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It is a sad truth for people that their beliefs become so powerful that it often leads them to violence. This has been going on for a long, long time. Of course, these days, it seems like those who follow the Muslim religion are the ones in the cross-hairs. But, the Christians need not forget that plenty of violence and hatred and evil has been done in the name of their beliefs. The problem is always when beliefs, of any kind, lead to violence.
There are some countries where the sport of soccer it taken so seriously that when the national team loses, the coaches and players fear for their lives. Can you imagine that? If you said, yes, then you are someone who needs to get some help. The fact is that there might be someone, somewhere, in this country who is so wrapped up in his or her sports team and, were they to lose a tightly contested race of some kind, might explode into violence because of it.
Political beliefs often explode into violence but, for a very long time, this happened in other places in the world. You do realize that much of the world looks at our elections and the peaceful transition of power and shakes their head in wonder, right? In other countries they will hold a national election and when the guy in office loses, he decides to just throw out the results of that election, cross his arms in front of his chest and then stays in office. This usually leads to violence because you have to use violence to stay in office.
However, this past summer shows that violence has potential here as well. Thankfully, in the heated town hall meetings heated discussions ensued but there were no incidents of real violence. Still, there were people found in the audiences with weapons in a few situations, which means the potential existed.
Most times, where it comes into play is with religion. I don’t know why this is. People want to believe so fervently in their god and want everyone else to believe what they believe that it somehow gets mixed up and turned around in their brains and turns into violence. Before too long you are storming and abortion clinic or walking into a crowded room and crying to your god before opening fire.
All this really does is cast a bad light on the regular people who are somehow able to believe that they believe and not feel that they have to convert the world to their belief system. There are those who pray to whomever or whatever they want to pray to and then just go about their business. They don’t want to kill or hurt other people and they don’t want to be part of a mass suicide. They just want to live their lives.
But the nuts get the press. Thus, it casts a bad light on everyone else just trying to live their lives. And everyone else is so shocked by the violence, they are willing to forget that so many others who may share the same religion or beliefs are not violent. In the end, the violence only causes harm to the cause these people who perpetrate violence claim they are fighting for.
I remember when I was in about seventh grade and the principal for my school was teaching a class. He said that we would all be amazed at how fast the high school years would go past. I remembered sneering and snorting in derision at that. It seemed like forever that I had been at the school I was at and I had first started there in fourth grade. Here it was, three years later, and it seemed like it had taken eighteen years. Certainly four years of high school would seem like forever.
I didn’t know, however, that at that time the giant fast-forward button would be pushed on my life. I think, however, that this button gets pushed on everyone’s life at that time. It seems unfair. During those previous years, when you were doing stupid things like jumping in mud and riding bikes all over the place and other stupid things, times seems to stretch out forever. Life seems long and full of good things and the summer seems to be an eternity. I remember those three months of summer vacation seeming like a lifetime.
Now, of course, the entire year flashes past me in the blink of an eye. I am sitting here in my office and looking at a calendar and I am shaking my head at the fact that it is November again. I swear, it was just November and I was preparing to visit my aunt’s place for Thanksgiving just yesterday. How is it possible that an entire year has rocketed past again?
Of course, the irony is that I would now appreciate things a bit more than when I was a kid. Like most kids, I figured I was invulnerable back then and that time would just go on forever. I can remember when I first learned that everyone died. I knew people died, but on the TV shows they only died when they got shot or came down with some horrible disease. It seemed easy enough for me to understand how to prevent dying, just don’t get shot or come down with any disease. When my mother informed me that, yes, everyone dies but that it wouldn’t happen to me for a very long time, I smiled and bit into my sloppy Joe sandwich.
Now I would be able to appreciate a day that goes on forever. Now, I would appreciate a summer that seems to take forever. These days, the seasons fly past so fast that I barely have time to notice them when they change. Somewhere along the lines the things that we should notice and the things that really are important got lost and the idiotic things that cloud our minds took hold. They serve to distract and annoy and, before you know it, life has flashed past and another year has gone. It’s sad, really.
I am staring 40 in the face. I cannot believe that at all. I could barely handle turning 30, and I have no idea how I am going to face down middle-age. But I wish I could push the pause button for a while. Maybe that happens when you get older, but, again, the irony is that you probably don’t notice much then either, just like when you were a kid.
Maybe, at least, when I turn 80, they will allow me to jump in mud puddles again and it won’t seem weird.
I was in the second grade when I got my first crush. I remember staring for long periods of time at my second grade class photo at the pretty little blonde girl named Jennifer, or Jenny, in the front row. I told everyone she was my “girlfriend.” I thought that was all you had to do. You saw a girl you liked, you declared her your girlfriend and, voila, she was. It was my dad who burst my bubble in asking me if she KNEW she was my girlfriend and had to agree to it for it to be official. I knew I was in trouble right then and there.
