Beware the box to the right

In a land of 330+ million people, two thirds of which have access to the Internet, two thirds of that group use Facebook, conservatively, that means conservatively over 150 million Americans utilize Facebook.  The Boy Genius, Zuckerberg, has made his chops with being clued into this huddled mass of people, supposedly leaders of the free world.

I woke up this morning, and as always, I was astounded by the trending block on Facebook.  This huge group of the wealthiest, most privileged, freest and least constrained people on the planet, they were most interested in the following topics:
Vinnie's Pizzeria (made a pizza delivery box out of pizza in Brooklyn)
Johnny Manziel (what else, drunken ass who has become a Beiber groupie, only way to get lower)
Del Taco (employee fired for being rude)
Earfel Tower (water tower at Disney, that never held water, torn down)
Eve Plumb (is still alive apparently, and not trying to kill Marsha, as far as we know)
Katrina Steffens (whore for JayZ, one of thousands I suspect)
Human Centipede 2 (a high school teacher showed to his class, sick bastard)
Russian SU-27 (jet barrel rolls over an Air Force jet, you know the Rulers of the Sky)

I will confess that I did click on the Eve Plumb story, cause I thought she had been one of those child acting tragedies and died years ago.  Who knew?  And I did click on the Earfel Tower.  I am a Disney geek to some extent.

But, how does a community 150 million strong, turn the trend line into this collection of things?  It is a random sampling.  I am almost always challenged by the grouping to my right.  I have been morally outraged, angry and disappointed over it.  Now, I am just kind of in awe of America.

How the hell do we survive day to day, without nuking ourselves or accidentally fracking down to the core of the earth and unleash the Yellowstone Super Volcano over the entire continent?

I have stopped wondering how it is that people can do the stupid human tricks that we marvel at in righteous indignation.  If our combined interest produces this subset of data, we are doomed to elect Trump.

I don't weep for our nation.  Honestly, watching this, I think we have kind of become the nation that most resembles the cockroach.  Nothing will kill it off.  You can freeze it, irradiate it, poison it, trap it, and still it moves, it keeps going.  Not because it is doing any kind of service of note, but because it stumbled upon a working frame that is so robust, little to nothing can disturb its perpetual motion.

In a way, that kind of makes me feel better, and in a way it kind of skeeves me out.  We pay more attention to Johnny Manziel than to medical science, literature, politics, anything of note.  Train wrecks are always fascinating, unless you are in one.

I always wonder, does the continued grouping of foolishness we focus on indicate we are watching a train wreck, or are in one?

At least the Kardashians nor Kanye showed up.  Maybe we ticking up off the bottom.  Maybe they just couldn't believe Jan Brady was still alive either.  Wonder if she went to the Bieber concert with Johnny Drunkard?  Who knew?

GLYASDI

Like going to war

I am starting to get to the point where I feel comfortable in a hospital.  I used to have panic attacks just being in a hospital, or a doctor's office.  I have gotten to where I am not a basket case when I smell the stench of disinfectant, and that hard to describe smell of a hospital.  It is there, in every one of them, and it is disturbing.

I am sitting here in the waiting room of another hospital I have never been in before.  This is supposed to be a great one, you know, one of those hospitals that other hospitals send patients to.  There is nothing new or unusual about this place.  The nurses and doctors and technicians, they can tell a difference about this building.  To me, it is just bigger than most.

It has the same difficulties that all the other hospitals have, it takes freaking forever for anything to happen.  There is a huge gap in communications between the staff and the patients/family.  There is this sense that the patients/family will not understand, so don't try, it just pisses them off.  There is the equal sense that the nurses/doctors can't explain it so someone understands, so don't ask, it just pisses them off.

It is so bad, most patients are afraid to ask persistent questions or refuse to settle for answers they don't understand.  They are prisoners to that bed, and totally dependent on this staff.  They know who pays the price for pissing the staff off.  It scares most people spitless to challenge doctors/nurses.  Some of them develop a perverse superiority complex because of that.  Not all, not even most, but the few are bad enough to ensure the masses stay in line.

