If there were some way to record the litany of my dreams and turn them into written word, they would make both terrifying and exciting books.
Some nights, I have these amazing travel dreams that leave me faintly believing that I have enjoyed the adventures that I have only been able to dream of in my life. I confess that I have always harbored a jealousy for people who travel. They trot the globe, yet there are some who don't seem to be able to truly enjoy the experiences they have been given. It's as if they are so jaded by their international experiences that nothing is able to reach them anymore. They feel they have 'seen it all'.
In my dreams, I am able to go to the places that are remote and spend time getting to know and understand the customs, culture and practices of the regular people who are off the beaten path of tourism. The people who live quiet lives of day to day struggle are the most interesting anyway because they don't depend upon tourism to fill their pockets. While I want to know about the tourist type visit, I don't want to confine myself by believing that a bus trip through Amsterdam gives me any understanding whatsoever of what it means to be a resident.
Also, I have no desire to make the youthful error of believing that shouting English imparts understanding. I'd like to hire local people to take me places and pay them to translate for me and help me learn the words of their language. I want to shop where they shop and eat what they eat, within reason, and work my way around the globe from place to place meeting the brothers and sisters whom I forgot I know.
Then, there are other dreams. They are not pleasant. They are the fears of life combined with the horrors of our reality in a world where power and money mean more than peace and goodwill.
I run from danger or battle it with superior skills. I hide in corners protecting the helpless with my own body or I stand boldly before the barrels of their guns. My dreams show the horrors I have never experienced in a way that leaves me breathless and frightened. Sometimes, I have awakened in tears screaming for help that will never come.
The intensity of these dreams is such that they don't fade easily and like the knife wound in the flesh, they can leave a scar, albeit emotionally.
I have dreamed of doing things that I hope I will never even attempt. I have awakened from dreams in a cold sweat gasping for air. On ocassion, I have had dreams that I can't fully remember, but which leave me with unease and fear so great that only prayer and priesthood blessings can abolish the pain.
What I haven't yet figured out is where the rich fodder for all of the dreams, for good or ill, comes from in my though processes. Or if thinking is even part of the process.
Sometimes, things I have read in the newspaper or seen online or on TV feature prominently in my dreams unbidden.
Rare are the times when I dream and DON'T remember them. Generally, I have more than one dream a night and they are usually different in context, events and feeling.
Is this nocturnal ADD-ADHD?
There may not be an answer to that question.
All that I am sure of is that every night will be another showing on the movie screen in my head. The only problem is that I buy a ticket but never get to see the preview of any coming attractions to know what to watch and what I might be able to avoid.
Sweet dreams...
February 19, 2009
February 16, 2009
Money, money, money, money - MONEY!
Loot. Cash. Bucks. Greenbacks. Gelt. Long green. Moolah. Dough. C-note. Dollar. Smackers. Clams. Dead presidents. Benjamins. Fin. Sawbuck.
Trillion.
Does any of this make sense to you?
My checkbook maintains a small balance after shopping days. Generally enough for the milk, bread and eggs we need in the 'off week' from the regular trip. We only get groceries twice a month.
Our needs are met and most of our wants.
But there are some who have more than a passing familiarity with the terms above, however, the meaning and sense of the words is in a different dictionary than in mine.
Back when I was a wee small gnat of a child, my parents taught me that if you didn't have the money to buy something, you did without it. Period.
Naturally, buying a car or house required the faith and trust of a loan from a reputable bank who took into consideration that you were not eligible to finance a Bugatti on a bologna budget. Nor would they float you a loan on your pipe dream of the mansion on a hill when you were still living in your mother's basement apartment for free.
It seems the rules are different now.
If you belong to the 'right crowd', you can get a house with no visible means of support because you are 'entitled' to have one. Nevermind that the bank will be compelled to give loans to the risky and unable. When they fold up and take all the deposits with it or get bought out, you can refinance and keep the house, right?
Apparently for some, that's the way the game is played.
I remember early in my married life, we were struggling college students and newlyweds trying to put something besides Beanie Weenies on the table. And sometimes, the bills were paid later than the creditors wanted - but the point is they DID get paid.
The funny thing is, when we were just a couple of DAYS past our due date, the kind people who expected and deserved payment for goods and services we had received began to call to check on our health and welfare. And they kept calling until the check was in their hands. They didn't care if we were eating oatmeal sandwiches three meals a day and sleeping under the Route 6 overpass. They wanted their money. And sometimes, they weren't nice about asking for the money to be sent in.