It would have been so much easier if it had worked the way I originally thought. Granted, supermodels would have it tough. Imagine Cindy Crawford, in her prime, having to date the one-and-a-half million men who would have called her their girlfriend. So much for photoshoots and calendars with that dating schedule. Although, she might have not made that awful movie with the Baldwin brother either, so it’s a wash there.
So, I quickly settled into my role of being the dateless wonder with the crushes but no actual girlfriend. Of course, it didn’t matter much for a while. I remember, however, being about 14 or so and suddenly realizing the girl, named Toni, who lived down the street wasn’t just this kid I could run around with. She was beautiful. I fell hard in what probably actually qualifies for my first “real” crush. I was a little more worldly-wise by then. I held quite a flame most of that summer and then, somehow, her friend convinced me to let her tell Toni about my crush. I had already turned into a portly, braces and glasses-wearing freak by then. I will never forget when that friend came back and said, “Toni says you’re fat and you’re ugly and you can stick your d**k in some other girl’s va**na because you aren’t sticking it in her’s.”
Those words still echo in my head. I entered high school with bad hair, a mouth full of metal, and glasses. I remained the dateless one. Homecoming dances came and went. Junior prom followed a similar path. I had no dates, no girlfriends, but lots of crushes. Senior year came and I went to a Homecoming dance without a date and then came the Senior Prom. The girl I had the biggest crush on and wanted to ask to the dance kept telling me she wasn’t going to go and that she didn’t want to go and, finally, some girl I did not want to go with asked me and I said yes. Later that same day, the girl I really wanted to go with, and who had excuse after excuse not to go, accepted a date to the prom, right in front of me, at lunch.
My dateless life continued right on through college. I dated one girl Junior year, another Jennifer, and even let an internship opportunity at a radio station in California go by to stay in St. Louis to try and make something out of it. She soon shoved me into the “friend zone.” I was still a virgin, and still mostly dateless headed into my senior year of college.
I met a girl while visiting friends back in Chicago who were attending a different school. It took a while, but we finally went on a date. She took my virginity that same day. I finally had a girlfriend. My plan was to graduate from college and then spend time finding a job in my chosen profession (at that time it was radio) and then I would ask her to marry me. I figured I had to marry her, I mean, it had taken me all those years to find someone. If I let her go, I reasoned, it would take me another couple of decades. That summer she hinted that she wouldn’t just wait around forever. So, while driving in a car one day, I asked if she would like to get married. She said yes.
It didn’t feel right, but I was like Cameron in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I was marrying the first girl I laid. I figured, it would somehow all work itself out. We bought a ring via a Sears catalog. I never got down on a knee to propose. We spent that final summer apart, her in the city where the wedding was and me in Chicago.
We were married in October of 1994. Things went bad almost immediately. Nothing I did was right. I didn’t make enough money. I didn’t clean the house right. I didn’t do anything right. We moved to St. Louis because it was cheaper to live down there and I struggled to find a job that I could stand. She began using sex as a reward and punishment. By 1997 she had moved into the spare bedroom. By 1998 she was gone, I had a destroyed credit rating and no phone and I was living in a city I did not like, working a job I hated.
I moved back home. I stayed with the folks for a long time, sorting out the credit issues. I met a girl in a chat room named Amanda. She lived in Canada and we seemed to hit it off. She was with someone. Then, in 1999, she and that guy broke up. She had one brief fling and, suddenly, our chats got romantic and I began making plans to see her. This was different than it had been with my wife. This was more powerful. I began buying phone cards to talk to her on the phone every night. We chatted all evening, then talked on the phone until we went to sleep and I flew to Toronto as often as I could to be with her. I still remember the time she told me she loved me. This was it, I thought, this is what people always talk about when they talk about soul mates. I figured she would graduate from college, settle into a teaching job in Toronto, I would move there and we would get married.
Then, in January of 2002, she broke it off with me, over the phone. It was something she had been considering for a long time, but it caught me by surprise. I was shattered. I spent nights screaming into a pillow and crying myself to sleep. I would get to work and have to run to the restroom to weep uncontrollably. It took me a solid two years to even consider looking at someone else.
Since then, there hasn’t been anything resembling a “girlfriend.” There were some long distance things that never really worked out. There were some flings. There were some attempts a friends with benefits. However, it took another few years before I even considered maybe having a real relationship again. I tried, in earnest, in 2007.
Then, I thought, I would try in earnest again in 2009 and this time use eHarmony. I got hundreds of potential matches. Of those, maybe 50 responded to my initial inquiries. Of those, maybe 20 got to the point of “open communication.” Of those, maybe 10 got to e-mails and phone calls. Of those three lead to dates. Of those, zero lead to anything else.
