How to Discourage Those Pesky Volunteers - A Field Guide

c.2000 by Troy Bierkortte

You see them everywhere. They exist in all communities and organizations. They wear funny clothes, live in messy homes, drive cars with cluttered seats, and never seem to have time for regular meals. They're a bane on society with their little do-gooder mentality and seemingly unlimited energy. Moreover, most notably, they will try to recruit you too if you let your guard down for an instant. If Stephen King wakes up screaming at night, he was dreaming about one.

They are the dreaded VOLUNTEERS!

Thanks to the techniques you will learn here, you need never fear them again. You will be armed with the power to destroy them in their tracks, leaving nothing but a faint odor of burning hair. You are about to become the worst nightmare of the volunteer. So, put on your cammies, blacken your face and sharpen your tongue.

LESSON ONE - Identification of the Volunteer

To be an effective exterminator of volunteers, you must be able to recognize the target of your lethal power. Although they are almost impossible to find when you need them, they are lurking everywhere. Fortunately, it is not difficult to distinguish them from real humans. Some of the tell-tale signs of the volunteer:

• They are usually found in places where nobody else wants to be.
• They frequently dress in uniforms, especially firefighters, ambulance crews, scout leaders and coaches.
• They appear to be tired at all times.

Along with the visual signs, you can also pick them out of the crowd by their distinctive behavior:

• They are doing things that nobody else wants to do.
• They carry much more stuff than their worn-out backs can handle.
• They tend to talk, listen, read, walk, and work simultaneously.
• They can carry on at least two conversations at once.
• They are the only persons present who do not know exactly what they are doing!

With very little practice, you will be able to spot any volunteer immediately and instinctively.


LESSON TWO - The Hunt

Once you have identified your prey, you must place yourself in position to deliver the fatal blows. Adequate cover must be maintained at all times. Remember that stealth is your best ally. At all times, attempt to remain out of the reach of the vollie. If it can see or hear you, it will try to recruit you.

You must NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN!

If the vollie does manage to catch you off guard, pretend to be interested and offer unlimited assistance. This will aid your escape and be very useful later as a weapon when you suddenly and completely renege.

There are several methods for getting the target into your sights. Combining several of these can be devastatingly effective, especially if you team up with other vollie-hunters.

1. Make the vollie need something you have. This will keep it looking foryou; cutting down on the effort needed to find it.
2. Promise anything that it wants or needs, but NEVER deliver. This level of dependency will weaken the vollie and make it vulnerable to attacks from your fellow hunters.
3. Offer to help only when your assistance is unwanted, unnecessary, inept or too late.
4. If the volunteer activity involves your children, leave them in its care and always be late. (Do not worry, they can't convert kids.)
5. Suggest, suggest, and suggest! This will keep the beast in a state of confusion and self-doubt. It is most effective when the suggestions are lame, untimely or outrageously impossible.
6. Withdraw all offers of assistance only when it is too late to replace you.
7. In the unlikely event that you are replaced, offer to help again.
8. When offering unsolicited advice, be sure that you make clear that you will not actually do any of the things that you will say need to be done.
9. Whenever possible, make all criticisms to a third party who will relay them through the grapevine to the volunteer.

LESSON THREE - The Kill

By far the most difficult phase of volunteer hunting is the actual kill. The only way to ensure a clean kill is to mortally wound the volunteer's spirit. This is a daunting task, as the spirit is strong in this particular species. However, with a little insensitivity and a fair dose of unmitigated gall, you can be lethal.

It is important to emphasize here that your victim must be sufficiently weakened by the hunt before attempting to land the killing blow. The techniques outlined in Lesson Two must be applied relentlessly so that the vollie will be too exhausted to recognize the coming onslaught of verbal abuse, unjustified criticism, sarcasm and ridicule.

Any of the following tactics can be used to kill your nemesis. They work most effectively when delivered under the guise of being constructive - in this case, subtlety is not your friend.

1. Take credit for all successes. No matter how trivial your participation in the volunteer's activity, be sure to thrust yourself into the limelight. Act as though your contribution was the only factor in the success of the undertaking.
2. Give credit to someone else for work actually done by your victim.
3. Return all written materials corrected for spelling, grammar, punctuation, format, usage, and typographical errors. Do this only after all copies have been distributed. Be certain to mention that you were available to proofread them, although you didn't actually volunteer to help.
4. Call attention to the most minor errors. Be sure to point out that they destroyed what would otherwise have been a pretty fair job.
5. Praise the volunteer, faintly and briefly.
6. Be sure to mention often that you would have been available to take on the job if your time weren't more precious than that of the volunteer.
7. Never let the beast forget that it is an "amateur".
8. Immediately upon completion of a volunteer's work, offer to take over and run next year's project. You can back out of this later, citing the fact that you have more important things to do with your time.
9. Rule of Thumb: Praise in private, criticize in public.

Timing plays an important part in destroying the will of the volunteer. If killed too early, a vollie is merely relieved of its suffering. This is a cardinal sin to the true volunteer hunter! Suffering is the essence of the sport. If you're after big game, you must use big weapons. Patience will be rewarded.

Experienced vollie killers know that the most prized trophy is taken at the moment of its greatest triumph. The killing blow made at the moment when the volunteer is about to rejoice in the glory of its success is a true work of art. This not only kills the target of your attack; it may also prevent the breeding of new volunteers to take its place.

Good luck, and good hunting.

A Graceful Exit?

Since my mid teens, I have had some problems with my right shoulder. I injured it playing some game or something that I don't now remember, but time has only aggravated the condition.
I gave up golf a long time ago, which probably saved me enough money to buy a house, and I haven't been able to throw a baseball with any force in a long time.

The progression of the arthritis, tendinitis, and bone spurs have made the pain in my arm and shoulder continuous. Lately, I have been losing feeling in the arm more and more frequently. It appears as though paralysis will eventually deny me the use of my right arm entirely.

This is inconvenient, considering that I am right-handed. I won't be able to use any of my favorite pens any more, and my typing will be much slower with only my left hand to cover the whole keyboard. For now, I can still do most things most of the time. I'll continue to thump away my frustrations on my bass guitar - much to the annoyance of my neighbors and family - until that is taken from me too.

Of course, there is hope that I can regain some function with physical therapy, so I'm going to start that soon. But even that will eat a large part of my free time, at least for a while.

I have so many things that I want to do while I still can. It is time to make choices, time to use my abilities wisely in pursuit of my goals. If there are only a finite number of pen strokes and key strokes left in this arm, I want to put them all to good use.

So, for now anyway, I won't be writing any more entries here. I must face the reality that it is time to quit doing some things even though I love doing them.

Please wish me luck, or pray if that is your preference, and maybe I'll get better soon.

Thank you.

In Contemplation of the Moon

About four and a half billion years ago, Theia and Terra joined. Terra went into labor and delivered the stillborn Luna, whose ghostly presence haunts us to this day.

In plain language, the proto-Earth, while still forming in the new Solar System, was struck by another planet, whose iron core was plunged deep into the forming Earth. From the detritus of this collision, the Moon was formed.

She changes constantly but remains always the same. She shows us only one side of her face as she traces her orbit around us in silence. The other side - the dark side - stays hidden from our view like the secret part in every one of us that we keep hidden inside ourselves.

This, the most barren and lifeless of all deserts, though it cannot support life, nurtures in us the greatest of all things - our sense of wonder.

From times before civilization, mankind has marveled at the silvery-white goddess. We have for all time looked to her for strength, for comfort, for a bountiful harvest, for inspriation, and for love.

She casts blue shadows across the faces of the poets, the lovers, the insane, and the hopelessly lonely who gaze upon her to find the answers to questions that have no answers.

She inspires us to greatness and to madness.

Luna, who reflects the Sun's light onto us also reflects our own hopes and dreams back to us. We cast our desires at her, and she sends them back unfulfilled.

Still, there are times when you can look at her and know that someone far away is looking too. She is the link between us that makes the miles that separate us irrelevant. She is our secret.

Be still now, and look at the Moon.

As if...

Sometimes you believe what you see; sometimes you see what you believe. Faith, not just religious faith, but faith in yourself, depends greatly on living as if your faith was justified. You have to see yourself as beautiful, successful, talented, capable, worthy, or loved before you can believe those things about yourself.
Once, I was a bitter, angry, surly person. Nothing made me happy. Life was something I did just waiting for something better to happen.
Then, I wanted something. I wanted to be loved. In many ways I was loved, but I couldn't see it happening. I wanted to feel it - to know it in my heart. So, I began to live as if I were the person I wanted to be. I began to look at myself through the eyes of another. It was a revelation.
When you step outside yourself and see what others see, it can be a horrifying sight. Or, it can be beautiful. I chose to make my life a thing of beauty. It worked. Though you can never be sure how you are perceived by others, you start by learning to respect and love yourself. That is not easy. The pitfalls and traps that you have set for yourself are the biggest obstacle. Self-respect slides with you until you can no longer feel disgust or disappointment. That is when you start to wallow in your self-loathing. It gets comfortable there. If not comfortable, at least it gets more and more tolerable until there is nothing else.
The pop-psychology books tell you to learn to love yourself as you are. This is just one of the ways that pop-psychology is full of shit. Self-help books might be a cure for insomnia, but that does not make them worth the lives of all the trees that are wasted on printing them. Trying to love yourself as you are, is merely an exercise in accepting your misery and worthlessness. They teach you to accept yourself without bothering to make yourself acceptable. All you accomplish by that is to lower your standards to the level where you can love the unlovable. You need to learn to love yourself by learning how to be loved.
So, where do you turn? Well, if you are truly unlovable, stop it. Easy, huh? Nope. It takes a little effort. It can't be done alone.
If this all seems hopeless, it isn't. There is reason to hope, because somewhere there is someone who does love you. Someone doesn't care about all those things that you have done. Find that someone, your spouse, your child, a friend, God. When you have found the one who loves you, look at yourself through the eyes of that person. Behave as though that person is watching you always. Don't be surprised to find that there are many more of those people in your life than you thought.
If the love is unconditional, it won't matter what you do or say, but you will find yourself doing the right thing anyway. You will act as if it mattered to someone. It does matter to someone - you. Soon, you will become the person whom you want to be; and you already love that person. You know you do.
Live your life as if you are loved. Because you are.

Yeah, you.

And then the day gets a little bit brighter when people forgive each other and repair the little tears in the tapestry of their lives. Misunderstandings get straightened out or forgotten. Friends remember that they care about each other too much to let pettiness divide them.
To love unconditionally is to be free.
Loving you is what makes me free.
Nobody - not even you - can prevent it.
Tearing open old wounds serves no purpose but to delay the wonder that the future holds. Let us never again put mistrust, worry, fear, despair, or anger between us. We both deserve better than to regret. We deserve to hope. Let us always have hope.
If you think that this is written especially to you, then you are almost certainly right.