I hate to write that, like there is a battleground.  Right, there is supposed to be this innate trust that the doctors do what they do because they want to help people, the Hyppocratic Oath and all like that.  There is supposed to be a sacred bond between patient and Doctor, that the patient is willing to submit their wellbeing, their very life, to the treatment prescribed.  It is supposed to be a holistic, St Elmo's kind of thing about it all.

Instead, it is pretty much an antiseptic, emotionless interaction.  I suppose they care, some of them even show it.  Some of them are even pleasant.  But, somehow, the instruction for generations of doctors and nurses has been to maintain this clinical detatchment.  As our science progressed, our interactions and communication suffered.  "We will just have to wait for results."  Nothing about understanding that you still hurt like hell, or that we will try to do more to make you comfortable until the results are back.  Nothing about what good results would be or look like.  Nothing that indicates a genuine understanding that there is a sick, likely scared, human being in this situation.

As the economic constraints increased patient to staff ratios, this became even more intensely taught, so as to minimize time of interaction (wasted time to the insurance companies paying the bills), and increase the throughput to the latest fancy machine that exposes you to radiation, electromagnetic fields, ultrasonic waves, and other things that we avoid anywhere else in the world.

Want to complete flummox a doctor?  Ask them if the X-ray they are ordering, because you have not had one yet, is going to be clinically worth the risk of radiation exposure.  Want to disturb them completely?  Ask them if they know the relative amount of dose, and what percentage of non-ionizing exposure allowed for the year you will exhaust with the procedure.  Most will probably cut and run like hell, terrified.  "THIS ONE KNOWS STUFF!!!  STAY AWAY!!! STAY AWAY!!!"

Unfortunately, knowing stuff is seen as challenging the authority of the Doctor, and wasteful of their time in explaining.  Don't we suffering masses understand that the moments we steal from them to gain understanding could be the moments that spell life or death for another patient?  I honestly think that is what goes through most of their heads.

Nurses are just as bad, but mostly because they are overwhelmed.  It is their jobs to deal with the patients and their needs.  They have to interact closely.  They have more patients than they can really attend to adequately.  They have less tools they are allowed to utilize without asking.  Almost everything they do, they are required to get permission first.  Imagine you have seven kindergarten students to take care of, and you have to call each of their parents before you let them color, or paint or go to the bathroom.  And, you can't do it in any kind of order, you have to be doing it all at one time.

Some nurses just suck.  Some doctors just suck.  Some patients just suck.  Some situations just suck out loud.  That is not a thing that can be remedied.  It is part of the human condition.  But, the next great medical breakthrough will not be a cure for cancer, or even a cure for the common cold.  The next great medical breakthrough is going to be reconnecting doctors/nurses to patients at a human level.  We will somehow get rid of the constant threat of lawsuits.  We will get rid of the cash based medicine we have today.  We will break the stranglehold that Big Medicine has on the system.

Then, doctors will spend more time trying to heal, than to treat.  They will spend more time designing care plans than dictating orders.  They will do the tests required, not all that insurance will allow.  They will have a deep, vested interest in the health of their patients, because they are people they have gotten to know, not just charts that add up on their rating.

Then, nurses will be able to care for people, instead of monitor people.  They will be compassionate, because they are connected.  They will be trusted, because they are worthy of it.  They will be partners in the process, not go-bots only permitted to execute the exact words written.  They will have a deep, vested interest in the health of their patients, because they are people they have gotten to know, not just diagnosis with room numbers.

Then, patients will understand that no doctor knows everything.  They will be trusting, and work to do what is needed to get the result they want.  They will know that there are not pills to cure some things.  They will understand that health and illness are things that are sometimes only God can control, and won't hold those that are not God responsible for not fixing it.  They will have a deep, vested interest in their own health, because they trust their caregivers, as they are people they have gotten to know, not just a lab coat that speaks a mysterious language.

