Why do you build me up. . .

Everybody does their job. Very professional.
Fill out the computerized forms, look up the records, tag the wrist, interview by admitting nurse, wife helps me with the answers.
“Take of your clothes, put these on.”
Take some blood and some biological measurements. Graphs go by on the screen. They have peaks as they move across the screen, good sign. Low heart rate, normal blood pressure, also good, I guess.
It’s the middle of the night, no windows and fluorescent lights. It’s the same twenty four hours a day.
Homeless or junkie or just poor and disheveled?
Midwestern accent, firm, gentle, businesslike, professional. “You will have to leave.”
Inaudible response
“You will have to move into the reception area then, you can stay there, but you can’t sleep here, you’ve been treated and discharged, sorry, the pain medicine will help soon, but you can’t sleep here. . . “
Names and initials attach to my name on the flat screen hanging on the wall across the room.
Wheeled into a darker room,
“Please stand against the machine and don’t move”
Back to the curtained cube.
“No heart attack, but there’s a blocked artery that will have to be opened…”
“Time for me to leave, see you in the morning, I love you.”
“I love you, too.”

More sad than scared.
More scared of pain than dying.
Doctor is confident, it’s routine.
I can deal with it.
I’ve been through it once, it hurt plenty, but I’m still here, but it hurt, but you can handle it. Bullshit, it hurt like hell. You’ve been through it once, it’s a half an hour deal, you can put up with it for half an hour. Forty-five minutes, tops.
Ride the gurney through the maze. A basement is still a basement. Stuff lined up against the walls looks like old clothes and junk., guard nodding off in chair, wakes up to chat with tired lady who pushes the gurney, another tired lady operates the elevator.
Freezing cold operating room keeps these guys awake.
“Take off your underwear.”
“Those are the words I’ve been longing to hear you say.”
Almost a smile.
“We’ll be inserting a catheter ….”
“Doc, do you know the name of that song”
“Build Me Up Buttercup.”
“Very good, do you know who sings it?”
He’s too young to remember.
“It’s from ‘Something About Mary’…uh, no.”
“The Foundations. Doc, don’t let this storehouse of useless information die.”
Masked, no smile.
Pressure on my thigh.
“Do you want pain killers?”
“As much as you can give me!”
It’ll be over soon.

IF WE COULD SEE OURSEVES AS OTHERS SEE US…

I once told my “blogging” daughter (hereinafter referred to as “BD” to preserve her anonymity) that I don’t post comments her blog because I’m like that outgoing, talkative kid that is given a telephone or microphone and then can’t utter a syllable. Many of her posts make me want to comment, but I’ll just blog instead, and because she’s the only reader of my blog, it’ll be like writing a real long comment.

Her last few posts made me think about how she perceives herself and then how we all perceive ourselves. As I thought about this and decided to write a piece on my blog, I went to my research assistant, GOOGLE, to see who had written the original thought and typed in, see ourselves as others see us…. Results 1 - 10 of about 66,200,000 ….

After reading the first 14,325,278, I realized that I might want to do a more defined search, I put it in quotes “see ourselves as others see us”... Results 1 - 10 of about 43,200 … after reading all of these and taking out the repeats, I still wasn’t sure about the original quote. I do remember that I was nodding off in high school English as a poem was being read. As my eyes rolled back in my head, and the drool ran out of my mouth, and just before narcolepsy took over and my head cracked against the desk, I heard these words. But who said them? Lord Byron, Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Who names a boy Percy Bysshe and expects him to grow up heterosexual? I believe he was (heterosexual that is) his wife was the author, Mary W. Shelley, author of “Frankenstein,” but I digress….).

So what was that going to tell me anyway? I wanted to know the exact quote and the context, but whoever said it could be interpreted on several levels; if “they” think we’re ugly, are we? If “they” think we’re cool, are we? If “they’re” cool (in our opinion) and we’re not cool, in their opinion, are we therefore not cool by extension? On, and on and on. Again, so what? What would it mean to her if I said, “You’re beautiful,” which several of her readers did say, and I now realize I never said it enough, and she is.