Who, me?

I guess this is a pretty good place to tie together the two previous entries . Even though they each have a distinct meaning, they are related.
It seems to me, if not to anyone else, that a great deal of the apologies that I give are for things that I didn't do, didn't intend to do, or never would do. But, as discussed here earlier, it doesn't really matter, because people hold you accountable for those things anyway.
Either they figure what they would do if they were in your place, or they call into account all the shitty things that everyone else has ever done to them, and they assign blame to you based on the expectation that you would do those things too.
Try to be nice to someone, and they jump right to the conclusion that you want something in return. That's the really tough one to live with. The adage, "No good deed goes unpunished" is God's honest truth. And that is the part that really burns my ass. It seems that every kindness you ever do to someone must have an ulterior motive. If you help someone out of a jam, they assume that you expect to be repaid. Give a woman a compliment, and you're really just trying to get into her pants. Do a charitable act, and you are either buying a place in heaven or seeking personal recognition. Say a kind word, and you are fishing for a compliment in return. Show a little caring and concern, and you're really just setting someone up to use them.
It's enough to make a person bitter - to make you turn your back on humanity for giving you back blame in exchange for kindness. Well, not me. Go ahead, take advantage of my friendship when it suits you. And when it doesn't, feel free to say that I was never being sincere anyway. Blame me for your misery - even when all I wanted to do was help you bear it. Feel free. I can take it. But I will never regret being a friend or lending a hand. I don't ever want to be that cynical - even if I have every right to be.
I am never going to regret caring about someone; no matter what they say about me later. You can lie to yourself. You can lie to the world. But I know the truth, and neither the truth nor the lie can change a thing. Neither matters now.
Still, I have no choice but to apologize. I cared, and it made you feel obligated. I'm sorry. I tried to lift your spirits and help you see that you were not as hopeless as you thought you were. I tried to show you that your good qualities far outnumbered your faults. It made you think. It made you suspicious of me. I'm sorry. I offered to be your friend, and never placed conditions on it. You couldn't handle that. You kept waiting for the other shoe to fall, and when it didn't you couldn't bear it. I apologize.
If I wished you peace, prosperity and joy, would you think less of me than you do? Is that even possible?
Maybe you meant a lot to me. Why else would I have cared so much? Maybe I respected you more than you respected yourself. Maybe losing your friendship has diminished me in a way that will always affect me - but even that was not too big a sacrifice if it was what you wanted. I could not refuse you anything you asked. I'm sorry for that too.
If you think this is written specifically to you, you may be right. I never brought harm or trouble to you, asked anything but friendship of you, nor did I burden you with my presence when and where it wasn't wanted. For these and all the other things I did to hurt you, I ask your forgiveness.

You think....

There are three of four phrases in any conversation that are most certainly wrong every single time they are used.

You always....
This one is a matter of shaded perception. The speaker in this case wishes to attribute some characteristic to the listener which is actually the speaker's perception - what the speaker notices. An example; "you always criticize my grammar" This isn't true except in the cases where the grammar is bad enough to justify criticism. The speaker fails to register the many times when his or her grammar is bad, but not so bad that the listener has bothered to correct it.
Another example; "you always pick the girl with the big breasts" This is an obvious one. The speaker notices the times that the listener has made this choice, but has ignored the (less obvious) times when the listener has made a different choice.
The phrase "you always..." really means something else. It means, "I notice when you..." It has nothing to do with the qualities, characteristics, or habits of the listener and everything to do with the perceptions of the speaker - which are colored by his or her own fears, prejudices, desires, etc. "You always" imputes a consistency of behavior to the listener which simply cannot be true.

You think...
It seems unnecessary to explain this one. Unless you have the gift of mental telepathy, you can not possibly utter this phrase truthfully. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to deal with someone who believes that she or he already knows what I think, and therefore has no need to listen to what I say. If you deny or contradict whatever thoughts that the speaker has cooked up for you, you are either lying or in denial. This person already knows the unknowable, and will not be bothered with any facts, arguments, or even behaviors from you that are, in his or her view, simply obfuscations.

You know...
This one is especially frustrating. It isn't just another way of saying "you think..." because it also attributes the listener with that telepathy thing. If I already know what you are thinking, then you should be able to discern what I am thinking. I shouldn't have to tell you. It should be obvious to you, and if it isn't you are just not paying attention.

You want...
This one is very much like the previous one, except that it is even more frustrating. While I know almost always exactly what I am thinking, I do not always have a firm grip on what I want. But the fact of my own indecision does not make it any more likely that anyone else is able to figure out my desires before I can. Either I know what I want or I don't, but you will never know if I don't tell you. Of course, the speaker may be well intentioned or not. He or she may be trying to help me arrive at a decision or to sway me toward one that he or she would prefer.

Most of the time, these phrases are not attempts to describe behavior patterns, or to read minds, or to influence the undecided. Usually, they are accusations. As such, they are pointless. One may accuse another of stealing money or killing his wife. These are actions that can be proved to have happened or not. But, to accuse someone of having a thought, a desire, or a tendency are all futile attempts to impose one's own will or motives on another, to explain the unexplainable, or to insert a plausible explanation in place of a truth that might be difficult to face.

If you tell me what I think or want, you are really telling me what you need me to think or want in order to support your own suppositions and suspicions. If you have any genuine interest in what I think, ask me. Let me decide for myself what I want. Accept me as I am, and not as you think I should be. If you don't want to live with the truth, then lie to yourself. But don't lie to me about something that is in my own head or heart. That is one lie you can't get away with.

Wanted - Time Machine

Way too often, I have occasion to wish I could turn back time and undo something stupid or careless that I have done. It's not that I live a life of regrets, or have a trail of total disasters behind me. But it seems that I'm wishing for a do-over a lot of the time.

Of course I don't really mean to say insensitive things or stumble into situations where I don't belong. But, being a bit of a tactless oaf, I find myself looking for a cave to hide in more frequently than one might consider healthy.

Different situations and people affect me differently. Some folks I could offend every moment of the day and still not care, and others I just wish I had never met. It's not their fault either. I don't know. Maybe it is just me, but after I have offended certain people I get to the point where I get tired of feeling remorse and shame every time I see or think of them. After awhile I even start to resent them even though it was I who did wrong.

Either I have to find that time machine, or just get the words "I'm Sorry" tattooed on my forehead, because saying it is getting harder and harder.

Okay, Sara Bareilles Too

Listen to her album. She's amazing. If you close your eyes, it isn't hard at all to imagine yourself in the third row orchestra of a Broadway musical. Transport from there to a little joint where they play the real soulful kind of blues that everybody feels from the floor up. She has that kind of versatility. Too bad, probably nobody but I will ever notice that she should be scoring shows instead of wasting her talent on top 40 radio.
Either way, the album is called Little Voice. Buy it.
Of course, you may already have developed an immunity to the upbeat tune, Love Song. Don't give up. If you are sick of this song - which is a remote possibility itself - you will be refreshed by Bottle It Up, moved to strut while humming the tune to Many the Miles, and groove to the sultry Morningside. If you are like most people, there is that one person in your past who never leaves your mind completely. You'll love/hate him or her all over again when you hear Gravity.
Bareilles has a vocal range and strength that holds up to some challenging music without losing its delicate beauty. She doesn't have the range of Mariah Carey or the vocal strength of Christina Aguillera, but they don't have a tenth of her sensitivity or grace. She moves a part of you that is about a foot and a half higher in the anatomy. It is doubtful that she will have paparazzi stealing her soul every time she pops out to the market - and she ought to be glad of that - but that is only because she has something so much more than mere "star quality". The quality of her music is deeper and more substantial than the glitter of stardom. It will endure. Wouldn't we all like to say that about our life's work?

Seriously, Carole King!

One of the joys of life is discovering treasures - not the gold and diamonds kind, but the kind that cost little or nothing and fill your life with joy, pleasure, and meaning.

And some of the best treasures to discover are not always hidden but ones that you just never noticed before. That is the story of how I came to discover how much I have always loved the music of Carole King without ever noticing it before.

You know how that happens. One day you hear a song that you have heard many times before. But this time you listen a little differently. For whatever reason, you hear it as if for the first time.
It touches you in a way you would not have expected. You know what I mean, I'm sure. So, this time, for me, it was Carole King.

I think it is time for some new speakers.

What's Past is Prologue

Shakespeare never had Google. Therefore, he never made the tragic mistake of doing something that nobody should ever do -- he never Googled an old girlfriend to discover that she had done quite extraordinarily well in life without him.
One week ago, I was sitting in a comfortable chair in a Starbuck's in Baton Rouge, doing the LA Times Crossword, and relaxing. The silliest things can trigger the most profound of thoughts without any warning, especially in an idle mind such as mine. So, I considered for a moment the lovely young woman behind the counter. Thinking about pretty girls isn't terribly intellectual, I admit, but I wasn't pining for her greenest of eyes, milky skin, adorable haircut, or the fact that she looked so much like Sandra Bullock that she made Sandra Bullock look like ... well, someone who wasn't actually Sandra Bullock. No, I was marveling over the way she engaged the customers in silly small talk to make them feel comfortable around her.
I never considered the banter to be more than that, but appreciated it greatly. You see, an old guy like me rarely gets more than a smile and a thank you when conducting small transactions such as the purchase of a coffee. Often, I feel invisible to the young, attractive people I encounter every day. While I am fully aware that I hold no allure for them, it is nice when one of them remembers to treat me like a person. It happens less and less often as I age. A middle-aged man (I don't know if that adjective describes the fact that I am in the middle of my life, or if it refers to the increasing width of my middle as I age) is irrelevant and invisible to most young people. They rarely engage me in conversation of any kind. So, the rare time that one so young and sweet pauses to acknowledge my humanity is something that I attribute to her character.
When most people are focused on her perfect smile or her trim figure (which I didn't ignore either) I saw something inside her that would be best called grace. Graciousness, as I define it, is the ability to make those people around us feel comfortable and worthy. It is a rare quality, and one which I credit totally to her parents.
So, my thoughts turned to my own children. I can only hope at this point that I have taught them to be kind and gracious people. They are all wonderful people, and I'm proud of them.
When you are the father of such beautiful and kind people as my children, you can be expected to count your blessings now and again. That is exactly what I did.
So, I walked out of Starbucks, - not an irrelevant and invisible middle-aged guy with a beer gut, but a husband and father. Not just an unremarkable, middle-class consumer was I, but the provider, teacher, and friend to a family - my family.
But, the movie doesn't end with the cowboy riding into the sunset. Even if it did, there would be a sunrise to follow. When the harsh light of the morning shines into your eyes, the glory of the sunset of the night before is not the first thing into your mind. Sometimes, the first question is, "where am I?" or "how did I get here?"
It didn't just happen that I, at forty-five years of age, became a husband and father. The journey of my life has been tortuous. At times, it seems that a whole life is nothing other than the sum of the mistakes that one makes over the time between birth and death.
Certainly I am not the first to turn and look at the road behind me in the middle of the journey. Often, especially when you have no map of the way ahead, the only guidance you will find is in studying the way that brought you to where you are now.

