When there's blood in the water...

My local newspaper ran an article describing a child suffering the supposed ineptitude of the entire industrial-medical complex.  Even the institutions are included in the list of defendants.  Being good Catholics, they abstained from dragging the Creator into it deferring to His mysterious ways.  [cough]

Of course the loss of a child is a hole that nothing can fill but only be compromised with.   The vacancy sign will always flash in the night.  What remains of the child will have to be attended to and it will be expensive.  Anyone who has ever uttered the phrase, life is cheap, has never seen a hospital bill for life support services.

The plaintiff’s council believes there is a vein of malpractice gold to be mined and are merely waiting on the assay.  Their strategy is to indict everyone.  To sling blame in all directions and see what sticks.  Justice they will howl though there is none to be found, only the amount of remuneration to be haggled over and their 40% off the top.


This is but another reminder of the fragility of being born a human into a world beset with dangers large and small at every turn of every day.  Speaking for myself, if and when a doctor/hospital/et al fails at first to perceive and treat my child correctly, I will find another doctor/hospital/et al before sunset.  I love my children too much to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting different outcomes.

In the meantime, the sharks will always circle waiting for one of us to make a mistake.

On your mark, get set...

Okay, we as in members of humankind, and more specifically, a bunch of Europeans just landed a man-made object of space travel on a frigging comet this week! If you’re a member of the same species and did not get a bit tingly at the news then stop right here and read no further. But, if you stopped for a second and realized what just happened, then you know we have born witness to science doing what it does best — pushing out on the envelope of ignorance.

“With so many going hungry in the world, I just don’t understand how we can afford to go to space.” This is the constant refrain from the same people who see this milestone as nothing more than (insert favorite deity here) allowing mankind a bit more slack in the umbilicus that is our inseparable link to our maker(s). These acolytes complain at trying to understand the universe. To them, if reference to such things does not exist within the pages of their sacred scribble, then it must not be of relevance nor importance. Things like germ theory, evolution and historical facts are considered suspect. 

Remember Galileo? He’s the guy that described the universe without the Earth at its center and was summarily placed on house arrest for the remainder of his life. Even after it became old news, the Church did not pardon him till 1992. He died in 1642! Talk about holding onto a grudge.

I grew up during the Space Race fomented by the constant beep of Sputnik and our President’s admonition shortly thereafter. Like a latter day Babe Ruth he stood up at the plate and pointed his bat at where the country needed to put the ball. Out yonder, that bright disk in the night sky. That’s where we are going and back by decade’s end. And we did. I wish he could have seen it.

Cooler still, we did it in my own backyard. I was living one hundred miles inland from Cape Canaveral and on the day the first Saturn V rocket lifted off, I could see it climb into the sky from the rooftop of our home. Better still, I could hear it. A deep crackling sound as the ball of light trailing white condensation rose ever faster until disappearing into the ethers. When it broke the sound barrier the windows rattled. It was glorious.

I shinnied down from the roof and joined my parents in front of the large black-n-white Philco with Walter Cronkite reporting the event. He looked shaken. My parents told me that when the Saturn V's Rocketdyne F-1 engines fired up, things in the newsroom started falling off the walls.  

CBS had underestimated the harmonic resonance that the rocket’s five engines created. Visibly shaken, Mr. Cronkite, always the professional, composed himself and carried on though at a slightly higher pitch. Those engines remain the most powerful ever produced by mankind.

With that the Space Race was on and no expense spared. That is the America I miss. The one with the cojones and the chutzpa to get what needs to be done, done. We all benefit from it in measurable ways by the products and technologies born of the time and inclination. We as a country need that again. Make no small plans. Everyone benefits and besides, I want my Space Race back.

and a side of psychometrics too, please...

    My local school district has just dumped north of $106,000 dollars in annual salary for one newly minted expert in psychometrics.   
    Now wait a minute, I know what you’re thinking and that’s a little presumptuous coming from the likes of us. We simply do not know what the going rate is nowadays for good help in the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement.  Maybe we got her on the cheap.
    However, we do know what the going rate is for three newly minted teachers. And, that we could get two doctorate degree seeking teachers with a signing bonus of free parking, weekends off and all the bad coffee they can chug. And, we would know how to measure their performance. 
    The world would know them by the inspired and edified minds they’re able to turn out semester after semester year after year with dwindling support and little hope of advancement unless they join the likes of the new Senior Director of Assessment, Accountability and Evaluation.

How will we know how good the new Senior Director is at her job? How will the new Senior Director elevate the District’s credibility? Most important, how will the teachers and students of the district benefit from her expertise today and tomorrow?  Time will tell.

