drivers that I worked with at Budget Rent-A-Car. I don't recall any of their names, but I recall their personalities as though I have known them all my life.

There was the patriarch (we will call him Bill) who had been there longer than anyone else. He was in his 40s and had a dream of opening up his own junk-yard. He worked for the City Special Events Planning office by day and was an expert in Checker Taxis and Sedans (he owned several in various states of repair).

There was the young Afro-American going to college on a scholarship (we will call him Jerome). He was about 6' 5" tall, in his early 20s and spent most of his time in the back seat of the van sleeping.

There was the tall skinny guy in his mid-twenties looking for his first real job. He was high school educated with a pale complexion and long thinning curly hair. The rest of the crew nicknamed him 'Vampire', because he looked so frail and anemic. He had just started a day job as a studio sound engineer and wanted to get into the recording industry.

Then there was the guy who had the speech impediment. Something like a cleft pallet or a nervous stutter. He was likable and smart, but he had to overcome his handicap every time he opened his mouth. (Lets call him 'Stan' for Stuttering Stanley).

Finally, there was "Clutz". He was the youngest guy in the group, who had just turned 18 and we assumed his daddy in corporate had gotten him the job to start him off on the 'ground level'. We called him "Clutz" because of his inability to solve the most simple tasks, such as, "you have to put your foot on the break before you can move the shift lever", (duh, it is a safety feature on all cars!). Clutz was a good kid, but he was frustrating at times and had a lot to learn.

So one balmy summer night we are all assigned to drive cars to Sun City, which is a good two hour round trip to drop the cars off and make it back to the central facility. We all hopped in our trusty steads with the 'new car smell', tuned in our favorite radio station, cranked up the volume, and semi-raced each other to Sun City. Mind you, we never really raced, but it was sort of an insult to be the last one to arrive. It was more a matter of knowing the 'best' way to get there, than speeding to get there, since getting a ticket was a sure fire way to get canned.

The last of us trickled into Sun City around 7:30pm and we all piled into the van for the trip back. We all had dibs on our favorite positions in the van, Jerome was in the back seat laying down, Bill was driving, I was next to the driver in the passenger seat, Stan, Clutz and Vampire were somewhere in the middle.

As we headed back, we made small talk about various frustrations that all of us were experiencing in our 'day jobs'. These van rides were a sort of group therapy session, although we didn't realize it at the time. Eventually, the conversation turned to women as Vampire started to relate his prospects for a promising date that he had lined up the following weekend. I listened to the conversation from the co-pilot Captain's chair as my co-workers went back and forth about the issues they had with women and how they were so frustrating to figure out.

After a while it sounded as though the group was stuck in a sort of relationship vapor lock, so I thought I would chime in with my two cents.

"Guys, the trick to making women happy is to make them the center of attention.", I stated.

"...and how do you do that?", came Vampire's reply.

"Well, you can't pay attention to them 24/7, that would drive you nuts, so you have to find 'special ways' to make them feel important that linger for a long of time. In essence, you have to do things that they can brag to their girlfriends about. It will take them about two weeks to brag to all their girlfriends. After two weeks it will be time to come up with another 'special' surprise to placate them for another two weeks, etc., etc."

By the time I had finished this little explanation, I noticed that all the eyes in the van (even Bill's) were fixed on me.

"....and....", they collectively said.....

"...and what? Do special little things for them, and you can keep them happy, ergo, they will be less bitchy."

"Like what sort of special things?", Clutz asked.

"Yeah, g-g-g-give us some ex-x-x-xamples.", Stan added.

It sort of dawned on me that this van was populated with a bunch of emotional pygmies. They hadn't watched any romantic movies or put any real 'thought' into the motivations and desires of the female gender. So, I decided to give them some pointers from my experiences regarding intimate relations with the opposite sex.

"Well, first of all....FLOWERS. They cost you about a $5 at local grocery story and they translate to about 5 days of good will. As long as they are on the dining room table, and haven't wilted, they scream out to anyone in the room that your girlfriend is a special person."

"But they just die and end up being thrown away.", responded Clutz.

"Doesn't matter Clutz, it is the thought that counts, and not the physical value of the flowers. The flowers themselves have no meaning or value, it is the act of giving them that lingers in the woman's mind."

"W-w-w-what else.", Stan prodded me.

"I don't know, do something for them that shows a lot of thought went into it. If you do something for a woman that lasts 30 seconds, but she realizes that it took you three weeks to plan it out, it is good for three weeks and 30 seconds of good will as far as the woman is concerned."

"......l-l-l-like what?", he continued.

I thought for a second and recalled a special date I had planned for someone I used to work with. "OK, here is a good example:"

"I used to work with a girl that I really liked and I wanted to do something special for her birthday. So I took her on a date and made a treasure hunt out of it. I knew she really liked cheesecake, so I hand-made two of them, packed them in dry ice and hide them in the trunk of my car with a bunch of helium balloons tied to them. Then I went to Encanto Park in Central Phoenix, and hid an envelope under one of the foot bridges that span the canals there."