Now, we have the same people who not only guarded the henhouse but snarfed down the original flock of chickens asking us to trust them with our money, uh, chickens, once again.
I don't mind the head cheeses making money. They deserve an omlete or two for the work they do. But when they allow stupid decisions and political manipulations for cash to bring the world to its knees, they don't deserve even a sack of dry and crusty eggshells.
Now we are discovering that the appointees to the president's cabinet don't know how to pay their taxes, balance their checkbooks or buy their own postage and airline tickets.
I am sick of seeing their 'fact finding missions' to tropical climates. What facts are they trying to find? How long the paper umbrella will last in their coconut cups?
We don't need bailouts. We need pullouts. We need the decent people who have elected representatives who no longer serve our needs to pull them out of office. Forever. They shouldn't be eligible for the position of local dog catcher. Even wild dogs deserve better.
According to the latest numbers, the bailout will bring 8 dollars a month into your home when it finally trickles down to us... you remember... WE the people. Apparently, we the people can move mountains with 8 bucks.
Have fun spending your extra loot.
We may save ours. In the form of ammo. I have the feeling we might need it...
Trillion.
Does any of this make sense to you?
My checkbook maintains a small balance after shopping days. Generally enough for the milk, bread and eggs we need in the 'off week' from the regular trip. We only get groceries twice a month.
Our needs are met and most of our wants.
But there are some who have more than a passing familiarity with the terms above, however, the meaning and sense of the words is in a different dictionary than in mine.
Back when I was a wee small gnat of a child, my parents taught me that if you didn't have the money to buy something, you did without it. Period.
Naturally, buying a car or house required the faith and trust of a loan from a reputable bank who took into consideration that you were not eligible to finance a Bugatti on a bologna budget. Nor would they float you a loan on your pipe dream of the mansion on a hill when you were still living in your mother's basement apartment for free.
It seems the rules are different now.
If you belong to the 'right crowd', you can get a house with no visible means of support because you are 'entitled' to have one. Nevermind that the bank will be compelled to give loans to the risky and unable. When they fold up and take all the deposits with it or get bought out, you can refinance and keep the house, right?
Apparently for some, that's the way the game is played.
I remember early in my married life, we were struggling college students and newlyweds trying to put something besides Beanie Weenies on the table. And sometimes, the bills were paid later than the creditors wanted - but the point is they DID get paid.
The funny thing is, when we were just a couple of DAYS past our due date, the kind people who expected and deserved payment for goods and services we had received began to call to check on our health and welfare. And they kept calling until the check was in their hands. They didn't care if we were eating oatmeal sandwiches three meals a day and sleeping under the Route 6 overpass. They wanted their money. And sometimes, they weren't nice about asking for the money to be sent in.
Now, we have the same people who not only guarded the henhouse but snarfed down the original flock of chickens asking us to trust them with our money, uh, chickens, once again.
I don't mind the head cheeses making money. They deserve an omlete or two for the work they do. But when they allow stupid decisions and political manipulations for cash to bring the world to its knees, they don't deserve even a sack of dry and crusty eggshells.
Now we are discovering that the appointees to the president's cabinet don't know how to pay their taxes, balance their checkbooks or buy their own postage and airline tickets.
I am sick of seeing their 'fact finding missions' to tropical climates. What facts are they trying to find? How long the paper umbrella will last in their coconut cups?
We don't need bailouts. We need pullouts. We need the decent people who have elected representatives who no longer serve our needs to pull them out of office. Forever. They shouldn't be eligible for the position of local dog catcher. Even wild dogs deserve better.
According to the latest numbers, the bailout will bring 8 dollars a month into your home when it finally trickles down to us... you remember... WE the people. Apparently, we the people can move mountains with 8 bucks.
Have fun spending your extra loot.
We may save ours. In the form of ammo. I have the feeling we might need it...
February 9, 2009
A Price for Everything
I am no paragon of virtue.
There are too many people who can blackmail me about my life for me to run about as if I am a flawless saint with not a trace of scandal in my past.
Each of those indescretions, be they great or small, has exacted a price. Sometimes a price that was most painful to pay and which took a great deal of suffering to complete.
Patient people who love me have been compelled by the force of my actions to wade through the quicksand of the reality I have created in order to see me through to the salvation waiting on the solid ground of the other side.
It hasn't been easy for them or me.