I think this place I am sitting is is probably as good as they get within 300 miles.  Maybe more.  But, it is handicapped like the most backwoods, rundown rural clinic.  There is a people disconnect in medicine.  The smarter we get, the more miserable we are trying to get better.  We have made it possible to keep people alive to a much greater age and more fulfilling life, but to do it is to go through a process that often feels like the Spanish Inquisition, without all the side benefits.  (Yeah, that was sarcastic)

It shouldn't be this way, and it shouldn't require an effort akin to going to war, to ensure the best outcome for your family member.  It is a screwed up thing that is better all the time, and worse by the second.  Weird that the thing that should have us most connected, should be most tied to our better angels, has become a thing of turmoil, anxiety and fury.

If you don't believe in a Devil, if you don't understand the role that evil takes in the world, spend a day or two around a place like this.  Where we do have proof of God's grace and Angels, we see such a clear indication of the role of Satan.  We get to choose who we will obey in the end.  Who are you going to choose?  It starts with us.

GLYASDI

We the People

In my life, I have witnessed some horrifying and some inspiring things.  You tamp down the horrifying and lock it away, and you attempt to hold onto the inspiring and apply it to your life.  I know good and bad, and I have no illusions about the kind of world this is.

So, I listen to and respond to the news with a very informed view of the polar opposites that exist in this world.  And, I try to remember the help that all of us need, and the ultimate source of that help.

I will share this story that got me thinking about this on a very bright and beautiful morning at the beach.  A news story I stumbled upon, in the kind of aimless clicking that happens when you are the only one awake, and there is nothing new on TV.  It is horrible and tragic, and a fine illustration of why we all need help.

In Pinellas County Florida, the story describes 3 teenage girls crashing a stolen car into a pond and drowning.  That is tragic enough, in and of itself.  Yet, the reason I found the story is that the police are accused of not attempting to save those three teenage girls, and sitting on the bank watching them die.

Of course, it is not so unusual that teenagers steal a car.  Being 16 and with little experience behind the wheel, that they wrecked running from the police is not that unbelievable.  Drowning in your stolen vehicle is a terrible way to go.  There is nothing about this story that makes anyone feel better.

But, if you read the comments and garbage, it makes you even more disturbed.  No, 16 year olds did not deserve to die, regardless of how many cars they had previously stolen.  No, because their parents are the definition of bad, they did not deserve to die.  No, it did not matter what color their skin was,they still did not deserve to die.  No, their life was not already wasted.  No, they were not already a lost cause.

No child of God is a lost cause.  I pray that there could be reconciliation to society for those this young already down a long road of criminality.  There has to be a way into their lives to turn it around.  There is value to these lives.  There is value to these souls.  These are troubled people, not lost causes.  They are 16, and not Manson family members.  They are criminals, and deserve to be punished for their crimes, but that does not mean they are a waste of life.

The cops are not evil because the girls died.  Because the dash cam video does not show any cops in the water does not mean that cops were not in the water.  Cops are not required to dive into murky Florida water, amongst gators and moccasins to save those that crashed in commission of a felony.  Cops are not the answer, regardless of the question.  Cops should not be laughing at that situation.

I think it is kind of ironic, that the people most distrustful and hateful for the police, have the highest expectations for the police.  I don't think cops are required to jump into cold, dark water to try to save someone from a sinking car.  If it is me, I hope that they do, but it is not a realistic expectation.  It does no one any good to have dead suspects and dead cops.  They are taught not to expose themselves in that way.  Many do so, even though it is contrary to training and protocol.  Because so many go above and beyond, it is now an expectation.

Worse, there is an assumption of prejudice and racism associated with this story.  The implication is that if the car had been full of white girls, all the cops would have dived in.  I think that is incredibly self serving.  It is also hypocritical.  My bet would be none of those complaining would have jumped into that weed clogged pond in gator territory, at night.  Most would not jump in a swimming pool in the daylight to try to drag someone out of a sinking car.  They are the ones filming it on their cell phone, so they can blog dissent later.

I don't know how to impact this, with the people involved.  The families that lost children should be saddened and heart broken.  The police are traumatized.  The commenters are agitated.  I am saddened.

God alone knows why children are given to so many that are so incapable of raising them.  Regardless of the color of the skin of these teenagers, to be in this much trouble by the age of 16, the parenting is atrocious.  The court system failed them entirely.  How can someone be 16 with seven arrests for felony theft, and still on the streets to commit more crimes?  How can the parents fail like this?