So, I took the ill-advised step of looking up some people from my past. One who had a very small part in my life for a very short while was one who affected me the most. She had represented all that I had wanted to be. She lived the life I had so badly desired for myself, and the time I spent with her was like realizing a part of my dream.
But, her life and mine were not tightly bound together. We were not in love, and when she continued the natural course of her life I could not have joined her anyway. The path she chose - the same path that I would have chosen for myself - was one I could not have taken with her or alone. It was one of the many turns in my trip - choices I made - that took me to where I needed to go instead of where I wanted to go.
I found that she has become a very successful attorney, that she has clerked for two federal judges, and that she and I had many more things in common than I had ever known. Once, there were two of us in the same place at the same time, with many similar interests and probably similar talents. Now there are two of us, a country apart, with vastly different careers and lifestyles. It is as though we had never met.

Looking her up was ill-advised because the effect was just what you would expect. It led me to compare my life and all its failures with hers and the successes she has had. It showed me the vast gulf between what I have and what I had wanted. In effect, it has showed me the cost of being who I am. Now, it wouldn't be fair to compare my life to hers. We came from widely different backgrounds, and she was already far better educated than I could ever hope to be. My feelings were born more of the sense that I could have done more with my life than I have - that I could have followed my own dreams a little further.

One could easily fall into a state of depression or anger when comparing one's reality to one's dreams. If you have no perspective of value, you can exert all your energy at mourning what might have been. I have chosen to measure what I do have by the cost of getting it - by the value of all I had to forego to get it.

If you add up the value of all you ever wanted and didn't get, and assign that value to what you got instead, you will find that what you have now holds all that value and maybe a little more. By that standard, every love I ever lost, every career I never pursued, every goal I never achieved, and all the money I never earned add up to a fortune that I traded to have the wife and family - the life - I have now. I guess I must have made a wise deal, because I would not give anything that I have to get any of that other stuff back. Kinda makes them seem pretty precious, doesn't it?

Running on Empty

Of all the things I hate to do, the worst by far is saying goodbye. Sadly, the nature of my work dictates that I must do this often. I move from place to place and meet new faces, new names, who all come with stories, desires, goals, peeves, quirks, qualities and faults. Our lives become woven together though each strand remains separate and distinct.
We become accustomed to working, eating, drinking and joking together, almost to the point of becoming friends. Then, at the end of our time together, we gather in small circles, shake hands and say everything but the word "goodbye". "See you on the next one", or "catch you down the road", or "take care" all substitute for that word and its finality.
We know, of course, that there is no certainty that we will or will not come together again. What is sure, is that the same group will never be complete. We form a cohort, break it apart, and from its pieces form another at another time and another place.
Sometimes, we slip a little and let ourselves form bonds of friendship that we carefully keep slack so that we won't miss each other too much during those long stretches when we are apart. Some of us move in certain circles, and some in others. We live states away from each other and follow the work to where it leads each of us. Years can go by quickly between the times we have to work, eat, laugh, drink, and sometimes cry together - but we can always think of each other as friends.
If you are one of those people in my life, let me take this minute to tell you that I love you. Nothing else matters, and tomorrow may be too late. For those of you who don't know me, turn to those whose lives have touched yours and pray for them. Tell them that you love them. You never know when or if you will see them again, but you can always hold them close in your heart.
See you down the road.
Love,
Troy

Opened any good worm cans lately?

Wow!!!

Y'know, I got horrible service and bad food at a restaurant, and I wanted to tell about it. Yeah, I felt cheated out of my money, and I exercised my right to tell the truth to anyone who cared to read about it. I think maybe I touched a nerve. Any thoughts?

The following are excerpts of some of the responses I got (along with the comments to the previous post). The full text of the reviews can be found by clicking the link.
http://www.we8there.com/rest_detail.php?busid=7489


"Although it is still a brand new restaurant, obvious from the inexperienced waitstaff, the atmosphere and food made up for it. (If you are overly sensitive to waiting a few extra minutes wait until the staff is a little more experienced and confident.) ...."

Submitted by:
Amy Phelan (09/11/2007)

A few minutes, Amy? How about an hour and a half?


"Well, Troy, you obviously are one of those impossible to please types. Poor you. Judging a restaurant on it's first night as though it were a chain, of which I am sure you must rather eat.
And who said it opened 5 months late? Who are you blaming? The building landlords, the business owners or the town? Better check your facts. Oh, that's right, Troy, you open restaurants every year, right? You should know.
Do you think it is possible that two staff members could not make opening night because of unavoidable circumstances? How would you have overcome that, Troy?
Packed to the gills, this restaurant hops, kicks, and runs circles around anything else in the metropolitan area.
My meal was fabulous, as were the friends meals with me. You'll love Blue Cactus."

Submitted by:
Jean Rivot (09/11/2007)

Jean here seems to know an awful lot of inside details for a customer. D'ya think she might work there, or own a piece of the joint? Who knows? And since when did "impossible to please" equate with wanting my food to be warmer than the table, or to get it within a decade of placing my order?

"Pay no attention to Troy's review below. He obviously leads a very unhappy life. Blue Cactus is a refreshing new restaurant on the Rochester scene. My family and I ate there the other night and it was an amazing experience. Incredible food in a great atmosphere. I wish these owners nothing but success."

Submitted by:
Lisa Trenkowsky (09/13/2007)

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." - the wizard of OZ
"Mom, don't pay any attention to him. He's lying. Besides, he started it...." - any five-year-old kid

C'mon Lisa, will you finish your amateur psychoanalysis of me if I tell you how much I liked the ice cream I got at Lickety Splits to wipe out the taste of the achiote?



"This place is wonderful. Having lived in San Francisco for 20 years and traveling often to Mexico, I have developed a love for real Mexican food. While I appreciate the efforts of other Mexican restaurant owners in the area, no one comes close to Blue Cactus. The food, the decor... everything first rate.

What a great addition to the Rochester-area culinary scene!"

Submitted by:
Loretta Kruger (09/21/2007)

I'm wondering how San Francisco figures into this. It is over 500 miles from SF to Tijuana - not exactly the "corazon de Mexico". This is the equivalent distance from Fairport to the North Carolina state line. Should this make me an expert on Catfish and Grits?

"For the record, you kinda have to be looking for problems if you rag on a new place that has only been open for two days. Troy, its really uncool and a great disservice to execute what appears to be some kind of personal vendetta in this forum. If you don't want to spend $24 per seat on fine dinning, may I suggest Taco Bell next time? There are many convenient locations. [apologies, everyone, I'm upset and dismayed -- I'm sure this is just going to escalate Troy's rantings]"

Submitted by:
Kevin Kondo (10/12/2007)

For the record, I don't object to $24 per seat. I object to being served canned vegetables for $24.
For the record, I was not looking for problems; I was looking for a good dinner; I was looking to introduce my son to real Mexican food to wean him from Taco Bell - a task which may now be impossible. The problems required no effort to find. They found me.
What is really uncool is to ascribe some ulterior motive to the fact that I was just telling the truth. I'm not out to destroy somebody's business. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the owners and staff. It looks like they can run this business into the ground without any assistance from me. Too bad. I was hoping to eat a lot of meals there. But, there is still hope for improvement. It depends on whether they intend to correct these problems, or if they just want to defend the indefensible by having shills post phony reviews on the internet.


This one came by email:

"Regarding your Blue Cactus post:

What would grandpa Henry have said about your post? Would he have cheered you on?

What about Pammy? Do you think her spirits would be lifted had she read your toxic post while hunkered down in the Middle East?

Do you think Father Deven would give you a hearty pat on the back for trying to crush a new business that is trying to improve Fairport?

What a hateful person you are. You should reflect upon your actions. What compels you to actively seek to hurt people? If you feel no remorse, seek professional help."

sent by: Borked Pseudo Mailed

My reply was:
"You hide behind an anonymous email address. Yet, you act as though I should be the one who is ashamed. My late Grandfather, my admirable daughter, and "Father" Deven (who is a woman, by the way) would likely be happy that I am telling the truth. There is no malice in what I wrote - only my honest opinion. I regret that you must live with a truth which disturbs you. Perhaps you should seek help. Or, just work harder at improving your restaurant.
I hope it gets better. If it does, I'll say so just as loudly and publicly as I criticized it."

Troy (my REAL name).

What spooks me the most is that this creep actually Googled me to see the names of my relatives and my Priest. What kind of a psycho is this? Maybe I can get him together with Lisa for some free therapy.