One thing for sure is the District has just added another layer of deniability in case the current direction of education in our fair county doesn’t markedly improve.  Even if the student's grades don't improve, I am sure that psychometrically they will track on an advancing plane adjusted for shift in the demographic mean.  Right?

Wait a minute, what am I talking about? This isn’t the REAL world where results are what matter most.  This the realm of school boards where our property taxes go to fatten the backsides of only those smart enough to ditch the “I do it for the kids” routine and latch onto the real money in education — administration — where no one ever gets fired, only laterally promoted with a bonus and a parking space upgrade. 

Silly me.

So money!

Everyone who has seen the movie, Swingers, knows that line. They know it as the favorite utterance from Vince Vaughn’s character signifying something unusually good. After the vote tallies of last night the line has obviously made its way into the lexicon of political operatives that I believe the likes of which America has not seen since Tammany Hall or the Teapot Dome Scandal. 

The moneyed interests in pachyderms have conquered Congress, the Supreme Court and as of today, the Senate is in their pockets too. I fear that the next election cycle will stack the deck with another one in the White House.  God forbid.  

Historically whenever all three tips of the trident are sharpened on the same bias, Americans suffer.  We’ve heard that we have no one to blame for this but ourselves. But is that true? If we chafe under the weight of knowing then it shouldn’t be a stretch for us to understand that it just might NOT be all our fault. 

If not, then shouldn't we be handing out pitchforks and torches? Where is the reasoned response? The outrage? The righteous indignation? Where in Hell are the Democrats? We know where the Republicans are. They’ve expanded through gerrymandering, misinformation, fear mongering and Fox News. Wait a minute, that’s just being redundant. Sorry.

The Democrats resemblance to Nero stroking his lyre while the poorer parts of Rome go up in flames is not much of a stretch. THINK: Urban blight solved.  And if all you know about the sack of Rome was that it was done by the Visigoths in AD 410 then you miss the more important aspect as to why. Simple math is the answer. 

By the time Alaric plundered the Eternal City, the population was two thirds enslaved. That’s two out of three people on the street being already screwed and tattooed by the empire. So it's easy to imagine them holding the gates open with, “Come on in. Make yourself at home. The treasury is that way and the bordello this way. Would you be so kind and kill my boss?  Can I get you something to drink?”

Another truth is that the fiction of rugged individualism is a lie. No one raises a barn on his own. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had help and some of it via virtual slavery. 

When a nation’s powerful and elite take liberties with us, it is our duty to the country to reassert our own liberty and call them out. Historically that has been the only way real change has taken place in our system. It has never been a top down game. Only of late, and done to us while we were sleeping. In other words, those are not hemorrhoids we are suffering from. 

When so much of the country’s wealth is concentrated among a handful of corporations, banks and oligarchs, we’ve got a stew simmering. One that smells faintly familiar and one particularly appetizing to Visigoths.

“I don’t believe.”

The statement means different things to different cultures, for sure, but it holds a special place in Christendom.  To utter such a phrase would have lost you your basic right to life in earlier times.  THINK: a barbecue for one.  Some still favor such a notion. 

Nowadays any psychopath armed with a smart-phone, an Instagram account, an AK47 and some twisted scripture can be expected to press their agenda on a world stage in real time.  Beheadings are just the beginning.

So how do we come to terms with the notion of God and those who consistently misread Holy verbiage in order to press their neuroses like a red hot branding iron onto the forehead of everyone else.

For shiite sake, are you kidding me? 

That’s the usual response you get from most thinking people in the West.  In history class, we were taught about the Reformation with a capital R.  There’s a reason for that.  It was a pretty big deal back then.  It set the tone for the modern world we enjoy today.   Without the Reformation there would not have been a Renaissance nor an Age of Enlightenment.  Science would have been left to the trifling of alchemists and hairstylists. 

So why do they hate us?   

That’s the essential question in dire need of a definitive answer.  If I am to hazard a guess, I’m thinking it has something to do with primacy and place.  Mankind is a species of greedy bastards.  It’s in our DNA.  We shouldn’t apologize for it as it is the same stuff that puts us at the top of the food chain.  However, it has to be marshaled and managed.  Think: space exploration. 

For Westerners, codified laws do that for most of us.  It is the thing that civilizes and socializes and contextualizes our very existence.  That said, it’s easy to see how some people get carried away with their beliefs--but day-emn!

It is another cruel irony that the thing that civilizes some of us can also serve as source material of still others to take up arms and commit atrocities on their neighbors in fealty to that belief system. 

God help us, indeed.

What did the clown say when he was asked about the size of his shoes?