Michael Phelps is the lastest casualty in the war between what we know to be right and the little tempter within who makes everything seem like it's no big deal.
The tempter's voice whispers that 'you are special and the rules don't apply the same for you'. It whispers of consequence eluded and lame apologies accepted with no further ado. Carefully, the tempter makes it seem so slick and so well packaged that something which would have made you shrink in horror mere months earlier now appears to be 'no big deal' - except that it is.
Which the tempter knew full well all along. Now, he laughs.
Many people who are picking up the shards of glass from their own houses, are tossing stones like there is no tomorrow. Get right with yourselves on this one people, just because his particular 'flavor' of sin wasn't your 'flavor' doesn't make yours appear more lily white. Nor does it make the hue of black on his sin darker because you didn't do it, too.
We mere mortals make stupid mistakes, create dumb choices with painful consequences and hurt people around us in an ever-increasing quest for self-gratification. What we don't want within this process is accountability.
The very word accountability reminds me of some prissy, glasses wearing, starched shirt, bean counting dweeb who is a total square.
But that is exactly what we freewheeling sinners need - the steadying presence of one who doesn't call it a day until all the checks and balances have toted up. Someone who says, "You can't have this 'positive' without creating a 'negative' somewhere."
Michael Phelps is starting the accountability phase. Endorsements from Kellogg's are gone. Children do NOT need bong smoking, pot huffing poster boys. And it doesn't make me, a fellow sinner, a hypocrit for saying so.
He DESERVES the three-months long suspension from the swimming authorities who govern his sport.
I can't say whether he deserves more or less. I have been extended unexpected mercy too many times when what I truly deserved was the justice I had earned. While not yet perfect and still learning about what 'accountable' means, I hope I am learning.
What remains to be seen is whether Mr. Phelps will learn from this mistake. There are children who idolize him. Which begs the question - why do we idolize mortals who are guaranteed to let us down horribly, time after time? Do we idolize them because we secretly believe they are somehow better than us or stronger or more perfect?
We have the same price in our daily lives in the friends we choose, the actions we perform and the stupidity that we level onto the world.
The truth is that somewhere, sometime the check has to be paid. The dancing and singing of the piper can't last forever.
Like the people of Hamlin so long ago who wanted a reduction of problems and difficulties with no accountability, eventually the price they paid was most dear indeed.
What we should all do is when the first bright notes of the piper sound in our ears is to decide then and there that we will not be caught by the siren song of the slick and well packaged lures he dangles before us.
Some decisions need to be made only one time.
I think that this one qualifies.
If only we could all learn that lesson for our own 'flavor' of sin. We might be less bankrupt emotionally and more rich spiritually.
There are too many people who can blackmail me about my life for me to run about as if I am a flawless saint with not a trace of scandal in my past.
Each of those indescretions, be they great or small, has exacted a price. Sometimes a price that was most painful to pay and which took a great deal of suffering to complete.
Patient people who love me have been compelled by the force of my actions to wade through the quicksand of the reality I have created in order to see me through to the salvation waiting on the solid ground of the other side.
It hasn't been easy for them or me.
Michael Phelps is the lastest casualty in the war between what we know to be right and the little tempter within who makes everything seem like it's no big deal.
The tempter's voice whispers that 'you are special and the rules don't apply the same for you'. It whispers of consequence eluded and lame apologies accepted with no further ado. Carefully, the tempter makes it seem so slick and so well packaged that something which would have made you shrink in horror mere months earlier now appears to be 'no big deal' - except that it is.
Which the tempter knew full well all along. Now, he laughs.
Many people who are picking up the shards of glass from their own houses, are tossing stones like there is no tomorrow. Get right with yourselves on this one people, just because his particular 'flavor' of sin wasn't your 'flavor' doesn't make yours appear more lily white. Nor does it make the hue of black on his sin darker because you didn't do it, too.
We mere mortals make stupid mistakes, create dumb choices with painful consequences and hurt people around us in an ever-increasing quest for self-gratification. What we don't want within this process is accountability.
The very word accountability reminds me of some prissy, glasses wearing, starched shirt, bean counting dweeb who is a total square.
But that is exactly what we freewheeling sinners need - the steadying presence of one who doesn't call it a day until all the checks and balances have toted up. Someone who says, "You can't have this 'positive' without creating a 'negative' somewhere."