Perhaps those are poor questions.  Maybe the parents were good, decent folks, that just had children that failed to listen or learn.  It happens.  Perhaps the parents had many other children and worked many hours to put food on the table, and could not closely supervise them like the wished.  Perhaps the parents were in jail, and not responsible for the children at all.

Why do we assume that the police let them die?  Or that there was something to be done, that was not done.  No available video shows an angle with the car in the water.  Because we cannot see it, we assume none of the cops got in the water to attempt a rescue, even though the sheriff says they did.  We have created a climate where the selfless are considered corrupt, and good are condemned along with the bad.

The problem is neither side of the argument see that.  The Black Lives Matter movements and supporters do not consider themselves bigoted, though they assume the worst of all law enforcement and believe nothing that is not video proof.  It is a sad, and in some ways, self destructive life.

The Blue Lives Matter movement and supporters do not consider themselves bigoted, though they view all suspects and perpetrators with the same prism.  And, they are predisposed to believe the worst of anyone of color, or in the projects and ghettos.  And, they refuse to accept the truth, even with video proof.  It is a sad, and in some ways, self destructive life.

If we mourned the loss of three young lives, who started dying the first time they stole a car, just like someone with cancer starts dying the minute the diagnosis is made, we might find the resolve to do something about the broken system that failed them.  We might start to see the court system as more, as a system of both punishment and recovery.  We might make it so that repeat offenders, even though juvenile, are removed from the situation that is producing that behavior and placed in a system that requires them to be educated, to work, to learn about a life outside of the narcissistic and self-absorbed world they live in.  We might decide that it is time to accept our shared responsibility to make everyone's children successful, to give them all an opportunity to grow and develop, to ensure they have access to a future of meaning and purpose.  We might decide that now is the time to break the cycle that we have been observing for 50 years in our communities of poverty, and tap into the incredible resource that they are.

If we accepted that the police, everywhere, are just like us, it could change the environment.  They have faults, some of them are bad, but it  is the very small minority.  That the career is increasingly difficult to navigate.  That it is our neighbors, relatives, sons and daughters, that are creating the uber violent times that have led to the militarization of the police.  It is a myth that started with 9/11.  9/11 accelerated it, but it started with a bank robbery in Southern California, where the police were outgunned and overmatched by a pair of robbers with military style weapons, body armor and military style tactics.  It is impossible to be Barney Fife and Andy Taylor today, just like it was impossible to be Barney Fife and Andy Taylor when that show as on air.  We want it to be true, so we think that it must be.  It is not.

We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, once ordained and established a Constitution.  It is a beautiful document that was heavily flawed.  Over time, because it worked to our better graces, we changed it and amended it.  We eliminated the strictures that prohibited full participation to minorities and women.  We eliminated strictures that condoned a gentry class and confirmed them power.  We added strictures that protected rights to groups never considered by the Founders.  We came together and were the people, in We, the people.  Over and over we have done that.  We defeated the greatest empire on Earth, twice in our first 50 years.  We defeated the greatest military machine and menace the world has ever seen three times in the last 100 years.

There is nothing beyond us, as a people, if we just decide to take an issue on.  Nothing is more than we are as a whole.  We have just let division and divisive tactics drive our landscape since 1964.  For 52 years, we have counted things for and against, and divvied up shares in reparations for it.  We ignored our true values and settled on racial quotas, sexual quotas, numbers versus justice.  Before that, things were definitely worse.  Many good things came out of this period.

But, the cancer that is killing us slowly also was born in that movement.  We established a consensus in America that an individual could be owed something more than a fair shot.  They could be owed money, education, preference, assistance, shelter.  We taught our children that these things were deserved for reasons other than hard work and dedication.  And because of that, we unwittingly devalued hard work and dedication.  We tacitly agreed to ourselves that past sins meant those born now are owed something they did not earn.  Therefor, they do not need to work hard, do not need to overcome the obstacles of life that everyone meets.  They could continue to survive, without input to the system in a positive and fulfilling way.