Whatever it could be, he’s taken the punchline to that one with him.  His star rose some years ago in the early evening sky, hailing from the land of Ork.  No relation to the Tolkien varietal but rather the survivor of a network sitcom who rallied onward, upward and forever outward like an expanding double helix.  In many ways Robin Williams owed, and paid, homage to every comic that ever cast a line into a crowd and reeled in some laughs.  But Robin went big.  He went Papa Hemingway big for the biggest baddest whoppers out there and he did reel them in. 

He made my stolid Southern Baptist mom and pop laugh out-loud.  No easy task.  He made us all laugh hard, hard enough to cough and spit and gag and cry at how blindingly fast his wit could be.  Only one other comedian has ever been as good or as fast at the same time.  Bob Hope?  Nah.  Bill Cosby?  Close, but no.  Richard Pryor?  Okay, maybe Richard.  Certainly, it was Jonathon Winters as anyone with enough lines on their face will remember, Jonathon Winters was just as nimble and ludicrous and spot on all at the same time.  He, like Robin, was a runaway roller coaster teetering on two wheels and we were happy to ride along with our arms in the air.  Jonathon even did time in a sanitarium as a result.  Like so many of our generation, Robin turned to substance abuse.

His depression was laid bare only recently and probably as a direct result of sobriety.  Some folks are just too fast for the rest of us.  While we are happy to chillax or hold still for a moment, Robin could not.  I believe he sought peace in the only way he could, through self-medication and or inebriation.  Whatever it was that was eating at him has now had its fill.  That gluttonous soul eating fuck, self-loathing has taken another one from us and we are bereft.  David Foster Wallace, Richard Jeni, Tony Scott and now Robin Williams.  When will the madness stop?  Probably never.  It is a curious thing that all brilliant comedy is born of darkness.  Maybe it's a need to point at the abyss and laugh.

What we did not know of Robin will fill volumes in the years to come.  But I hope I never see a biopic and have to witness the drubbing the poor bastard cast as he will have to suffer.  No one could be Robin but Robin.  To think otherwise is folly and Hollywood’s prerogative. 

But maybe just maybe they’ll rally ‘round their fallen brother and honor his memory in a way befitting the laughs he bestowed upon us all.  Give us a Best of… made up of friends and coworkers that have something about Robin they’re willing to share with the rest of us and there should also be only one sponsor, an advocacy group that at every break can enlighten us in some small way as to what to look for when someone we love is dealing with serious depression.   And please, please, please not one damned psychedelic butterfly or dark hole with eyes hawking their brand of relief in pill form.

Till then, godspeed, Robin.  I already miss you, man.

And then there's that...

The owner of the Washington Redskins is being sued purporting insult to Native American's heritage.  What, like being damn near eradicated wasn't enough?  So much for the noble savage.  

F___ them!  Let them buy or build their own NFL team and name them the Waukesha White Devils or maybe the Sioux City Scalpers or how about the Baton Rouge Rapers.  Now, imagine them in the Super Bowl.  Imagine the half time show.  Woowee, I'd pay cash money for them tickets.

But seriously, with distractions such as this it is no wonder real issues are ignored.  Lawyers who dredge up and drag such dreck into our court system should be vivisected and their entrails made available to hangry ferrets.

Obviously, I don't believe in insulting someone who can't help themselves.  That's tantamount to kicking a puppy.  Maybe being raised with an invalid brother helped me to see that early on.  It helps me maintain a proper perspective.

Still, I bitch about the blue hang tags scooping up all the best parking slots.  Especially to that fat bastard squeezing out of his conversion van then groping his way around to his Johnny-Go scooter.  What keeps these people alive?

It is fun to see one of them bottom out an electric shopping cart at Wally World.  The best yet was a mother and daughter tag team.  Took out a clerk and a clothes rack then blamed the cart and threatened the involvement of barristers.  Good God, they were some foul smelling women too.  Shoowee!  You don't get that in a theater.  Unless your date forgot to bathe.

Yeah, I'm feeling really bad about myself just now.

What’s that grinding noise?

Talk about tragic.  Talk about preventable.  Talk about a 22 year-old executive director with bare minimum credentials being in charge of whether or not to call 911 when a patient’s condition demands it.  Talk about inane.   

Where in hell’s half acre was the medical professional?  Where was the person with one eye and half-sense, invoking the notion that even one so disabled could have seen the obvious and made the right call.  Hindsight what it is, we know that the death of the gentleman at a local assisted living facility was preventable and will most assuredly be adjudicated as such and I hope so. 

What kept the others from acting on behalf of the patient?  What compelled them to willfully engage in neglect?  Where was that one eyed half sense person?  Self interest being what it is, I bet it was fear of censure and/or the threat of being fired outright.  After all, minimum wage earners are the easiest to manipulate.  If accused, they can always peruse the Nuremberg Defense, “I was only following orders.”  