Michael Phelps is starting the accountability phase. Endorsements from Kellogg's are gone. Children do NOT need bong smoking, pot huffing poster boys. And it doesn't make me, a fellow sinner, a hypocrit for saying so.
He DESERVES the three-months long suspension from the swimming authorities who govern his sport.
I can't say whether he deserves more or less. I have been extended unexpected mercy too many times when what I truly deserved was the justice I had earned. While not yet perfect and still learning about what 'accountable' means, I hope I am learning.
What remains to be seen is whether Mr. Phelps will learn from this mistake. There are children who idolize him. Which begs the question - why do we idolize mortals who are guaranteed to let us down horribly, time after time? Do we idolize them because we secretly believe they are somehow better than us or stronger or more perfect?
We have the same price in our daily lives in the friends we choose, the actions we perform and the stupidity that we level onto the world.
The truth is that somewhere, sometime the check has to be paid. The dancing and singing of the piper can't last forever.
Like the people of Hamlin so long ago who wanted a reduction of problems and difficulties with no accountability, eventually the price they paid was most dear indeed.
What we should all do is when the first bright notes of the piper sound in our ears is to decide then and there that we will not be caught by the siren song of the slick and well packaged lures he dangles before us.
Some decisions need to be made only one time.
I think that this one qualifies.
If only we could all learn that lesson for our own 'flavor' of sin. We might be less bankrupt emotionally and more rich spiritually.
February 8, 2009
All Natural or Not
I have noticed that labels scarcely tell eaters the truth.
Instead of saying 'this muffin is nothing but processed flour, lard and a ton of white sugar guaranteed to jack up your blood sugar level to "coma" within 10 minutes', the label casually disguises the truth in vague terms which would confuse most educated people.
The muffin is a single muffin in a little decorated plastic bag.
One would think that one muffin is for one person.
But...if you look at the sinister label, the minute giblety writing on the tiny nutrition facts section tells an entirely different story.
The label says the muffin in said package is one which serves 2.5 people.
Do what???
Does that mean I can cut it up into 2.5 servings and share? NOT WITH MY MUFFIN, DUDE! Get your mitts off and buy your own! Muffin money is rare and not to be used to buy muffins for trifling people who didn't plan ahead with their own allowances and found money.
I am left to ponder why ONE muffin should serve more than one person at all.
In the first place, who truly wants half a muffin with a thumbprint on the top and a ragged crumbly edge which is guaranteed to leave that freshly ironed shirt looking like you slept on a bed of cornflakes while wearing it the night before.
And in the second place, anyone who would be willing to take said raggedly torn muffin must know you well enough to know that you should have bought carrot sticks instead.
Then, we are left with the horrible thought of just who the half a person is who gets the remaining particle of muffin.
Did they get run over by a train while napping on the tracks and become bisected in some odd sci-fi moment that allows them to live with only half a body? Half a head...less teeth to floss... half a chest, if they are female there will be a lot of questions when it's time to buy a new bra... one shoe...thrift stores can help there, they always seem to have an ample supply of odd shoes.
In any case, do we really want to watch someone with half a mouth chew up their muffin?
I digress.
Back to the naturalness of the muffin.
If you have to tell me in chemical terms what I am eating, I am much more inclined to believe my food to be a by-product of Dr. Frankenstein's lunch experimentation. Just what was Igor doing with that jar of pickles and that power strip?
Why can't food just say the truth: "I am horrible for your diet, I will load 10 pounds upon your already burdened frame and I taste better than manna in the wilderness to a starving man."
Or better yet, "Just like the incredible, fluffy, homemade 3-layer cakes that Sister Brown made at church socials, I have NO calories and NO after effects!" (yeah, I wish...*sigh* those days are gone...).
Instead, our food has gone 'Hollywood' and now uses flashy and revealing packaging to disguise the truth. Even Twinkies have been compelled to 'go light'. How sad.
Back years ago, there was this naturalist dude on TV advertising a cereal product called "Grape Nuts" which had nothing to do with grapes and everything to do with gross. It was the cereal old people ate. It was touted as being an all natural product that was 'healthy' and apparently reminded their spokesman, Euell Gibbons, of eating the seeds and bark from some tree in the mountains.
I have to say the ads themselves were fodder for comic acts and snarky remarks among the younger set to whom digestive complaints were not yet reality. I mean who wanted all natural when it tasted so bad?
No amount of sugar made Grape Nuts palatable. No amount of added fruit made the cardboard taste disappear. For better or worse, the all natural claims of Grape Nuts simple made young people gag and old people regular.