The Blue Cactus

This place opened three months late and they still haven't caught up.
The service was slower than death from a waitress who could not possibly have paid less attention to our table. We were seated at a table with no napkins or silverware. The only condiments are a vinegar cruet filled with sea salt and a bottle of hot sauce. There were four of us, but we were given only two menus. The waitress was made aware of this but never attempted to bring more menus. After depositing two paper french-fry boats with six tortilla chips in each, she took my order for an iced tea and left without taking the other three orders. Along with the chips were small dishes of salsa verde made with apples and bean salsa that was made with beans and nothing of flavor. The waitress returned with the tea, no sugar, no lemon, no spoon, and left carrying the empty paper boats, but without taking the other drink orders. Fortunately the tea was good without lemon or sugar, but that was simply a turn of luck.
A typo in the menu indicated that fajitas were served with cilantro guacamole - an unappetizing option which the waitress could not explain.
A freebie appetizer was served which consisted of jicama, cucumbers, and pineapples in a large Margarita glass dusted with a spice called Achiote, which was strongly reminiscent of red pepper and snuff tobacco. Actually, it tasted like tobacco without benefit of pepper. The jicama has a flavor which does hand-to-hand combat with the Achiote. The two flavors together were as complementary as gasoline and turpentine. Unfortunately, neither gasoline nor turpentine was available to wash down this dirt.
The real appetizers were served after an interminable wait. The nachos with chicken were quite tasty, though burned a bit on one side of the plate. The sampler plate left much to be desired, although the pink pickled cabbage added flavor to otherwise unremarkable quesadillas. Again with the "tobacco" and jicama salad!! Enough!!
One full hour after being seated, we sat, drumming our fingers and contemplating forming a search party for our long-lost waitress; our glasses empty and our patience thin. A manager or owner happened by to clear our plates and asked how our dinner was. She showed no reaction to our dismay at not having seen our dinners yet. She ignored our empty glasses while portending a forthcoming culinary delight. She was kidding herself.
Each entree, when served barely above room temperature, was overcooked, over spiced with an offensive amount of achiote, burned black, and accompanied by a pyramid of white rice steamed in canned broth with peas and diced carrots as well as a dollop of refried beans sprinkled with a very tasty white cheddar cheese. The cheese was the only pleasant flavor on the table - another turn of luck.
Even though Fajitas were served on iron plates with peppers and onions, neither the steak nor the chicken were hot. It is the first time I have ever seen Fajitas served that were not sizzling.
My dinner, an Arrachera, was cooked to the correct medium rare, but also arrived cold and dusted heavily with achiote. Beef loves salt: my beef was not in love. The chef uses one spice and uses it to the exclusion of all other seasonings. My beef came from an animal that died a senseless death. To waste the life of one of God's creatures only to serve it with no flavor ... it is too horrific to contemplate. I only hope the butcher never learns of his part in this crime against nature. He may become a vegetarian from the guilt. If so, I recommend that he stay clear of the Ensalada de Jicama at the Blue Cactus Grille.
The younger child, who ordered the breaded chicken tenders from the children's menu, asked for ketchup. After three requests, the waitress brought the ketchup with an admonition from the chef that it was for the children only. If only ketchup could have helped this sorry meal!!!
I have never refused a doggie bag with so much food left on the table. Not until tonight. I couldn't think of a dog hungry enough to eat this ... what is the word I'm looking for here? Oh, Yeah. Crap. Crap is the word. No. Dogs eat crap. But they wouldn't eat what we left on that table.
I left a measly five dollar tip on a tab of $90.72 because I was feeling charitable. My wife will probably not sleep with me tonight because I was so carefree with that $5. Actually, she won't sleep at all because the Pepto Bismol she has been taking may not prevent the diarrhea from continuing through the night. I think I'll take the couch tonight.
If you absolutely MUST experience the Blue Cactus for yourself, because you have no reason to believe me or because you hate yourself, do it soon. I figure they have about nine to twelve weeks to live. Then the chef can go pretend to be the next Rick Bayless somewhere else.

Four Weddings and a Mockery of the Church

In today's news we learned that Tori Spelling, star of several instantly-forgettable television movies and some series that was produced by her father, has taken Holy Orders and begun a ministry in the church.
Well, she got herself ordained online, anyway. I did the same once. I thought it would be cool to officiate at the wedding of my little sister Maria. It is painless, free, and totally legal.
The funny thing about our constitution, the one I have written about here before, is that it guarantees us freedom of religion. That means that there can be no government definition of what is or is not a proper religion. Therefore, the practice of ordaining ministers by mail, telephone, or internet (though absurd to most of us) is as valid in the eyes of the law as the traditional method of putting them through a dozen years of divinity college and another dozen years of internships before laying hands upopn them.
In fact, as a minister I can ordain you right now. Just send me an email confirming that you believe in God (which is not legally required) and I'll ordain you. You can start calling yourself "The Reverend __________" immediately and perform weddings by this evening.
Actually, the State of Ohio required me to fill out a form and pay a $25 fee to obtain a licence to officiate at weddings. I was not able to attend Maria's wedding, and so I didn't bother to pay the fee. But, I learned that here in my Upstate-New-York town, I can still perform weddings. The town clerk told me that all I had to do was sign the marriage license. It seems that having two adult witnesses to a marriage is far more important than having a minister, judge, or mayor actually asking the questions. She said that if I said I was a minister, they would just trust me. The laws do vary among the several counties in New York. It is best to check first. Insanely enough, a Notary Public can not perform a marriage ceremony in New York. This is a person who has passed a test and whose character has been officially certified by the Secretary of State of the State of New York. But, he or she may not marry you to your sweetie. An internet minister can do it, but a Notary can't.

The point of all this is that marriage is a civil affair. Regardless of the history of marriage as the sacramental union of a man and a woman, blessed and instituted by God, for the purpose of producing and nurturing children; it is, in our modern society, a contract for the purpose of transferring the ownership and control of property.
When two people get married today, they do not do it solely to be seen by God and the church as a family: they do it to protect the ability of one to inherit the house and money if the other dies: they do it to provide medical insurance and other employee benefits to their life partner: they do it to have the right to be considered the next-of-kin for the purpose of notification and healthcare decision-making: they do it to have the right to file a joint income tax return, and hold joint ownership of bank accounts and businesses. People get married these days for financial reasons almost to the exclusion of all others.
There is no longer a stigma placed on bearing and raising children without benefit of marriage. Famous people routinely marry after the birth of a child. It's almost as if Tom Cruise needed the physical proof that Katie Holmes was really going to bear him a child before he was willing to plight her his troth (whatever that means).
So, I say let's get the church right the hell out of the marriage business altogether. Really! Churches are being torn to shreds over internal disagreements about whether to marry same-sex couples -- and it's really none of our damned business anyway.
Recently, a member of my parish had her wedding in our little church. She's the only woman I have EVER seen in that church both before and after her wedding day. It was a rare occaision to have a wedding there, because outsiders don't come to us seeking to use our rather plain and unadorned building as the site of their magnificent, overpriced extravaganza of a wedding. Nope, only our members seem to be interested in maryying in our humble surroundings. And I, for one, am glad of it.
When you have a beautiful church building, it attracts brides. There are no more objectionable creatures in the universe than brides. But, that is a matter for another vehement discussion at another time. Anyway, pretty churches attract couples who nod their heads in unison when the minister explains that our church is not a wedding chapel and that a commitment toward full membership in the community is expected before she will consent to holding their nuptials in our sanctuary. They attend services nearly every Sunday for the months leading up to the glorious day - even the prospective bridegroom dutifully allows himself to be dragged to the back pew of the church.
Then, the big Saturday finally comes. The uncomfortable guests abandon immediately any attempts to participate in the rite, because they can't tell the Hymnal from the Prayer Book. The rings are exchanged, the couple walk arm-in-arm out the doors, duck under the hail of rice and/or birdseed, stand to be photographed for a brief eternity, and then are apparently abducted by a craft from a planet in another galaxy.
Who needs 'em!
They don't need us either. All they wanted was a pretty building where they could seat their friends, relations, and other bearers of a place-setting or a salad bowl. They wanted somewhere to be photographed and a roof in case it rains. They wanted nothing at all to do with Jesus Christ, the feast at Cana, the Eucharist, or God Himself. After all, a bride isn't about to let herself be upstaged by the likes of some almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, Giver-of-Life who died for our faults and rose again to life. Who could compete whith that?

People don't need the church to have weddings, and the church is far better off without doing them too. Let's just leave these contracts to the Town Justices, and the Internet Ministers, and the mayors and the ships' Captains. Why don't we let the Notaries in on it too? If you want your marriage to be blessed, that doesn't have to happen only on your wedding day. You can come to church together any Sunday, or Temple on Saturday. Hold hands and bring your children. Your marriage will be blessed.

Letter From the Front

Pam just sent the following from Iraq. She didn't say anything about it, but she would never have sent it if she didn't agree with it.

Hope Rides Alone

By Eddie Jeffers

I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others.

I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to me to direct them in a manner that will someday allow them to see their families again...and yet, I too, am just a boy...my age not but a few years more than that of the ones I lead. I am stressed, I am scared, and I am paranoid...because death is everywhere. It waits for me, it calls to me from around street corners and windows, and it is always there.

There are the demons that follow me, and tempt me into thoughts and actions that are not my own...but that are necessary for survival. I've made compromises with my humanity. And I am not alone in this. Miles from me are my brethren in this world, who walk in the same streets...who feel the same things, whether they admit to it or not.

And to think, I volunteered for this...

And I am ignorant to the rest of the world...or so I thought.

But even thousands of miles away, in Ramadi, Iraq, the cries and screams and complaints of the ungrateful reach me. In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn't fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America, and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler.

I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about. It is their right, however, and it is a right that is defended by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls scattered across the world, far from home. I use the word boys and girls, because that's what they are. In the Army, the average age of the infantryman is nineteen years old. The average rank of soldiers killed in action is Private First Class

People like Cindy Sheehan are ignorant. Not just to this war, but to the results of their idiotic ramblings, or at least I hope they are. They don't realize its effects on this war. In this war, there are no Geneva Conventions, no cease fires. Medics and Chaplains are not spared from the enemy's brutality because it's against the rules. I can only imagine the horrors a military Chaplain would experience at the hands of the enemy. The enemy slinks in the shadows and fights a coward's war against us. It is effective though, as many men and women have died since the start of this war. And the memory of their service to America is tainted by the inconsiderate remarks on our nation's news outlets. And every day, the enemy changes...only now, the enemy is becoming something new. The enemy is transitioning from the Muslim extremists to Americans. The enemy is becoming the very people whom we defend with our lives. And they do not realize it. But in denouncing our actions, denouncing our leaders, denouncing the war we live and fight, they are isolating the military from society...and they are becoming our enemy.

Democrats and peace activists like to toss the word "quagmire" around and compare this war to Vietnam. In a way they are right, this war is becoming like Vietnam. Not the actual war, but in the isolation of country and military. America is not a nation at war; they are a nation with its military at war. Like it or not, we are here, some of us for our second, or third times; some even for their fourth and so on. Americans are so concerned now with politics, that it is interfering with our war.

Terrorists cut the heads off of American citizens on the internet...and there is no outrage, but an American soldier kills an Iraqi in the midst of battle, and there are investigations, and sometimes soldiers are even jailed...for doing their job.

It is absolutely sickening to me to think our country has come to this Why are we so obsessed with the bad news? Why will people stop at nothing to be against this war, no matter how much evidence of the good we've done is thrown in their face? When is the last time CNN or MSNBC or CBS reported the opening of schools and hospitals in Iraq? Or the leaders of terror cells being detained or killed? It's all happening, but people will not let up their hatred of Bush. They will ignore the good news, because it just might show people that Bush was right.

America has lost its will to fight. It has lost its will to defend what is right and just in the world. The crazy thing of it all is that the American people have not even been asked to sacrifice a single thing. It's not like World War Two, where people rationed food, and turned in cars to be made into metal for tanks. The American people have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Unless you are in the military or the family member of a service member, its life as usual..the war doesn't affect you.

But it affects us. And when it is over, and the troops come home, and they try to piece together what's left of them after their service...where will the detractors be then? Where will the Cindy Sheehans be to comfort and talk to soldiers and help them sort out the last couple years of their lives, most of which have been spent dodging death and wading through the deaths of their friends? They will be where they always are, somewhere far away, where the horrors of the world can't touch them. Somewhere where they can complain about things they will never experience in their lifetime; things that the young men and women of America have willingly taken upon their shoulders.

We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children in. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped, and murdered if they do not comply with the terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause, and see it to its end. But the country must unite in this endeavor...we cannot place the burden on our military alone. We must all stand up and fight, whether in uniform or not. And supporting us is more than sticking yellow ribbon stickers on your cars. It's supporting our President, our troops and our cause.