The posts on “BD’s” blog were about how she sees herself, not how others see her. I think she’s beautiful, and I know others do too. Can she accept imperfection in others, but is it that she can’t accept a few extra pounds on herself? Would she say to me “change your physical appearance (or anything else) so my love could be given”? We have to accept what we are and do the best with what we have. Not to say, don’t try to better yourself, but if you can accept imperfection in others and grant them love, is it important to be perfect in your own eyes to love yourself, or at least not hate yourself? I’m more than happy that her posts indicate she has turned a corner. I hope that she continues to be happy with herself; but who knows what’s in the cards, it’s all good, we hope, but fate or God or some random microbes may take a hand. We are what we are …until we’re not.

So hang in “BD.” BE HAPPY, and I hope you’re through agonizing about your physique, and as Percy Bysshe would say:

"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

PS -- By the way, it was Robert Burns who almost said “if we could see ourselves”…he wrote in Scottish, and I guess the line has been used so much, it’s English now. It’s in the last stanza of his poem, “To a Louse.” That’s the one about a flea that was crawling on a beautiful woman, in church, while Burn’s watched (no doubt bored by the Preacher, his eyes rolled back, droll came out of the corner of his mouth, just before his head cracked down on the wooden pew) he wrote:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us

An foolish notion:

What airs in dress an gait wad lea'es us,

An ev'n devotion!

I remember the point now, as beautiful and well dressed as this woman was, to the flea she was just dinner and a home. Makes me want a glass of Scotch!

So L’chaim, Bobby Burns, and may we all BE HAPPY, especially BD, LF, MELBERITO, and DOOBIE.

DE-HYPENATE AMERICA – PART 2

Back to the other post. So what is the issue with immigration?

I am not an immigration expert, but here are my assumptions:
We regularly allow people into the country legally, so there must be some legal procedure for entry
After that there must be some application for citizenship or at least the right to continue to live and work in the USA.
It must be pretty complicated or onerous, because so many people can’t follow the procedure

Is that what immigration reform about? Making it less complicated? Or there some National Board of Immigration Review whose job it is to let in some and keep out the “riff-raff?” And who decides who’s “riff-raff” anyway?

Here’s my plan. Immigration reform made easy:
Everybody is welcome to the party. It’s a bring your own. You have to contribute or leave. Do what you do, cut hair, hammer nails, file nails, be a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or computer programmer if you want; hey, it’s America. You could even be in the mortgage business, if you can’t find anything better (or legitimate).

No unreasonable waiting periods. A background check and proof of a means to support yourself such as a job or a responsible legal US dweller or company to agree to sponsor you. If you have a substantial net worth, don’t even bother with the job, just bring the money and invest it here in legitimate endeavors.

A national registry and ID card. If you have one, you stay, if we catch you without one, we throw you out. Repeated offenders who keep sneaking back in should be thrown in jail. Or in the alternative, they could earn their legal entry by serving in the military or working on some other national priority that we can’t seem to find the labor to do. National priority does not include cutting somebody’s lawn.

You can get your registration if:
You have not broken any laws that would be enforced in the USA.
For example, if you were arrested in an Islamic Theocracy for being Christian, it wouldn’t count. Other things like being arrested for “economic” crimes such as profiteering in a communist country would probably be OK, too. I would recommend that we even tolerate arrests for not paying parking tickets or other “minor” offences. But no felons allowed. Arrests for assault, rape, theft, murder, and other generally violent or antisocial behavior would keep you out.

You agree to become a contributing member of American society within some reasonable period of time.

You lose your registration and right to become a citizen if:

You are convicted of a felony
You cease to be a contributing member of society or fail to pay taxes (i.e. no more working off the books)

Now that unreasonable barriers to entry are eliminated, and “American” is your new nationality, remember that you or your parents left some shit-hole country because it sucked, and DE-HYPHENATE.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Did you ever notice that there is Braille on the key pad at the drive up ATM?

Add this to the mindlessness:

I’m driving in to work today and I hear a news article. Some of the details escaped me since I was typing an e-mail on my Blackberry while driving with my knees (also pretty mindless), but my ears perked up as the story unfolded:

Somewhere, LI -- Police answer a call about a wild pit bull dog. They’re familiar with this dog as there have been several complaints. The dog attacks one of the several responding officers. He shoots it with his 9MM automatic. The enraged dog continues the attack as the bullet entered his (the dog's) abdomen. Other responding officers shot the dog 3 more times. Dog and attacked officer are currently recovering from their wounds.