I realize truth is at a premium now, moreso than at any other time in our history. Everything has an angle, people can "spin it" to mean whatever they should have said when they weren't
shooting their mouth off saying something entirely different.
But adding the words "all natural" to something that is disgusting only fools the nuts...and we ain't talking Grape Nuts here... people who believe that everything must be tagged as a natural product in order to sell have forgotten the best truth of all.
We are, ourselves, no longer 'all natural'. We enhance our beauty and appeal with scents and lotions, potions and pills guaranteed by some faceless person to make us something that we aren't.
Oh. I get it now.
Our food has just started to match us. "All Natural".
Run now...while there is still time.
Instead of saying 'this muffin is nothing but processed flour, lard and a ton of white sugar guaranteed to jack up your blood sugar level to "coma" within 10 minutes', the label casually disguises the truth in vague terms which would confuse most educated people.
The muffin is a single muffin in a little decorated plastic bag.
One would think that one muffin is for one person.
But...if you look at the sinister label, the minute giblety writing on the tiny nutrition facts section tells an entirely different story.
The label says the muffin in said package is one which serves 2.5 people.
Do what???
Does that mean I can cut it up into 2.5 servings and share? NOT WITH MY MUFFIN, DUDE! Get your mitts off and buy your own! Muffin money is rare and not to be used to buy muffins for trifling people who didn't plan ahead with their own allowances and found money.
I am left to ponder why ONE muffin should serve more than one person at all.
In the first place, who truly wants half a muffin with a thumbprint on the top and a ragged crumbly edge which is guaranteed to leave that freshly ironed shirt looking like you slept on a bed of cornflakes while wearing it the night before.
And in the second place, anyone who would be willing to take said raggedly torn muffin must know you well enough to know that you should have bought carrot sticks instead.
Then, we are left with the horrible thought of just who the half a person is who gets the remaining particle of muffin.
Did they get run over by a train while napping on the tracks and become bisected in some odd sci-fi moment that allows them to live with only half a body? Half a head...less teeth to floss... half a chest, if they are female there will be a lot of questions when it's time to buy a new bra... one shoe...thrift stores can help there, they always seem to have an ample supply of odd shoes.
In any case, do we really want to watch someone with half a mouth chew up their muffin?
I digress.
Back to the naturalness of the muffin.
If you have to tell me in chemical terms what I am eating, I am much more inclined to believe my food to be a by-product of Dr. Frankenstein's lunch experimentation. Just what was Igor doing with that jar of pickles and that power strip?
Why can't food just say the truth: "I am horrible for your diet, I will load 10 pounds upon your already burdened frame and I taste better than manna in the wilderness to a starving man."
Or better yet, "Just like the incredible, fluffy, homemade 3-layer cakes that Sister Brown made at church socials, I have NO calories and NO after effects!" (yeah, I wish...*sigh* those days are gone...).
Instead, our food has gone 'Hollywood' and now uses flashy and revealing packaging to disguise the truth. Even Twinkies have been compelled to 'go light'. How sad.
Back years ago, there was this naturalist dude on TV advertising a cereal product called "Grape Nuts" which had nothing to do with grapes and everything to do with gross. It was the cereal old people ate. It was touted as being an all natural product that was 'healthy' and apparently reminded their spokesman, Euell Gibbons, of eating the seeds and bark from some tree in the mountains.
I have to say the ads themselves were fodder for comic acts and snarky remarks among the younger set to whom digestive complaints were not yet reality. I mean who wanted all natural when it tasted so bad?
No amount of sugar made Grape Nuts palatable. No amount of added fruit made the cardboard taste disappear. For better or worse, the all natural claims of Grape Nuts simple made young people gag and old people regular.
I realize truth is at a premium now, moreso than at any other time in our history. Everything has an angle, people can "spin it" to mean whatever they should have said when they weren't
shooting their mouth off saying something entirely different.
But adding the words "all natural" to something that is disgusting only fools the nuts...and we ain't talking Grape Nuts here... people who believe that everything must be tagged as a natural product in order to sell have forgotten the best truth of all.
We are, ourselves, no longer 'all natural'. We enhance our beauty and appeal with scents and lotions, potions and pills guaranteed by some faceless person to make us something that we aren't.
Oh. I get it now.
Our food has just started to match us. "All Natural".
Run now...while there is still time.
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