Right now, the burden is all on the American soldiers. Right now, hope rides alone. But it can change, it must change. Because there is only failure and darkness ahead for us as a country, as a people, if it doesn't.

Let's stop all the political nonsense, let's stop all the bickering, let's stop all the bad news, and let's stand and fight!

Isn't that what America is all about anyway?

If I let you go, I must have loved you.

“You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.
Your heart can be empty because you can't see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she'd want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.” - David Harkins

This is the wisest thing ever written about loss. But I have so many questions. Wisdom seems to be like that. It offers more questions than answers. The answers, of course, must come from within the questioner. So, I have this wisdom, but how do I use it? Why is it so easy to see the truth in this advice, yet so nearly impossible to take it?

All of us lose someone important to us. Most of us live long enough to lose quite a few. Still, we carry on - maybe not so diminished by the loss as we are enriched by having known them. But it is so hard to see the positive influence that they have had in our lives. The moment we remember them, all we can feel is how much we miss them. It is a bittersweet thing to love another person.

I often remember my son at the age of three. He is still my son, but I'll never know that three-year-old again. Every day he grows and becomes a new person whom I love more and more as I watch him gradually grow away from me. I would freeze time if I could, to keep him little and always near.

We can never keep things the way we want them. That one perfect moment could not last forever no matter how perfect it is, or how many times we remember it.

For a minute or two today, I was feeling particularly contented - not so much satisfied with my life, but with the direction it is taking. Then I thought about old friends and other loved ones whom I shall likely never see again. Of course, I wished that I could share another happy moment with them. Though I can't do that, we can always and forever share the memory of those we had together.

It's hard to take the good advice of the wise. I think it is supposed to be.

Is it Dufuses, Dufi, or Dufae?

I don't know what the plural of Dufus is, but there are plenty of spam-brained people in the world, and Chris Hansen has met a whole lot of them. On camera. Being as dufotic (or is it dufonious?) as you could never imagine.
First it was the internet predators who want to hook up with twelve-year-old boys. These brain farts devise some of the loopiest excuses for why they have wandered, grinning and drooling, into his living room o' shame. Knowing, as most of them do, that Hansen has been laying this trap on national television for months, they gladly stroll in, condoms in hand, and pour themselves a glass of Kool-Aid while the cops are positioning themselves right outside the door.

The latest breed of dolts are the African internet scammers who promise a fortune to anyone gullible enough to pony up the "fees" needed to free outrageous fortunes from the bonds of some bureaucratic monetary limbo. The scammers in this case are even more gullible and guileless than their intended victims, arranging to meet with some intended mark who goes by names like "Jimmy Dimoni" (rhymes with gimme da money) or "Rich Greenback" played by Hansen. I'm bursting with laughter at Hansen's audacious slap at the intelligence of his subjects. He plays them far better than they could ever dream of playing him - and all the while keeping a straight face.

Chris Hansen gets my vote for Genius of the Century.

The lost art of being human

They say that conversation is a lost art. Although I have been hearing it all my life, I have yet to find a place where it is true. Believe me, it is getting harder all the time. The art of conversation is not lost - it's just that nobody is any good at it.
I went over to the pool this morning to read and get a little color onto my too-white legs. I plugged in the earphones on my PDA (which is useless except for its MP3 player function) and cracked my book. Over the sweet, velvety tones of Norah Jones, I could still hear the cackling of some tourist who was giving a turn-by-turn account of his entire trip. The book went closed, and I went away. I thought about Starbuck's, but then I thought better. Too many cell phones last time.
The yakking traveller at the pool was actually a rarity. Conversation may be alive and well, but face-to-face communication is something that almost never happens anymore.
We're an isolated society these days. Technology has made it possible for a person to cocoon inside a fully wired home and correspond, order merchandise, conduct our banking, order dinner, download music and books, and "make friends".
The phrase "alone in a crowd" has become our motto. We have become so acclimated to interacting by computer or telephone that we can't behave in public any longer.
The Walkman, Discman, and other portable forms of entertainment have been around for decades, but the iPod and its kind are revolutionary not only in their compactness but for their utility as tools of isolation. Put those little white stoppers in your ears, press play, and you are inside your own impenetrable universe. You might as well be deaf, mute, and blind and nobody will bother you on the subway.
No iPod? No problem. Just walk everywhere with that cell phone up to your face and you get the same result. I'm convinced that most of the young women whose phones never leave their ears are using them as a defense against being accosted by strangers. When you are talking on the phone you don't have to say "leave me alone". The sad side effect is that they walk into stores, libraries, and offices totally oblivious to the world around them and the people in it.
You don't have to be hypnotized to remember the last time you were accosted, offended, interrupted, or embarassed by some idiot with a cell phone.
People get so locked into their own private reality when on cell phones that they forget that they aren't sitting in their own living rooms. We believe that it is acceptable to behave in public as we would in the privacy of our homes.
Why did I go to the pool when there is a perfectly good patio right outside the condo? Because the patio is right next to a par 3 golf course. I have learned that even golfers bring their cell phones with them. The guy renting the condo upstairs did one even better. Yesterday he put his phone into speaker mode so that he and his fellow conversant could shout at each other. It would have been hilarious if it weren't so damned annoying. "I'm sitting on the Lanai, drinking a Bloody Mary", was meant to impress on the fellow (who was apparently still in the frozen North) that he was relaxing in the moderate Florida climate. The fact that he had to yell it twice to be understood belied any pretense to relaxation.
Ah yes! Speaker phones! Who doesn't want to strangle the &#(%#$@^&%#$ who had that idea? It took a lot of ingenuity to turn a radio into a device that worked just like a cordless telephone. You could take your two way radio almost anywhere and dial up a buddy just like making a phone call. You can hold it up to your ear and speak privately without having to press a button or say "over". Then, somebody had to screw it all up by making it work like a walkie-talkie again. Most conversations over these end up consisting mostly of both parties repeating every other sentence and yelling "what" at the top of their vioces in between. Naturally, every one within twenty yards is made to feel like an eavesdropper on a conversation in which we haven't the slightest interest.
The reasoning is circular. People live in their own little self-centered worlds, offend and annoy everyone around them, and disregard social convention and public safety for one reason - that they cannot stand to be around each other. The isolation causes the self-absorbed, boorish behavior which makes others withdraw and isolate themselves.
Take your cell phone to somehwere private and off the highway. Then hang up and rejoin society. Turn off your MP3 player and say "hello" to strangers. Be courteous and smile. Engage other human beings in conversation. Log off of MySpace and make some friends whom you can touch.
Be human.

You say tomato, I say pomodoro ...

While everybody is jumping all over George W. Bush for his pronunciation of the word "nuclear", I'd just loooooooove to respond in kind. Yeah, we all get it that the common pronunciation is new-klee-ur, while the President says, new-kyu-ler. A little tidbit of useless trivia is that John F. Kennedy pronounced it the exact same way as Bush, but was never branded an idiot for doing so - not even while having a standoff with Cuber.
Guess what. Go ahead guess! I bet you got it - If you guessed that most people mispronounce a lot of words everyday, you are right.
Gee, where to start? How about your morning coffee. If you stop at Starbuck's for your caffeine fix, you've probably noticed that they serve Italian style coffee there. The first syllable in the word "Italian" is "it". It rhymes with fit, hit, spit, and shit. There is no such goddam thing as EYE-talian. When you get there, many of you order a thing called a Latte. You (and those guys at Dunkin' Donuts who make fun of the "Fritalian" menu at Starbuck's) probably pronounce it "lah-tay". The correct pronunciation of this word (which is the Italian word for milk) is lat-tuh. The first syllable rhymes with fat, and the "tuh" trails off.
More marginally interesting trivia here: if you order a "latte" in Italy, they will give you a glass of milk - even if you pronounce it properly. To get a coffee drink with milk in it, you have to ask for a caffe latte, and you won't get it after about 9 a.m.
Italians do not pronounce the word "Grande" the same way that Mexicans do. In Spanish, the word is actually pronounced grahn-day, but in Italian, the trailing "uh" applies. You would say, "grahnd-uh". I don't know where, other than Starbuck's, you would hear any Italian pronouncing it that way either, since it is not an Italian word. The Italian word for "grande" is "gran". There is no "duh". Duh! So, if you are going to order a large coffee with milk in it by saying "grand-day lah-tay", you might as well be saying new-kyu-lur as far as I'm concerned.
There is no "x" in the word "espresso".
You could argue that you are not actually speaking Italian, and therefore are not bound by Italian pronunciation rules, but if you were truly not speaking Italian, you would just order a "large coffee with milk".

Once you've fuelled-up with your morning dose of bean juice, you still have lots of opportunity to sound undereducated.

While parking cars is not part of the job of a valet, his title always rhymes with ballot - not ballet.
If you're feeling a bit gloomy about all this, you may have a dour expression on your face. Someone may say that you have a sour-puss, but "dour" rhymes with "your".
Iraq and Iran are supposed to sound like "i-rock" and "i-ron", not "EYE-rack" or "EYE-ran".

Let's not leave off with the mere pronunciation of words either. Plenty of people just misuse words, or even make up ones that simply do not (or should not) exist.
Perhaps you have noticed someone trying to sound intelligent on camera. Invariably, that person will use the word "myself" when he should say "me" or "I".
As long as the word "use" is available, there is never an excuse for saying "utilize".
If you feel like throwing up, you are nauseated. If you are nauseous, you are the reason that the guy next to you is turning green and looking for a receptacle in which to deposit his stomach contents.
People are not things, we are people. So, you should never say "that" in reference to a person. Say "who" or "whom".
There is no such thing as "a reverend". Neither should a person ever be addressed as "reverend" or "reverend Smith". This word is an honorific, which is an adjective used to convey a position or distinction of honor. Another example of a word like this is the word "honorable". One should use "reverend" the exact same way one would use "honorable". It would sound stupid to refer to the mayor of Rochester as "Honorable Duffy", or to address him directly by saying, "how are you today, Honorable?" Just as stupid as this would be to say, "Bob Duffy is an honorable". Likewise, one sounds equally ignorant when referring to the reverend Mrs. Jones as "Reverend Jones".

The past-tense of the word "sneak" is "sneaked", NOT "snuck".

Okay, some wiseass can pull out a dictionary and find contradictory information for all of this. Dictionaries are not meant to be rulebooks for words and their uses. They are written to reflect current, common usage of language - no matter how badly it has degenerated. The fact that a dictionary lists two different pronunciations for the word flaccid does not change the fact that "flak-sid" is the only correct one. It merely acknowledges the fact that most people say "flassid" even though it is incorrect.