I can understand why they would treat the dog-bit cop, but why did they spend time patching up a lunatic pit-bull (shot four times at close range with police pistols). Surely they will euthanize this mutt, won’t they? Did they operate on it for the practice?? And another thing -- can’t they get these cops more effective weapons. Four shots hit the dog and it’s still alive. I’m not going to comment on marksmanship (or for the more PC, markspersonship), because its probably dangerous and hard to hit the attacker without hitting the attackee, but come on, if this were a lunatic person with a weapon, how about something with a little more stopping power?

And one last thing, what is it with pit bulls and their owners. These dogs are nuts! How about a nice cocker spaniel or or better yet, get your kid a gerbil.

De-Hyphenate America

“What are you?”

“Italian-American”
“Irish-American”
“Mexican-American”
“German-American”
“Polish-American”
”Indian-American”
“Swiss, Scottish, Welsh, Franco-American”
"Member of the Former Soviet Union-American"

“What are you?”

My grandparents came to this country in the 1880’s. They left a place where they were unwanted. Most probably they were terrorized by pogroms. They were second class citizens (if they were even considered citizens), economically downtrodden, socially ostracized, or all of the above.

I don’t know their exact motivation (the only grandparent I knew died 40 years ago. It was believed she was in her 80's when she passed on, but she was a young girl when she came to this country). I’m of the opinion that her parents didn’t pack up their family and sell or abandon all of the belongings they couldn't carry to walk away from a comfortable existence to go 5 or 6 thousand miles to a country they never saw because things were going well for them. This must have been especially true when you didn’t just get on a plane and cruise that distance in 8 to 10 hours. Also they didn’t take the Berlitz “Learn Conversational English in Five Easy Lessons" course. And when they got here, I'm fairly confident that most Americans living here at the time didn't want to see some poor, Jewish family move in next door to them and compete for whatever jobs were available at that time.

I believe most immigrants come to America come for similar reasons. A sort of desperate run to the promise of a better life. No guarantees, just a fair shot at a better life. We are a country populated almost exclusively by immigrants and descendants of immigrants, most likely brave and motivated people, tired of being poor, or of being abused, no longer tolerating their existance in intolerable conditions. They decided to take matters into their own hands and change their condition.

Inspirational!

America, a nation populated by people that I characterize as “intrepid dreamers” driven to these shores seeking freedom and opportunity.

Except for the slaves.

What are you?

“African-American”

In the most horrendous way, which I can’t even begin to imagine, much less describe, these people were dragged from their homes and families to be brought to America as property. With no regard for their humanity, or any family ties that may have survived or developed during the “relocation,” they are brought to do the “heavy lifting.” Bought, sold and treated as “beasts of burden”. And today many of their descendants suffer from the bigotry and inequality of opportunity that is similar to the conditions that likely caused the “intrepid dreamers” to pack up and emigrate to America.

All that being said, whatever brought our forbearers here, we are now all in the same boat, and the boat is being swamped with new “intrepid dreamers” that want in.

What are you?

“American Indian”

The indigenous people have no hyphen.

More to follow….

SOME CATCH, THAT CATCH 22

CATCH 22 by Joseph Heller, great book. I read it about 35 or 40 years ago, maybe I should read it again. They made it a movie. It became an anti-Viet Nam War statement.

I can't relly get into it all because this post would become a small book (read the book or rent the movie), but basically the hero, fed up with flying in bombers over Europe during WW2, and sure that he's going to die, figures he can get out of it if he can convince the army (the US didn't have a separate Air Force in those days) he was crazy. But here's the catch, rule # 22... If you report that you are crazy, then you are sane, since you have the ability to recognize your insanity, so you can't be insane if you think you're insane.... Or some circular reasoning along those lines. "Some Catch, that Catch 22".

Back to the last post...

Abdul Rahman may get to keep his head attached to his body after all. Islamic Catch 22.... If he is crazy enough to admit that he rejects Islam and converts to Christianity, he must be too crazy to stand trial for converting to Christianity. This is actually a pretty good catch for Abdul, as well as George W. and his gang. The US citizenry (and the rest of the "Coalition of the Willing") won't have to watch a public beheading on CNN (or in Cheny's case, FOX).

The bad news is that the Afghan Courts still don't recognize a basic freedom, the right to worship (or not worhip, as the case may be) as you wish. Oh well, we're nation building, and Rome wasn't built in a day. At least the thugs who are now in charge of Afghanistan are OUR Taliban.