All the eyes in the van were transfixed on me and I could tell that they were all taking mental notes about everything I said.

"I picked my girlfriend up for our date and told her that she would have to 'fugure out' what her birthday present was. Her first 'clue' was in the glove-box of the car. She opened the glove box and pulled out an envelop. Inside it said that her first clue could be found where the 'Trolls Lived In Encanto Park". We drove to the park, rented a canoe and paddled around the lakes until she finally found the envelope under the bridge. Inside the envelop was a "challenge". She had to go to a knick-knack gift store in Phoenix called "Juttenhoops" and spend as close to $20 as possible without going over (inside the envelope was a $20 bill). The closer she got to the limit of $20 without going over, the better her birthday present would be."

At this point, I noticed that even Jerome had sat up in the back of the van and was paying attention to everything I said.

"Juttenhoops, was a huge store with literally thousands of little do-dads and knick-knacks to play with. We arrived there and my girlfriend had 20 minutes to buy as many things as she could with $20. She tore through the place like a kid in a candy store and in the end, spent $19.92 cents. We went back to the car and under the passenger seat, there was another envelope. Inside it was her winnings. If she spent under $18.00, she got dinner at McDonald's. If she spend between $18.00 and $19.50, she got to eat dinner at Applebees. If she spend over $19.50 she got to have dinner at The Phoenician, which is a 5 star resort here in Phoenix. There was little doubt what prize she would win."

"So we went to the Phoenician and had a wonderful dinner and drinks. After dinner, I took her home and as we got out of the car, I told her I had one more thing for her. I opened up the trunk and all the balloons came floating out still attached to the cheesecakes that were still frozen from the dry ice."

"Two months later we took a weekend trip to Vegas, where I scored big time....and I don't mean at the slot machines."

At this point, not only were all of my van buddies staring at me, but their mouths were all open in stunned silence.

"Freak'in Brilliant"....I heard Bill say.

"Ow, man, this is like hitting a gold-mine.", said Vampire, "...what else, give us some more examples."

"Geez, haven't you guys ever done anything thoughtful for a woman?", was my reply.

My co-workers starred back at me in silence.

"OK, here is another one. My wife had a real penchant for expensive things that I can't afford, which is one of the reasons I am riding around in this van. She really likes 'smelly stuff'.....which is to say, perfumes and toiletries. Instead of going into debt to buy her gallons of Chanel No. 5, I figured out an alternative. I went to a mall store called 'Lotions and Potions' and bought a bunch of pure scented oils in bulk. Then I went to an import store and got three hand blown perfume bottles from Egypt, pretty cheap at about $5 a piece. Then I bought a very elaborate Christmas Chest with to latches and packed it with straw."

"I took the oils and filled the perfume bottles with them. I place the bottles inside the chest and secured them so they would not leak. Then I closed the chest and locked it with two very small key locks I got at Ace Hardware. I took each key and placed it in a separate envelope with my wife's name on them. I wrapped the chest in a very elaborate velvet rope so that it looked like a sunken Christmas Chest and placed it under the Christmas tree a week before Christmas. The chest had no name on it, so no one knew who it was for. This drove my wife nuts, since she assumed it was for her, but didn't know what it was. Then on Christmas eve, I slipped the two envelopes with the keys into the branches of the tree."

"On Christmas day, we went through all the presents until we got to the chest. No one knew who it was for and I stated that someone must have gotten the keys in one of their presents and they just needed to look for them. Needless to say, it took my wife about 2 minutes to find the envelopes, open the chest and find her 'smelly stuff'. Total cost was under $100, total value in score points with the wife...about $3,000."

At this point, Jerome was actually writing all this down on a piece of paper in the back of the van.

"What else, what else, give us some more.", Jermone demanded.

Just then, Bill pulled the van back into the Budget Rent-A-Car central lot and stopped at the drivers table outside the supervisors office.

"That is all I have for now guys. You just need to be creative. Remember, it isn't things you buy, it is the things you do that makes the difference."

I don't know if my little life lessons made any difference in any of their lives. I like to think they did. In more ways than one, these sorts of jobs were the best jobs I ever had. When you got more from work than just a paycheck.

The Wonderful Dream

Maybe, Someday...

I had a dream last night. It was a strange sort of dream. Not like the surreal sort of dreams I usually have where I am in the third person, watching myself solve a puzzle or a problem for no apparent reason.

This dream had me parked in front of a television set watching the nightly news. The news Anchor (I think it was Tom Brokaw) was fidgeting and kept looking off camera like he was expecting something, only it never came. He squinted into the teleprompter and then shuffled some more papers in front of him...then he cleared his throat.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a day like no other in broadcast history. For it is on this day, that I have to report to you the following:

there are no cheating sports figures

there are no dead celebrities

there are no kidnapped children

there are no new mystery illnesses

there are no plane crashes

there are no war dead

there are no natural disasters

there are no spikes in prices

there are no new government statistics on the economy

there are no reports from North Korea or Iran

there are no bank / corporate failures

there are no train wrecks

there are no pirates!

there are no bailouts.....

in essence my friends, there is no news to report to you on this day. So stay tuned for 20 minutes of advertisements from our sponsors for medications to combat illnesses that you have never heard of and automobiles that you can no longer afford to own. Good Night."