Now, by this point you are either wholeheartedly agreeing with me or asking "who does this pedantic (since you have your dictionary out, look that up for yourself) jerk think he is? What makes him the judge of proper English? Well, nothing really. I just figure that people ought to see how hypocritical they are when they point at someone's awkward pronunciation of a word and use it as evidence that he can't possibly be smart enough to do his job.
Bush can't say nuclear. So what?!?! You can't say a lot of words. If that's the only criticism that you can come up with, shut up.

At what point does the ridiculous become evident?

October 3 was election day in Adak, Alaska. It was also the day that incumbent school board member Katherine Dunton died. When the vote was tallied, the late Ms. Dunton was tied with her challenger, Dona Highstone. Following the recount, which also resulted in a tie, Division of Elections Director Whitney Brewster tossed a coin. Being the only living contestant, Ms. Highstone had the privilege of calling the toss. She called heads. The coin landed tails-up.
Katherine Dunton was not the only person in America to have won election this year post-mortem. Often a candidate passes away when it is too late to change the ballot or pick a substitute. It frequently makes good political sense to campaign for and cast your vote in favor of a person who has died. In the case where the living opponent has no other merit than the ability to draw breath, you vote for the deceased and look for a good replacement to run in the special election to follow. It's really no more than just placekeeping. But, when the opponent draws half the votes against someone who was alive only hours earlier, the opponent deserves a little better than the formality of a tie-breaker. Being alive should not be the only qualification for office but, all else being equal, it should count for something.
Though deceased, Katherine Dunton won the election by coin toss. Alaska election laws mandate that ties be broken by a game of chance. Whitney Brewster, who says that the process leaves her "speechless", tossed a coin to break a tie because the law told her to.
We should all be a little speechless. Why would an intelligent human being have used a coin toss to break a tie between a living person and a dead one? The law, in this case, was obviously meant to decide a tie between two living candidates. Even one who adheres rigidly to the letter of the law could have found an ethical way to break this tie and still ensure that the dead person would lose.
How about if each contestant were to write her name on a slip of paper and put it into a jar. The winner would be the person whose name is drawn. Too dead to sign your autograph? Sorry, you lose.
Maybe the election should go to the candidate who blinks the most times in a minute or has the faster pulse. Musical chairs seems like a fair game in a case such as this. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey is even better. Just as easily, the race could be won by the person who can fog a mirror faster, or have the higher temperature. Wait! Maybe they should put all the valid death certificates of the contestants into a hat and disqualify the person whose certificate is drawn first.
The law, which was written by a legislature who could foresee the possibility of a tie vote but not the inevitability of death, just doesn't seem to apply here. Perhaps it should be amended to allow the Director of Elections to consider a candidate's demise as a concession.
Now, the school board in Adak has to "find" a replacement to serve the three-year term of the late Ms. Dunton. To everyone else, the obvious choice would be the person who got just as many votes as the "winner". But it was also obvious to us that there was no need on earth to flip that stupid coin. It is no surprise to me that this poses somewhat of a dilemma for a community who couldn't figure out how to break a tie between a living human and one who has ceased to be. Chances are that Dona Highstone will be tapped to fill the seat left vacant by the death of her opponent. Just don't hold your breath - if you hold it too long they might give the job to you.

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You (*)

The sign at the corner says "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You". (Note the absence of an asterisk.) That is meant to be more than a slogan to draw newcomers into the church. It is a statement of who we are as a church.
We, as Christians, worship God who lived among us as one of us. We sing praise to Him, celebrate Him, and petition Him to heal us in every way. We acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, the incarnate God who came to rescue the world, the Christ.
A look at the life of Jesus is a study in breaking through the barriers and loving everyone equally. He taught by example when he dined at the home of a tax collector, when he saved the adulteress from the crowd who would stone her to death, and when he chose his apostles from among the lowliest elements of society.
He taught also by the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector that God is no respecter of persons - that God does not care what we own or how we appear to the world, but rather that we are faithful.
We worship the One who scoffed at the protests from those who considered themselves righteous that He should not be seen to consort with those whom society reviled and held in contempt. We laud Him for His rebellious love for those who were pushed aside.
So, when you enter an Episcopal Church, or any Christian Church, you don't have to hide in the back pew. No matter who you are, you are no more or less than anyone present, and you have no more or less right to be there.
But we conduct our worship in buildings that we build and maintain with our money and labor. Sometimes that leads us to feel that the church is something that we have bought and paid for, something that we can control. We mistake our stewardship of the church's earthly resources for ownership of the church itself.
In our love for the church and her history, we become zealous guardians of her traditions. We seek to preserve and defend the church from the corruptions which surround her. We grasp tightly that which we love and hold it close to us for fear of losing it. In our selfish desire to protect the church as we wish it to be, we pervert the very purpose of its being.
The human weakness that drives our need to control things can be seen as strength instead. A system of carefully husbanding the assets of the church would seem to be wise money management even though it stifles our ability to be charitable. Our method of choosing ordained ministers, through exhaustive vetting of candidates and stringent educational requirements, looks like careful personnel management when in reality it denies the truth that the church's ministers are not called by its members or by committees, but by God.
We have come to think that the process we use to select our leaders gives us the right to select them by our standards. Ordination of ministers by the church does not (as it appears to do) confer the gift of ministry upon an individual. It is no more than an acknowledgement by the church that God has already endowed the individual with those gifts and intends them to be used according to His will - not ours.
If you are welcome to join the church, you are welcome to participate too. We, the members of the church, have no right to deny what God has ordained. We have no right to interfere with God's will - even though it may seem alien to us. Just as the righteous objected to the dinner companions of Jesus, some continue to object to those who would celebrate at His table today. But, as Jesus was undeterred by those protests, we too must be undeterred.
If Christ had only one lesson to teach us, it was that we must give up control. He showed us that to have faith we must let go. We cannot have faith in anything as long as we hold it tightly and restrict its actions. We cannot love what we posses.
He taught us this lesson in His life as well as His death on the cross, where He allowed His fate to be served to Him without a struggle. On the cross His arms were outstreched in a position where it was impossible to hold anything. With His hands nailed to the beam, He could not use them to protect Himself or to cover His nakedness. On the cross He gave up His life, not as a human sacrifice, but as the ultimate act of faith in the resurrection to eternal life.
If we, the church, are to live up to our calling to be the Body of Christ, we must do as Christ would do. We have to let go. We have to allow faith to conquer fear. It is not our money which has bought the church, but the Blood of the Christ. Our efforts do not preserve her, but our faith will. We need to stop doing God's work and start allowing God to work through us. We have to take a risk, to gamble on faith that God will sustain us no matter what comes.
If God has given to one the talents for leadership in His church, that person is meant to lead. It is not our place to deny God the use of His servants, though we might think that we know better. God, who Jesus told us is no respecter of persons, calls those whom He chooses without regard for their gender, color, education, sexual orientation, or any other worldly distinction. These are not the qualities that matter to God. They are all beyond our ability to control, and so also they are beyond our ability to relinquish control.
When you come to the church, whether you come to lead or to follow, you may find me there with a friendly smile and a handshake. But, it is not I who welcomes you to the Episcopal Church - it is God. Whatever Power controls this universe, whether you name it Nature, Allah, God, Yahweh, or whatever, works through us - and not always in ways we would desire or expect. We are all imperfect, so it only follows logic that all our flaws and failings do not disqualify us from full participation in life. That is, after all, what the church is about. Life in all its froms is God's greatest gift to us, and it is our portion to live it and celebrate it the best we can.
If you are homosexual or homophobic, liberal or conservative, bold or shy, there is a place for you in the Episcopal Church and many others. Just don't stop at the back pew. Come up and take your place at the table.

Did it really seem like a good idea at the time?

I don't know if I come off as patriotic in these posts or what. Just to set the record straight: I am a veteran of the United States Navy, a member of my local volunteer fire department, a former Boy Scout, and a (not exactly active) member of The American Legion. My oldest daughter is serving in the United States Army, and has been to Baghdad and back. I'm far more proud of her than she will ever know. There is a Blue Star Flag on my front door and an American Flag flying from the front of my house most days. I usually march with the Fire Department Color Guard on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and several more times each year.
I love my country, as every person should.
I respect the flag of my country, and the Star Spangled Banner still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. These symbols of America - its history, laws, freedoms, and the sacrifices of her people - are nothing more than symbols unless someone appreciates the profound meaning behind them.
When the flag passes you during a parade, you might be forgiven for not remembering at that moment the millions of lives given to protect American values and freedoms at home and abroad. You may be forgiven also for not knowing that you should stand, remove your hat, and be silent as it passes. If you do remember these things your outward signs of respect are not just for the flag itself, but for all those who have paid the uncountable cost of your freedom.
Now, here's where you have to pay attention. If you want to burn that flag ... Read that again. I said, if you want to burn that flag you might be forgiven for that too. That's right, burning a flag in protest is not a mortal sin against democracy, truth, justice, or the American way. If you have exhausted every other means of redressing your grievance against the United States, if you can find no other way to express your frustration with what you believe to be your country's error, if you love your country enough to stand up and speak out against something you believe to be unjust, and burning a flag is the only way to convey your message, then you just may be forgiven, you poor bastard.
Now, I don't recommend just holding a flag drenched in charcoal starter and setting your Zippo to it. Burning things can be dangerous - especially things that are flapping in the breeze. Fires have the unfortunate proclivity to spread into places where they are not wanted - like your hair and clothing, or the house where you are living ... etc. If you are going to be burning anything in the open, have a fire extinguisher handy as well as a means of containing the embers.
You should also be aware that many localities have ordinances prohibiting open fires. You may find yourself and your flaming flag being doused with hundreds of gallons of water, which is preferrable to being pummeled to a bloody pile of scorched flesh by an angry mob of people who are not interested in seeing your point of view.

Leaving your ball cap on during the national anthem, or accidental self-immolation with a polyester flag and a can of Ronsonol aren't the only ways to treat the flag with disrespect. Sometimes, people who are trying to show their respect are the worst offenders.
Yeah, I told you that you had to pay attention, didn't I? If it seems illogical to you that a flag burner can be forgiven while a flag waver is doing something wrong, keep reading.

That flag you might have permanently affixed to a flagpole in your yard (the one that is pink, gray, and purple with only twelve and one third stripes) is a disgrace. Take it down and destroy it. The American Legion will be happy to burn it for you safely and respectfully.

The flag that has been clipped to the roof of your car since 9/12/2001 is tired. You've been dragging that poor thing through rain, snow, and scorching sunlight at speeds exceeding 65 mph for so long that it's shredded. Long ago, it went from Star Spangled Banner to Bug Splattered Rag. Take it to the incinerator, please.