All I Know Is What I See On CNN

Back to Will Rogers. He said, “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.”

I guess most of us get our news via some form of electronic media these days. All I know is what I see on CNN. A CNN story:

Abdul Rahman is a man on trial for his life. This man has committed the crime of converting to Christianity. Apparently, in that enlightened part of the world known as Afghanistan, denying Islam is a capital offense.

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf.

It was reported that George Bush was “deeply troubled.” Condoleezza Rice telephoned Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai seeking a "favorable resolution" of the case of Abdul Rahman. But in deference to the sovereignty of Afghanistan she did not demand the man’s release. A spokesman for Ms. Rice pointed out that “this is clearly an Afghan decision.”

Good idea, let’s leave it to them, the folks that brought you the Taliban, ancient Buddhist statue demolition (idols!!!), and public beheadings between periods of the soccer game (their equivalent of a halftime show). Not to mention Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist training camps. We wouldn’t want to interfere in the internal politics of a budding democracy, would we?

The article did say that the Afghan government was searching for a way to drop the case, but the article went on to say that conservative clerics claim "The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed." and the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, concurred. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."

Aside from the absurdity of demanding a man’s death because of his religious beliefs, how unbelievably difficult it must be to live in a place where cleric Abdul Raoulf is considered a moderate.

CNN article 2:
BATON ROUGE, La. Federal prosecutors in Baton Rouge will take up the misdemeanor case against a Mississippi sheriff accused of commandeering two ice trucks from a federal reservation and sending them to relief centers after Hurricane Katrina.

After watching residents of his county suffer for days while waiting for federal hurricane relief, fed up with the inept bureaucratic bull, Forrest County Sheriff, Billy McGee took a couple of his deputies to National Guard Camp Shelby, and commandeered two tractor trailer trucks loaded with ice. The ice had been there for days while the people of Forrest County sweltered without electricity or refrigeration of any sort.

The sheriff was confronted by army national guardsmen who refused to allow him to take the ice. He ordered his deputies to arrest the guardsmen, and then he took the ice to his townspeople. He did something while the federal government was watching the ice melt while trying to figure out their next move.

By the way, Sheriff McGee agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. He did this to make the case go away. Although he offered a plea bargain, the federal prosecutor wouldn’t accept the deal. Evidently, the US government thought it would be better to spend its (our) time and money to go after a man who tried to help his fellow townspeople. The US government couldn't just accept his guilty plea or (more appropriately) just drop the case. Frankly, a medal, not an indictment should be given to the sheriff. But then the federal government would have to acknowledge that its incompetance drove an obvioulsy dedicated public servant to take matters into his own hands to do the right thing.

Two unrelated stories, right.

How about this:

Afghanistan is one backward place, where the niceties of the rights of an individual has yet to be discovered. Women are still their husband’s property and adultery is punished by death by stoning and thieves lose their hands. We are trying to bring this country into the civilized world. The British couldn’t do it, the USSR couldn’t do it and we won’t succed either. The Afghan culture is still hanging on to social concepts that most of the people of the world abandoned in the 1700’s. The country is really run by warlords and their clans. They finance their activities by selling drugs (opium poppies) and the government consists of the "meanest mother in the valley" and his heavily armed relatives. In American cities we call these guys "gangs", and the government tries to put them behind bars. I'm still trying to figure out where the fundimentalist Mullahs fit into this puzzle, they must be the spiritual advisors to the "Robin Hoods" of these merry bands of Afghani men who really govern their clan's turf, sort of Islamic Friars Tuck.

The US has about 20,000 or so troops in Afghanistan. The Afghan government can’t get across to its people that democracy means that not only the majority rules, but minorities have rights, too. In fact the government only governs a small part of the country. Most of Afghanistan is probably in worse shape than Mississippi and Louisiana right afther Katrina. Some enterprising US major, colonel, or general in Kabul should take a couple of hundred heavily armed troops to the jail and escort Abdul Rahman to a safe place while the two national governments suck up to each other. Do this while Condi and George work their diplomatic magic, but before some enterprising mullah removes Abdul’s infidel head from his infidel body.

Who are we kidding? We can’t do anything because we respect their sovereignty? We've already invaded and occupied the country, what soverignity? Wouldn't want to offend the freedom loving people of Afghanistan now that we have given them democracy, would we?