It needs to be said, that what transpired can, has and will continue to happen until corporations and their principles are made responsible and held accountable.  I mean, the Supreme Court said corporations are people too.  Time will tell.  In the years to come, we will be treated to more incidents of the inept making life and death decisions.  It will happen because profits are paramount, and care is just a word bandied about in a brochure.   

I fear if this is just the tip of the iceberg, then the baby-boomers are the Titanic.  No problem, you say.  Tell the Marconis to take the night off, we’ve got an executive director at the helm.  What could possibly go wrong?

of guns and fathers...

Okay, it’s happened again.  Another disaffected college youth from a good and loving family has murdered in the name of his YouTube’d angst.  In the coming days we can look forward to a bevy of suppositional theses to float our way like brown torpedoes in a punch-bowl. 

The anti-gun crowd, as usual, will blame the easy and legal access to firearms as the culprit.  The usual pundits will be called upon to regurgitate their takes on the toxic concoction of disaffected youth and easy access to firearms.  The young man will be vilified as confused, deranged, antisocial, sick in the head, bent, misunderstood, in-crisis, spoiled rotten, and/or just plain crazy while the victims will be canonized as exemplars of the species whose lives were shorn short of their normal expiration dates. 

All our hearts are broken. But let’s hold off on the crazy moniker for a sec.  At times in my own life, I might have been thought of as crazy; the crazy artist, crazy in love or crazy from the heat.  So let’s not settle on crazy just yet.  Instead, let’s agree to THINK about the causality and reasons for the recent mayhem in south Cali.  That’s what sane people do.

One commonality is, few of the victims saw it coming.  Even though the parents had warned the police, the man-child reasoned with the police and dissuaded them from further action.  In the words of the local police spokesman, “the officers cleared the call.”  Then the young man went and murdered friends and peers.  As always, the hue and cry from the emotionally governed is, “It’s the guns!” 

Que crazy.  Crazy is blaming the inanimate object.  Blaming the tool for being misused.  Of course we all want to blame something; the sick mind of the murderer, the gun and bullet manufacturers, the NRA, right-wing politicians, my third grade teacher, the parish priest who touched my peepee, or the reclusive neighbor down the lane.  Anyone and everything is suspect.  Especially those who, as our forefathers did, cling to their guns. 

Instead, what is needed is a conversation about what it means to be safe in an otherwise unsafe world.  Armed with that knowledge, and ultimate responsibility, we can only sling so much blame without soiling ourselves in the process.  Yes, yes, t’is a sad commentary on our civilization that we cannot prevent such incidents.  Or is it?  I believe it to be the price of freedom.  If I were the parent of a slain child, I might think otherwise.  But I hope not.  It’s how he lives that matters, not how he dies.

When my first child was born, I realized that he would be subjected to all that life has to offer.  That he could be laid low even unto death by disease, war, accident, the short sighted chicanery of friends, lightning, too much alcohol and possibly at the hand of some deranged individual.  In that moment, I found it humbling to have had him in the first place.  That this small being would be in my care and keeping only for a short time, and that I would endeavor not to fail him.  He’s grown and gone now and thriving on his own with a brand new bride.  Still, I worry.

It’s not a stretch by any sane reasoning person to conjure that we cannot remain free if we seek only to make life a safe and easy process.  One that GOD herself has deigned otherwise.  How else can we truly cherish what we have until it is threatened, or we lose it outright?  How else can we feel the emptiness of the dark without having felt the warmth of the sun?  How else can we truly celebrate life without knowing full well that death waits for no one?

At the news conference, the grieving father’s lament sounded reasonable enough, blaming craven politicians and the NRA as if they’d done the deed themselves.  I don’t blame him for faulty logic, the man lost his boy and I can only thank heavens that I do not know that pain.  In time, he and his family will move on but they will always have a hole in their heart where once was a good and able son. 

Without evidence to the contrary, I can only surmise that the killer was once a good son too and that his father is just as heartbroken, if not more so.  My heart goes out to all the fathers who lost someone that weekend in California, but especially to him.  His burden will forever be membership in an exclusive club for fathers who have born sons who commit murders in multiple.  A club no one wants to belong to.  A club whose membership grows by the year.

He might have to move from his home, suffer the looks of neighbors who conjure that he did something or didn’t do something to his son and that he is somehow responsible for his child murdering other children.  He might have to change his last name and leave his profession.  The one that fed, clothed and supported his family, and sent his son to college.  God forbid he bought those weapons for him.  Again, my heart aches for them all, but especially for him.  His horrors have just begun.