The beach towel you got at Target with a full replica of a flag on one side, the one your child was using at the water park this afternoon ... well ... that's not a real flag, is it? No, but it looks far too much like one - exactly like one to be ... well ... exact. If a flag is a symbol, what can be said about the symbol of a symbol? A flag is not to be worn, nor laid upon the ground for a person to lie upon. A flag should never be used to clean beach sand from between your toes or to wipe the sweat, sunscreen, and muddy lakewater from the crack of your stinking ass!!!!! Cut that towel into very small pieces. Burn the pieces.

Sure, buying that towel seemed like a patriotic choice compared to the Sponge Bob towel you could have gotten a little cheaper. Clipping that flag to the roof of your car was done with the best of intentions, but you know where good intentions will get you. And it cost a lot of money to install that flagpole in your yard. You paint the white rocks around it every year and even installed lights so you could fly your flag at night. But somewhere you got lost in the symbolism and forgot that respect for the flag consists of more than just showing one without setting it on fire.

Remember, a symbol has no meaning until someone thinks about it, considers it for what it means, pays attention to it, knows its power. The protester who burns a flag invites - provokes even - the consideration of the meaning behind the symbol. The flag burner is aware of the emotion and loyalty that the flag inspires. He counts on these things to make his point, or at least to make his voice heard. But the flag waver, who professes and demands respect for the flag while destroying it by his neglect, does worse than burn a flag - he ignores it. How can anyone expect others to see the flag as a symbol of greatness, to show it due respect, to revere it, if he can't be bothered to just look at it once in a while?

Caution, the following contains vulgar language...

I get a chuckle when the cable channels flash a warning that a program contains "Adult Language". Really! I learned to say the seven dirty words when I was in third grade. There is nothing remotely "adult" about vulgarity, no matter how cool it sounded when you were eight years old.
The longer you live in this world, the more evident it should become that adulthood is more of a responsibility than a privilege. Adults are supposed to be the ones who restrain our language and behavior in public - not just as an example to children - but also to show our respect for the sensibilities of others.
I was sitting in a crowded waiting area of LAX, waiting to board a flight home, when I overheard part the conversation of two young men sitting on the floor behind me. The one who did most of the talking seemed to have only one noun in his entire vocabulary. Everything, to him, was a "motherfucker". The lazy, half-awake tone to his voice suggested that he was trying to be cool, but he sounded more like a drooling idiot despite his efforts at hipness.
After hearing about a dozen iterations of the word, which he pronounced "muhfugga", I had reached my limit. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable sitting idly by, thereby giving implied consent, as this vulgarity filled the air around me and the women, children and seniors nearby.
Though I normally avoid drawing the attention of a large crowd of strangers, I spoke up. "Son," I said, "you're not in a locker room. You are in a public place. These people aren't your buddies, there are mothers and children here." He returned a blank stare as though I were speaking to him in a language he couldn't understand. So I continued, "Your inapropriate language gives the impression that your parents raised you very badly. Do you think that it is fair to your mother that all these people think that about her?" This time he managed a grimace and a grunt which together communicated that he still had no clue what I meant. "Would your mother be proud or ashamed of you if she were here?"
"Idaknow, huh?"
"I'm talking about the words you use, and how inapropriate they are in a public place like this. Don't you understand that your language is offensive?"
The slightly-older gentleman seated to my left was forming a smile which he hid behind a book. I thought that maybe I had gotten my point across.
Then the kid answered up, "freedom of speech, man."
That tore the lid off. When I had been that man's age, I was wearing my country's uniform. My child, a girl half as big as this shaved ape, is this moment defending all our freedoms. Though I was shocked and mildly pleased that he didn't say, "freedom of speech, muhfugga", I was offended nevertheless.
It was not the fact that he could not form a complete or coherent sentence to rebut me that disappointed me so. Neither was it the fact that he was totally uninvolved in the patriotic defense of America's freedoms. It was the fact that he had absolutely no understanding of the freedom of which he spoke.
To this boy, "freedom of speech" is no more than a vague concept which somehow guarantees him the right to behave badly in public. That's good enough for him - he needn't bother to grasp it well enough to express his opinion in complete thoughts. If he had said, "I am free to speak as I please" it wouldn't have bothered me as much. An arrogant jerk would have gotten the message that his loutish behavior would not be tolerated by everyone. But this ignorant child understands nothing.
Though his mother might indeed have been embarrassed by her son's bad language, she is still to blame for it - not because she taught profanity to her child or tolerated it from him, but because she did not insist on a better education for him.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Those of us who passed Civics in high school remember those words as the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. We learned that this "freedom of speech" was indeed part of a complete sentence - the most important sentence in the entire document. It confers upon us the right as well as the responsibility to hold our government accountable to us. It guarantees that government will be subject to the scrutiny of the governed, and that we will control it rather than be controlled by it.
This complete, coherent sentence gives us the power to insist on the preservation of all the other freedoms granted by the other amendments. Without the first amendment, all the others would be empty promises. Without its freedoms, all the other ones we enjoy could be taken away, and we would be powerless to stop it.

The freedom of speech enjoyed by Americans is not a license to say anything we want at any time. There is no constitutional right to incite violence, to make false claims in advertising, to defame others, to provoke, or subject others to ridicule and embarrassment.

So, while the constitution does protect the right to swear in public, it is too important and valuable to be squandered on such a trivial thing. I'm grateful for the freedom to say "motherfucker" in public. I'm just a whole lot more grateful for the upbringing that taught me not to, and the education that taught me to appreciate and understand why.

New York Hack

New York Hack

For no particular reason...

I'm probably not the only guy in America who thinks Sarah Silverman is a babe of the highest quality, but I love the way she thinks too. Maybe it's just her politically-incorrect humor that makes me drool, but it's probably her body.
What I like best about Sarah Silverman is that she is so smart. What she needs to remember is that most people are not so smart. When you try to lampoon bigotry by parodying it, some people don't get the real joke - they get the one you were making fun of instead. A lot of people don't recognize satire when they see it.
She won't be the first to suffer from this. Carroll O'Connor sent up the bigot in his classic portrayal of Archie Bunker, only to find that some viewers were tuning in because they synpathised with the character and shared his world view. Others protested because they didn't see any humor in Bunker's racist language. Dave Chapelle suffered a worse fate when it became difficult even for him to distinguish between his protrayal of racism and raciism itself. He's still working that out.

Finding humor in racism or it's cousin, political correctness, is like rollerblading through a minefield. Any direction you go could lead to disaster. But, illogical as it sounds, it is important work. You see, humor is the only way you can get rid of things like bigotry. Sure, Congress and State Legislatures can make lots of laws against discrimmination, but they can't take away the underlying motives for it. No law ever written has been able to erase bigotry or hatred from a human heart, but making fun of those things can do it. Nobody wants to be told that the picture in the mirror is the face of a bigot. But, make us laugh at our own irrational fears and we can confront them. Comedians help us to face the ugly truth in ourselves. Comedy is killing racial bigotry.
Comedy is the best weapon we have to battle political correctness too. Why should we? I'm glad you asked. Political correctness is the illness that replaced bigotry. It is an attempt to find a "nice" way to call someone a "nigger." Political Correctness is a substitute (and a piss-poor one at that) for treating other people with kindness, compassion, and dignity. PC tells us to run away from the things we fear. It tells us "they won't hurt you if you don't make them mad."
Instead of hiding our differences, we should be celebrating them. Rather than trying to find inoffensive labels for each other, we should be learning each others' names. The thing that separates people is not our differences, it is our fear of those differences. We can deal with that fear by keeping our distance - by segregating ourselves - or, we can deal with it by trying to be inoffensive (the "nice-doggy-don't-bite-me" approach), or we can put that fear behind us by confronting it. Like the child who turns on the light in his dark room, we can discover that there was never anything there to be afraid of anyway.
So, let Sarah shine a little light on us and make us laugh at our irrational fears as well as our illogical ways of living with them.

There is no such thing as reality TV

Probably half of all television shows in America are set in New York City. That percentage is a lot higher for shows about cops or firefighters. Almost any American TV viewer can tell you that the Avenues run North and South, and the streets East and West. They know that the Upper East Side is the neighborhood for rich folks, that the Flatiron Building is triangular, or that the "Greenwich" in Greenwich Village is pronounced the English way.
What you can't get from the silver screen, or the little one in your living room, is the smell. New York City smells bad. Imagine the smell of a drunk guy passed out in a puddle of vomit, wearing the only clothes he owns soaked in his own piss, next to a trash barrel full of dog shit. Now, imagine two of those on evey block. Then, build in the aroma of one hundred thousand dumpsters and two million trash cans that get emptied weekly but NEVER washed. Consider that the process of emptying these receptacles results in ten percent of the contents being dropped on the pavement. The faster you walk past these offensive things, the faster you approach the places where the hobos pissed while they were awake.
What you notice after a while is how easily you get used to the smell even though you never stop noticing how foul it is.
It's not all glamor here in the Big Apple. TV and movies have a way of sanitizing and polishing this city so well that you don't realize how the "upscale" nightclubs are seedy and redolent of stale beer and vomit. You have to be here to get that part.

But then, just when you thought you would never understand why a million and a half humans would live on the 22 square miles of Manhattan, when you thought they were all insane or stupid, something catches your eye and it all makes sense.
You see the world-famous FDNY Rescue 1 blow past you with its siren and air horn blasting. Or, you go out on a Sunday in September and see all the beautiful women shopping in SoHo. Or, you eat a meal that makes you happy to be alive. Then, it starts to make sense that some people just can't have enough of this place. I'm not one of those people, but I love New York. I think I will love it more in smaller doses.

Way to F*@k up, Kanye West!

Way to go, you brainless a$$hole! While people all over this country are digging a little deeper to help Katrina's victims, you take the opportunity to piss them off by turning a heartfelt and emotional benefit concert into a forum for your paranoid tirade.
Let me tell you this; if anybody in the whole wide goddam USA is out to destroy black people, it is YOU, Kanye West! If anybody benefits at the expense of America's poor, it is the likes of you - the know-nothing, violence-promoting, woman-bashing, drug-glorifying rap "artists".
Do you want to help for real? Why don't you sell a couple of your Escalades and half a ton of your "bling-bling". Give the money to aid the relief, and for GOD'S SAKE shut up!!!

America's Soul?