Unfortunately, being human, we do not accept just surviving.  We have taught generations that they are owed something, which means that it is a simple step to taking what you want.  Because the system is rigged, because the man is out to get us, because we don't get all that we want, it is a short leap to just taking what you desire.  Not everyone makes it, but, many more do now, and because life is more complex, interrelated, transparent and forensically detailed, they are paying a high price before they are adults.

The generation after the Depression grew up without consideration of the hard times of the world.  The US has been such an engine of progress and growth, that we have now had multiple generations that believe better is owed us, not something we have to go earn together.  It explains Congress, who want the pork and the reelection, more than they want a more secure and viable country.  It explains the failure of churches, and the growth of Joel Oelsteen's heresy.  God can't expect us to work at being better and loving others.  That is hard.  It is better to believe God wants to give us all kinds of stuff, regardless of what reality is.  Even in the mega churches and denominations, we are reinforcing the cancerous decay that will leave us wretched and destroyed.

This is a hard, hard world.  It does not respect wants, should have beens, dreams, desires, wishes.  It only bends itself to hard work, determination and dedicated effort.  When we stop trying to explain that away, and begin equipping our children with tools to go do the hard work, we will experience another great period.  If we do not, we will not survive.  That is the lesson I took from three young girls drowning in a pond in Florida.

It all comes back to raising, and self awareness.  If you are not aware that you are worth hard work and effort, you won't put it in.  If someone promises you money for nothing and chicks for free, why should you work?  If the only successful economic engine you have witnessed is theft and dope dealing, why would you consider some other avenue?  If you have never seen real parenting responsibility, where will it come from within you?  If you have no script, you cannot get the lines right.

We, the people, in order to save our union, reestablish justice, get some domestic tranquility, provide common sense, promote self welfare, and show some blessings from our liberty for ourselves, and especially our posterity, we should ordain and establish our collective constitution, and make our nation once again the United States of America.

GLYASDI

Fine By Me

There is a political argument dying to get out of me...but, it makes little to no difference, and I am tired of the anger and frustration everyone is feeling.  So, it is officially fine by me.

If you want to require airport level screening to allow public restroom use, fine by me.  If you don't care if we all have the creepy "unisex" bathroom rules in every public restroom, fine by me. Whatever.  If I argue against one side, the other side gets to ignore and chastise me.  Because that is what discourse has become now, opportunities to demean and denigrate.  I will even stipulate, my fine sense of denigration has flowed forth in full rage.

If you want to make certain that we have clean water long after the cockroaches have ascended to apex predator status, or are cool with dumping liquid mercury in all of our aquifers, fine by me.

If you want to make sure anyone with measurable natural melatonin ends up in prison by 16, or you want to make even the act of noticing melatonin concentration a federal offense, fine by me.

If you are convinced that homosexuality is spread by knowing it exists, or that we would all be better off with a little more gay, fine by me.

If you think every cop is a completely fair and incapable of bad judgement and racial bias, or you think every cop is issued Klan membership with the badge, fine by me.

If you are certain the Japanese and Russians are targeting the gay whales just for cruelty, or you think they are all just creepy for hunting at all, fine by me.

It is not that it is not important.  Both extremes are equally worthy of ridicule and derision.  It is that important.  

But, no one seems to understand that good and decent people can disagree with them.  America has lost the realization that others can be intelligent, considered and worthwhile human beings, even if they do not have the exact same ideological core and dogma.  And that is not a disease impacting only one side of the spectrum, or one religious outlook, or one race.  It is a pandemic, and all of us are exposed, and all of us are suffering from the disease at some level.

If you have read Stephen King's novel, The Stand, you are familiar with Captain Trips.  Steve was right, he just got the symptoms wrong.  Instead of the tube neck and gargling, choking death he described, it is actually a prolonged living with rabid disdain.

Again, I am not immune, nor do I claim to have never been in full course of all symptoms.  But, I got some healing.  I may have stumbled on a treatment.  I combined two things in the Bible, (yes, that book, even if you don't believe, I promise these will not infect you with incurable paranoia or a need for wearing prairie dresses and bowl haircuts).