I changed the channel to look for new episodes of 'Cops' or 'Hoarders', but couldn't find any. So I went outside to play fetch with our dog.

It was a really cool dream.

First Friday Flashbacks

Scences From A Marriage, Part-2

Dispite making all the right decsions and doing your best, life sometimes has some very scary moments in store for us. Here is a case in point. Many may have already read this, but it bares another reading. This isn't fiction, it actually happened. First Publisched February 27, 2006


The Awful Truth


"Let's have a glass of wine and go outside." she said.

It sounded good to me. I never passed up a glass of merlot and it was a nice evening outside. The sun was just setting and our acacia tree was blooming. The tree had those little puffy yellow balls on it and they made the back yard smell wonderful.

We had been married a little over a year and things seemed to be going pretty well. It was the first marriage for both of us and there had been bumps in the road, but I expected that and thought it was kind of normal. I knew that the invitation to head outside with a glass of wine was the prelude to something, but I didn't have a clue what it would be about.

Standing in the fading glow of an Arizona sunset, she asked the question, "When we have a baby, do you want a boy or a girl?"

We had agreed to hold off having kids for the first year or so, until we got settled and were sure things were going to work in the marriage. Obviously, she felt that things were working well enough to start considering the next big step. So I pondered the question and gave an honest answer.

"Having a boy would be fun. I could play catch with him and try and teach him about all the mistakes that I made when I was growing up. But having a girl would be a wonderful learning experience, since I never had a sister and that would show me a whole side of parenting and life that I have never known before. So I don't really think I would have a preference for a boy or a girl. Each one would be a wonderful learning experience in their own way."

She looked at me for a moment and then sipped her wine, "I want a boy." she replied.

"Well, that's fine; hopefully we will have a boy. We have a 50/50 chance, and my side of the family is known for having a lot of sons." was my reply.

"I really want a boy." was her reply again.

"Well, we don't have much say in it; we sort of have to take what nature gives us."

"If we have a girl, I want have another baby until we have a boy." was her response.

This sort of threw me back a bit and I am sure that the expression on my face was one that showed a bit of alarm. The reasons for the wine and the sunset were starting to become clear. Something had been working in the mind of my wife and it was now making itself known to me.

"And just how many 'girls' are you willing to have before you give up on the idea of procreating a son?" I asked.

She pondered a moment and replied, "Five".

This whole conversation started to settle into my mind and I started picking it apart like I logically do. This woman was dead set on having a son and she was willing to give birth to five 'throw away' children in order to get the one she wanted. The fact that she was willing to give birth to four baby girls before finally hitting the jackpot and having a baby boy really hit me.

"What is your fixation on having a boy?" I asked.

"Women don't have any real chance of success in this world." was her reply. "Woman can't attain any real power or influence and they can't earn as much money as a man. I want someone who is going to take care of me in my old age."

It all came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks. She wanted an insurance policy. She didn't want to mother a child, she wanted a dividend for her old age, and a boy would have a higher yield than a girl. It hadn't escaped me that she had also said 'take care of me' in her old age. Not take care of 'us'.

She was perfectly willing to sacrifice any caring or love of the girls that she bore in order to grab the gold ring and bare a son. It was the ultimate statement of anxiety, self-centeredness and self doubt. She was worried about herself and her security and everyone around her including her parents, her husband; even her children were just a means of making sure that she was taken care of. Love and maternity had nothing to do with it.

That evening as she slept I laid staring at the darkened ceiling and wondered who this person was laying next me. I realized I didn't have clue.

I can't stop laughing...

"Hole In One!"


Evidently, obtaining a lot of money and/or power makes you really, really, stupid. It appears that there is a correlation that states; the more wealth and influence you obtain the less common sense you have, not to mention control over your libido. If this is what happens to you when you reach the pinnacles of power, I am contented to remain squarely in the middle class.



"I did not have relations with that woman!"


Take this into account and then add the fact that there are a LOT of Paris Hilton wanna-bes out there that are more than eager to hop in the sack with you and record every tryst you have, either in their diary, cell phone, computer, or twitter account, and you have an entertainment media frenzy.



“I don't care about motivation. I care about credibility.”


It seems that here in America, we aren't known for our majestic triumphs anymore, but instead for our dismal failures. I suppose there needs to be a college class, or self help guru that wildly successful people need to consult when they pass the 5 million dollar mark. Lets see if we can't fill in the syllabus:

Rule #1, lots of money builds glass houses, so everyone can see you idiot!

Rule #2, (anyone?)

Rule #3, (anyone?)

Rule #4, (anyone?)