In case you have been searching for someone to tell you what is wrong with America, you're reading the wrong article. But you can find yet another of those America-bashers at:
http://www.amin.org/eng/uncat/2005/aug/aug28-0.html

Being a Republican has gained me automatic inclusion onto some mailing list(s) that barrage me with emails intended to arouse my righteous indignation. These screeds run the full spectrum of right-wing propaganda starting at abortion and winding their way to the war in Iraq. I have to say that I agree with an awful lot of the things they are saying. This makes me wonder why these missives are addressed to my mailbox. They are "preaching to the choir" in a lot of cases. In others though, they are just blowing a lot of bad air, and I'm embarrassed to have people think that I am associated with them or that they speak for me. The other side undoubtedly has its own mailing lists, and I'm sure Jason Miller writes a fair percentage of the content on them. Somewhere someone is reading his article and exclaiming, "right on!" Somebody else is shaking his head and muttering, "what a load of crap." Notwithstanding my own political leanings, this piece goes in my "load of crap" file - not because it is full of self-hatred, nor because it maligns the country I love. It finds its way onto the dung heap because (somebody give Mr. Miller a chair and a glass of water) it is crappy writing.
Miller describes himself as an "activist" writer but he's really just a "bad" writer. Perhaps his lack of commercial success is the reason he became an "activist" writer to begin with. What makes Jason Miller's writing bad is that he has forgotten the most important thing about writing - the reader. A writer's job is to communicate a thought to his readers. Sometimes a writer makes it too difficult for the reader, either out of arrogance, laziness, or simple incompetence. In this instance, regardless of the reason, Miller has drowned his message in a sea of words and camouflaged it in a context more suited to obscure the idea than to make it clear.
When writing an opinion, a writer does no service to his reader by disguising it as a work of fiction. Even if every assertion in the story were true, it is still presented as fiction - a morality play. Though many great works of fiction have been written around a theme or "moral of the story" they begin and end as good stories. Their writers are able to convey a message of great social import while telling a story, but only because the story is well-told.
Alas, Jason Miller is not Aesop. His smugly delivered bill of charges against America is unsupported by any evidence, which is probably the reason why he arranges for America to "confess" its guilt. But let's forget about the convenient way he disposes with debate, and let's forget too about the way he takes license with the truth or forgets to address the questions that his rhetoric inevitably raises. Instead let's just consider the raw effort required of the reader and ask "what is the point?" If the writer's intent is to sway the undecided, or to convert the opposition, he fails by making it just too hard for anyone to stay interested. The "story" lacks plot, character, conflict, setting, pace or resolution. It's not a story at all. Therefore, the device of hiding the message inside a story comes through as a gimmick. Gimmicks are a poor alternative to good writing.
Even if one could plod through the dull and unoriginal tale Miller is telling, only those already aligned with him would be able to endure it without being offended. There is no more effective way to distract a reader than to offend him. Distracting the reader is worse than bad writing, it is a wasted opportunity. Once you have captured the reader's attention - even for a moment - it's a sinful waste to let him go and a literary felony to drive him away.
Mr. Miller wants to think that he has educated me, and he might have done so if he had been a better writer. Instead, he has insulted me and heaped blame on me for things done in other times and places. He scolds me for not having evolved from the slave-owning, Indian-killing, ancestors I never had. Then, he dictates to me cures for my ills that are equivalent to pulling the stitches out of one wound to suture another. As if taking the defense budget and spending it to educate black children were as simple as that. At least we might have some better-educated youngsters to mourn when a terrorist blows up their new school with them in it.
It's no wonder that this fairy tale has found publication in places like Arabic and Marxist web sites. An anti-American message - no matter how badly written - will find a forum there. But, if you let Jason Miller's diatribe bother you, he will have succeeded at one, if not the other, of his pursuits. Though a writer communicates thoughts and ideas, an activist merely screams for attention. A writer entertains, enthralls, and persuades with words. An activist uses them to distract you. To a writer, words are currency that is hard-earned and spent wisely. To an activist, words are mere sounds used to drown out the opposing viewpoint. Words, to the activist, are no more or less than the blowing of a horn or the screaming of a child. So, my advice to you is; Don't let the rants of the rabble-rouser distract or disturb you.

I Guess He Was Right

Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983) wrote eleven books despite his lack of a formal education. Though he held many jobs in many places, he spent the better part of his years working as a longshoreman in San Francisco. The qintessential working-class American, Hoffer defied the ordinaryness of his circumstances to educate himself - and a great number of people who have read his work.

As a youngster, I saw a documentary about Eric Hoffer and resolved to someday read his works, though I was not so sure what they were. I have never been a student of philosophy, and so I forgot about my promise to read Hoffer until recently.

His first book, "The True Believer" is a treatise on the need for individuals to join in a common cause as a means of achieving fulfillment. Though the Nazis and Communists of the twentieth century were at the focal plane of Hoffer's study, the book is as relevant today as ever. If you want to understand what motivates young Muslims to join Al Qaeda, or why white American boys form militias, this book is supposed to be the one to enlighten you. I say "supposed to" because I haven't yet read it.

I would like to be reading "The True Believer" right now, but I can't get my hands onto a copy as fast as I had hoped. Stupid me, I went to the local public library for it. That was pointless. The Monroe County New York Library System has 20 member libraries with 34 branches in all. In all thirty-four collections, there is one copy of this book. Let me repeat that, there is a single volume of this work to be split among 34 library branches serving a million people. One. Just one.

The MCLS has taken measures to be sure I will have something to read while I'm waiting my turn to check out the book I want to read. They have secured eleven copies of Pamela Anderson's first novel, "Star". Lucky me, ten of those copies are not checked out. The next town over actually has two copies.

Is it stupid or ironic that my county's libraries have an eleven to one ratio of Pamela Anderson to Eric Hoffer? Before you answer, take a look at a few quotes by Hoffer himself.

"When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant." -Eric Hoffer

"A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities." -Eric Hoffer

"Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles." -Eric Hoffer

"There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives." -Eric Hoffer

It turns out the guy really knew what he was talking about, doesn't it?

To be fair, I have to leave a quote by Ms. Anderson. Here goes;

"I don't really think about anything too much. I live in the present. I move on. I don't think about what happened yesterday. If I think too much, it kind of freaks me out.." -Pamela Anderson

Jon Swift: Who Needs Books?

They think we're all stupid, y'know?

If you watch television, read newapapers, surf the net ... if you are ever conscious, they're blasting you with ads. In today's mail was the renewal notice for my car registration. In the same envelope was an ad for Ford Automobiles, one for MasterCard, and another for Geico Insurance. You can not escape advertisements. Soon, you're going to see ads for homeowners' insurance and smoke detectors on the sides of fire trucks.
These ubiquitous intrusions into our enjoyment of life would be so much more tolerable if we could only ignore them. But that's the problem! When you don't notice an ad, it is still burrowing its way ito your brain. The more we get used to them, the more effective they are.
If you are wondering how a message can be effective when it isn't noticed, you're thinking just the way they want you to think. They want us all to think that a promotion for Coca-Cola or Nike shoes is as part of nature as a Norway Maple tree. You're not supposed to pause and think about these things - you just absorb them and move on, assuming that every aspect of them is the absolute truth.
If they really thought you were listening, would they try to sell you a pill that puts you to sleep for at least seven hours but gives you diarrhea? You almost have to wonder whether they are selling pharmaceuticals or bedsheets.
If you do pay attention to these things, you have every reason to feel insulted. Go ahead, try it. The next time an actor on TV says, "No other pain reliever has been proven to prevent more heart attacks than Banger Aspirin" ask yourself if any pain reliever has ever been proven to have prevented as much as one single heart attack. Technically, the claim is true, but it is no more true than if I were to tell you that no human being has eaten more cheeseburgers on Jupiter than I have.
Instead of ignoring the hemorrhoid ointment commercial, ask yourself why someone would own a notepad with the following checklist preprinted on it; Swelling, Itching, Burning, Irritation. Do you have to special order these pads, or can you buy them at Staples?
You expect - maybe even enjoy - the scantily-clad women selling beer. Since most people make a large percentage of their purchases based on emotions and desires, it is expected that advertising would be targeted right at those irrational parts in us that make us buy cars that go faster than we can ever drive them. It's practically an obligation for an advertiser to play on our lusts and fears, so you can understand why they do it. It's alright for people to want things they don't need. Nobody really needs a Hummer, do they? It's just as alright for the people who sell them to make those things more appealing to us - even if they use the most unattainable women in the shortest skirts to do that.
So, it's not the manipulation of emotions that bothers me. It is the insult to my intelligence that burns my butt. I don't mind someone telling me that their brand of beer will make me more appealing to women. Hell! I drink the beer to make some of those women appealing to me! But I object to being sold with facts that are meaningless, misleading, or perversions of the truth. From now on, I am going to do what they never wanted me to do - I am going to listen to what they say and think about it. I'm going to deny my business to people who think I'm too stupid to see through their crap. I'm not going to buy gasoline from an oil company who says that it is their responsibility to make America more self-reliant ... at least not as long as that oil company's initials stand for British Petroleum.

Cindy Sheehan Go Home

On Tuesday I listened to my baby girl on the radio. I still think of her as a baby, but she turned 24 the next day. I still remember the day she was born, but I privately worry that she might die. Pamela - Pammy to me - has done a tour of duty in Iraq.
While my firstborn was telling the radio talk show audience about standing tower guard at a former prison turned into Army base in Sadr City, Cindy Sheehan was sitting in Crawford, Texas demanding that the President of the United States meet with her. She wants to tell him to bring all the American armed forces home. She wants to tell him to keep my little girl here safe within our shores so that she won't have to go back to the place where Ms. Sheehan's son gave his life.
Should I cheer Cindy Sheehan? You might think so. You could reason that Cindy Sheehan is the voice of an entire generation of parents whose children go into harm's way. One could say that Cindy Sheehan, having paid the piper, has earned the right to call the tune.
Well, Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me. Her son Casey, like my own child, volunteered to serve this nation and the world as a soldier. He gave his life in the noble cause of defending the rest of us from terrorists. He is a hero, and she deserves to be revered as the mother of a hero. But that's where it ends.
Unlike Ms. Sheehan, I have not lost a child. Unlike me, she has no child still at risk to die in the war. There is nothing she can do to save the life of her lost son, and stopping this mission before it is finished would render her family's sacrifice worthless. When the world is rife with murderers, the home of the brave and land of the free must stand against them. There is too much danger on this earth to keep the defenders of freedom in the barracks shining their shoes.
Yesterday, I heard an anti-war protester say "bring them home and stop the killing". Like Ms. Sheehan, he is suffering from the utterly stupid notion that the killing would stop if our army came home. Somebody tell them both how idiotic they sound. Bringing our soldiers back home will not stop anybody from killing - it will only bring the killing back here to our soil. If we turn our backs on Iraq now, it will be controlled again by those who would murder us and all of our children.
Casey Sheehan and Pammy volunteered to take on the burden of fighting a war. The infants and children who died on 9/11/2001 were not old enough to make the choice to die.
No, I don't want my child to die. When she returns to Iraq, I'll worry for her safety every minute that she is gone. But, because I don't want to worry for the lives of all my children when they are at school or on the playground or at home, I want somebody to protect them. Because my firstborn child grew up; because my baby made an adult decision to serve, she must go and do her duty.