First, chronologically, is Proverbs 17:28.  "Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues."  (Note, you do not become wise, you are still a fool.  People just have nothing to prove it or reinforce it.)

Second, add John 13:34.  "A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another."  (Note, you do not have to be good or less whatever thing gives you pride, you just have to love others.  Not in that way, get you mind out of the gutter, we are talking about religious theories here.  I know, but, try, really hard.)

So, if you can keep from confirming whatever level of foolishness people suspect you possess; and then, really do the deed and just love them, regardless of whatever level of foolishness they confirm to you; a couple of things happen.

First, it is fine.  Of course, the situation basically remains unchanged, but the atmosphere and rhetoric tone down, and some people even start listening and trying to understand each other.  So, it is fine, honestly.  Going the other way just makes sure we drive the car off the road together.

Second, this only comes by me.  I don't need any input from anyone else to do these things.  I only need to think about how it will sound before I say it.  Then, I have to decide to love that other person, regardless or especially.  We all have those folks we love, regardless (and we have to because of what they say and do.)  And we all have those folks we love especially (because they really do and say the stuff we know to be right and true, in our minds, which make it right period.)  Treat them both the same and feel the same love for both.

I dare you, give this a try.  Of course, really, really bad candidates will still populate the political process.  Of course, there will still be crime, still be racism, still be classism, still be all that.  Of course, the most important everything's will still hang in the balance.

The difference will be in you.  The difference is that not only can you stand to hear about it, you also begin to be able to stay out of it.  I don't mean ignore it and drop out of the process.  But, you can keep QUIET, think about it for yourself, and then do whatever your conscience urges you to do.  Since you do not speak about it, you gain the ability to interact with issues and situations based on conscience and consequence.  And, you still get to hang with all those folks you really like to have beer with, but can't stand to talk politics with.  (Hey, there are always the Baltimore Orioles to talk about, just saying.)

You also really start to enjoy those folks.  You get less concerned about ALL their tattoos, and the misspelling and poor grammar that is rampant in tattoos.  You get less concerned about the evidence of the botox.  You get less concerned about the church they go to.  You get less concerned about the headgear, veil, shoes, whatever.  If you can get yourself to love the person, regardless of the sin, life becomes much more pleasant.  

No, it is not perfect.  No, it will not be permanent and without pause.  Yes, there will be people that you just can't love.  (Leave them be, pray, meditate, whatever you do over it, and don't let it consume you.)  Yes, there will be situations that make you speak out.  (Say it without curse words, without names and without disrespect, and then go back to Proverbs 17:28.)

This is not the cure for what is wrong with the world.  But, I have discovered that it does allow me the opportunity to live in a world dying for a cure, without feeling like I am infected and dying too.  It allows me to find humor in what happens, because the ridiculous is funny, and we are all ridiculous.  It allows me to pray humbly, because I realize it could have been me that said that, a couple of days ago when I was really mad about it, but I didn't.  I am not smarter, I just have earned breathing space to learn.

So, let me say nothing further today, except that I love you all, really, I mean that with all I am.

GLYASDI

Things I know

Just a random sampling from the last week, because it has been that kind of week.

God does not care about tomorrow in any way like we do, He is already there.  We ought to just trust that a tomorrow with God in it, is going to be okay for us.

What other people think is generally wrong, generally uninformed, and generally going to upset you.  This is because other people are not you.  They don't have the experience you do, do not know the sorrow you have lived and can't comprehend the reality you face.  It is not your fault they don't understand, and more importantly, it is not your responsibility to explain it.

Refer to above, since it is not your responsibility, worrying about it probably is inappropriate.

This is a fine life.  Not perfect, not everything we wish, but full of those we love and that love us.  Even if it doesn't feel like it every moment, that is true.

I cannot possibly know what you need me to know, unless you tell me about that need.

Just because I am not as upset about it as you are, does not mean I disregard the issue, or don't know that it is a problem.  I have things that piss me off worse than you.  Do me the courtesy of letting me decide my own priorities.

Advice is worse than the flu virus.  Stop being patient zero.