So, I have traveled long and I have traveled far, mostly wandering in the desert, wondering what everyone else is always raving about when it comes to love. Now I am tired and weary of wandering and fighting and losing. I want to come home. I want to lay down my burden and rest. So, I leave the field of battle, and close my eyes and call for sleep.
For me the best holiday of the season is the one that, generally speaking, involves the least amount of work. I don’t understand people who spend days and weeks decorating their homes. I see no purpose in such a thing when, really, you only get a short time to enjoy it. The enjoyment versus work ratio just doesn’t cut it for me.
I know people who spend almost a year preparing their Halloween costume. They then spend hours sewing or crafting some kind of clothing and then maybe more time in a woodshop to create props or things that flap or whatever. They spend hours and hours on these things to then….what? Wear them for a few hours and then toss them into a closet forever? Don’t tell me it’s fun because that much work for so little use just cannot be fun. If these people would turn their attention towards building fuel-efficient cars or curing diseases, maybe we’d all live in a better world
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Sometimes it amazes me how people who are so devoted to religion react when people make jokes about them or their deity. I am thinking, in particular, of Christians and Jews and those who follow one version or the other of the “biblical” God. They get so worked up whenever someone produces anything, says anything or does anything that questions things or pokes fun at things in their religion.
I am thinking about the movie “Monty Python’s the Life of Brian” when I write this as the IFC channel has been showing this great Monty Python documentary all week and re-showing their movies and TV shows. When that movie came out, Christians reacted like crazy and started picketing theaters as they are wont to do. Of course, all this did, like it always does, is generate more publicity for the film and, thus, generally make it more popular than it would have been if they had shut up about it. To me, this shows that God really does have a sense of humor
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The tales of the Heene family just get stranger and stranger. At the same time, some of the actions and behavior of the young man named Falcon become a bit clearer if you take the time to look. Over the weekend the sheriff in their particular town in Colorado, a town that must be right out of the show South Park, brought charges against the father, Richard. It turns out, surprise, surprise, the entire thing was a hoax.
See, the dad in this family has a thing about fame. He was on a reality show called Wife Swap once. For some strange reason he also does scientific experiments with his family. I suppose I should put the word scientific in quotes there as, from what I can see, all he does it make large Mylar balloons and sends them up into the air. He apparently was a meteorologist at one time and he also believes he has proof that aliens exist. Finally, he once took acting classes and this is supposedly where he met his current wife
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Well, it is hard to know what to think about the amazing display that we witnessed just yesterday on the all-news channels. Thankfully I was at work, so I missed the nearly-all-afternoon-long coverage of what looked like a giant metallic mushroom floating through the skies of Colorado. I follow people on Twitter, however, even during the day and the frantic updates I was getting there was enough to get me to check out some news websites.
What are we to make of this? So, the initial reports were that some six-year-old had crawled into a homemade weather balloon that his nutty, reality-show-appearing, storm-chasing, whack-a-mole father had made. I don’t know about you, but when I went on family outings they were to places like amusement parks and museums. Not once did my dad pile us into the car and hope to chase storms and tornadoes
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I know that you think you own the entire road and that no one is riding or driving on the road with you. I know that, as far as you are concerned, only you and your destination matters. I know that it is likely of vital importance that you continue to have your cell phone conversation with someone you could just as easily talk to about nothing once you get back home. No, really, I understand that this is your world and we just live in it, so we really need to follow your rules of driving, but if you will let a humble servant, a mere insect in your far more important world, may I make a suggestion?
When you approach an intersection, particularly one with a light, turn your turn signal on well before you reach the intersection? See, that will give those of us behind you, the mere scum who annoy you and dare to deem ourselves worthy of living on the same plane of existence of so obvious a god or goddess among men, a chance to decide to get around you. When you sit through an ENTIRE FREAKING RED LIGHT and then, once the light changes green, THEN DECIDE TO TURN ON YOUR LEFT TURN SIGNAL, well, you don’t give us much time to choose
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I understand that this blog has become a very political blog as of late. That was intended to be the case, of course. I had been writing articles here and there expressing my political views on things for some time, and felt that maybe starting a blog might be the best way to really vent on an almost daily basis. Writing these blogs is not the only thing I do for a living, of course, I also write for other venues and, most importantly to me, I also write books.
So, I hope you will pardon me by doing something I tell people who start blogs that they should never do. You should never, if you are blogging for your business, make your blog a direct commercial for your company or services. If you have a special offer going on at your company, maybe you can talk about that, but you should never turn your blog into an obvious commercial. So, kiddies, this is truly an example of do what I say and not what I do because I am about to violate what is, essentially, rule number one of running and writing a successful blog
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