Happiness does not come to you, it is in you.  All the other crap that overcomes happiness comes to you.  Refuse delivery.  That is how you manage that.

Somewhere around the end of your nose, your ultimate authority runs out.  This is not clearly defined, but the range is millimeters.  Assume it ends at you, accept your authority, and your responsibility.  Let others accept or ignore their own.

My good situation is not a direct outcome of your bad situation.  Nor, is the opposite true.  I am not blaming you for where I am in life, I am blaming you for where YOU are in life.

You can repent.  You can remediate.  You can change.  You can overcome.  But, you never get to not be what you were.  Own it, others are going to put it on you, regardless.

Yes, grown adults should be able to let go of something that happened years ago.  No, they generally don't.

If you are unhappy about something, you have to change, not the something.  Somethings don't think, don't feel and don't care.  You do.

Life is better now than it was then.  It just is.  Stop trying to prove it isn't, and start trying to prove it is.  Even if you can't, it is a much more enjoyable investigation.

Highest aspirations and actual results never match up.  That does not equal failure.  That is reality.

I am richer than you are, especially if you worry about my money.  If you even think about my money, my stuff, my bank account, I am richer than you by a Bill Gates times Warren Buffett factor.

No, I am not always positive.  Sometimes I am just pretty sure.  I just don't let you know the difference.  Forgive me the slight deception.

Hope is the description of God's love.  Faith is the experience of God's love.  Love is our reflection of God, within us.

My backyard is better than anywhere in the world, except my house.  They are interchangeable if I am holding Katrina's hand.

God did not explain things to me.  God did not make Himself clearer to me than to anyone else in the world.  I just quit expecting God to meet my expectations, and started trying to meet His.

In April, the water in the pool is really, really cold.  But, it won't stay that way.

I stopped doing things I did not even know I quit doing.  The important things, I have to think about every day, and verify I did them.  I like lists, I just quit keeping score by them.

Spaghetti O's will never be the kind of "super" food that gluten free, high potency, krill oiled dressed dried sea kelp is.  I get that, I am a grown up.  I ate Spaghetti O's yesterday, and it was awesome.  If you ate kelp stuff, I hope it was awesome.  I will never know, and I don't lecture you on the merits of filling your belly with preservatives to build your immunity to the rest of the things in the world that contain them.  Leave me alone about not eating kelp.  I don't care.

I lost all of my curiosity about "cool" stuff, along about the time I made my first mortgage payment.  I appreciate "cool" stuff.  Curved TV's, high resolution digital doodads and whatever LTE's are.  Great, all of them.  I still have a mortgage payment, and the VCR that was "cool" when I made my first mortgage payment is extinct, like the dinosaurs.  My mortgage survives.  There are no extinction level events for reality, but "cool" is constantly on the drop edge of yonder.

I want to die happy.  Fifty or so years from now.  But, happy will work, whenever it comes.  If that is my ultimate goal, and none of us know what our expiration date is, then shouldn't I stay happy, just in case this is it?  If I don't, isn't it really my fault if I don't achieve my goal?

I love you.  I am positive that I don't like a bunch of you, but I love all of you.  I am not in charge of making you different, better, more or less important, validating you, explaining you, understanding you, empowering you, or improving you.  I am not.  Stop expecting me to be, be satisfied with me loving you, whether I like you or not, and get on with your life.  I already have.

It doesn't matter what color the container is.  If the milk is fresh it all looks the same.  If it is spoiled, it all smells the same.  Regardless of your container color, work on not being spoiled.  Just do that, and pretty soon, all lives matter and stuff.  Keep focused on the color of the container and not the contents, and pretty soon, the whole world smells like rotten milk.  It is getting pretty stinky at this point, isn't it?

I love you.  Not as much, or as well as God.  So, if I am not hitting all your needs in that department, cut me some slack.  I am no closer to being God than you are.  Judge me by that standard, and see if it doesn't feel better.

Absolutely the best news so far in 2016.  It is baseball season again.  Really, it makes almost everything better.  The stuff it doesn't, yeah soccer and hockey fans pay attention to that, and I got nothing for them.

GLYASDI