"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx
Thought I’d give some of the old stuff another shake:
Death Comes For Us All- When Do you Start Saying Goodbye
Middle Age Depression- I Am Not Satisified
If Life Ended Today What Would You Regret
Streets of Philadelphia
The Cost: A Portion Of Your Lifespan
The Worst Album Covers- Ethel Merman Disco Mix
My Call To The Suicide Hotline
In the early days of my blogging career I fiercely guarded my anonymity. Blogging was nothing more than a therapeutic outlet and I had no interest in compromising my ability to write whatever I wanted without regard for being questioned and quizzed about it.
I can’t remember when, but at some point in time I eased up on wearing the mask and slowly began to develop friendships with a few bloggers. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. You know, once people find out that you have revealed your identity to some and not to others hard feelings can arise.
While I have never spent a lot of time worrying about whether people like me or not, I have tried not to be a jerk just for the sake of being a jerk.
I suppose that you could say that the genesis of this post comes from two places. Today I had a very pleasant lunch with a friend. And that lunch was one of the topics of conversation between my son and I today.
School started last week. The night before he headed off to second grade I reminded him that not only was he going to learn amazing things he had the opportunity to make some amazing friends. It is a conversation that he and I have had virtually every year since he started school.
Anyhoo, today he asked me about my lunch with my friend. The questions were pretty basic. What did we eat? Did we play any games? How do we know each other?
It made for an interesting discussion. Since the lad is a hair shy of eight I didn’t spend any time trying to explain why it is harder outside of school to make friends. Don’t get me wrong, it is not impossible, but when you are married there is only so much time. And that time gets chewed up into smaller and smaller pieces, especially once the kids arrive.
That reminds me, I have been meaning to write a post about the friends that we make because of our children. When the kids get involved in school and extracurricular activities you invariably begin to meet other parents, especially when your children become friends with other kids.
The hard part is that sometimes the parents of these children make it really difficult for you to want to help your children foster these new friendships. That is one of those things that I never thought about pre-children. It just never occurred to me that I would think that Little Sammy’s father was an ignorant fool or a pompous ass.
Sammy could be the greatest kid in the world but if it meant hanging out with Wolfie I was going to have to call in reinforcements. Or if nothing else pour the guy a stiff drink and hope that he passed out.
Ok, somewhere along the way this post drifted off target so I think that I’ll just wrap it up here. When bloggers lunch, better be careful what you say and what you eat because it just might end up serving as blog fodder.
Want to learn more about the tradition? Click here.
Updated: The great reformer, hah!
This comes from the Washington Post:
ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state
business.…She wrote some form of “Lodging — own residence” or “Lodging — Wasilla residence” more than 30 times at the same time she took a per diem, according to the reports. In two dozen undated amendments to the reports, the governor deleted the reference to staying in her home but still charged the per diem. “
I hadn’t intended to write another word about Sarah Palin. I really had said about as much as I wanted to, but circumstances sometimes dictate that we change our paths.
The impetus for this post really comes from the reception I have received from other bloggers and other assorted people who have rolled their eyes or been dismissive about my concerns about Palin. I think that many of you have intentionally blinded yourself or are walking in double standard land.
Ultimately I don’t care if you agree with me. I know what I see and it is ugly. I see a candidate for V.P. who is inexperienced in key areas and has demonstrated values that I find to be highly questionable.
CNN has an article about Palin’s church that continues to feed my negative opinion of her. I criticized Obama for his relationship with Reverend Wright. It would be wrong and inconsistent not to call Palin onto the carpet as well.
Palin now attends the Wasilla Bible Church. She was there on August 17, just days before entering the national spotlight. David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus, was a speaker. He told congregants that terrorist attacks on Israel were God’s “judgment” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity. Brickner said, “Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can’t miss it.”
The McCain campaign says his comments do not reflect her religious views. Palin’s spokeswoman says she is pro-Israel.
Pastor Ed Kalnin, the senior pastor of Palin’s former Pentecostal church, has also come under fire for his comments. In 2004, he told church members if they voted for John Kerry for president, they wouldn’t get into heaven. He told them, “I question your salvation.”
Assembly of God issued a statement online in response which said Kalnin was “joking” when he suggested “Kerry supporters would go to hell,” and statement went on to say, “We do acknowledge in hindsight that it was careless, and we do apologize for that. This statement is not written as a defense, but as a clarification.”
Where are the cries of outrage about this. Where is the call for condemnation. If you thought that Wright’s statements are outrageous you should be irritated, upset and angry. And what have we heard from Palin about this? Not a whole lot, mostly just the chirping of the crickets.
Let’s circle back for a moment and recap a few things. She hasn’t any experience with foreign policy nor economic. She has limited experience as governor running a state whose total population is smaller than many cities in the U.S.
It is acknowledged by her team that she explored the possibility of banning books. It doesn’t matter if it was one or 1000. This is America. Book banning is something that fascists do.
There is a history of her purging those who oppose her politically from their positions. Some of you may try to claim that this is just sour grapes or something that happens all the time. I don’t believe it to be sour grapes and I am not someone who supports cleaning house just because someone holds a different opinion.
Something stinks here and I think that it is her values. There is something lacking. And if you forgive me for projecting, there is something about her that smacks of the mean girl. I suppose that if I couldn’t criticize her bonafides, if I couldn’t drive a bus through the hole in her experience I might feel differently.
But that is not the case. I don’t sense principles that I support. And I don’t like the willful ignorance and shunting of reality that many of her supporters are engaging in.
All told I it is a question of values and I don’t think that she and I share them.
Alongside the return of school is the return of the soccer season and the resumption of my position as a coach. Yes, I am a soccer coach who is responsible for helping to teach, mold and shape young men.
Each week we gather for a short practice in which we discuss the proper way to play soccer. First we laugh at all of the crazy foreigners who have a fit of apoplexy at any comment that does not praise soccer. During the laughter we imitate and mock their funny antics and accents.
Once this is completed we spend several moments practicing how to be a soccer hooligan. This includes teaching the lads how to pound a beer, set fire to automobiles, loot, pillage and run wild.
Eventually we tire of this and spend the next few moments discussing why the NFL is a superior sport and the reasons why it is called Football. Not to mention the time spent educating the kids about how to hold a proper tailgate party.
Ok, so maybe we don’t do any of the above. Maybe, just maybe we spend time talking about the value of playing as a team and learning how many can be stronger than one. Maybe just maybe they get to listen to me speak about the main reason we play, to have fun.
They are only eight years-old.
Later on in the week we’ll play a real game and see if anyone remembers what they learned in practice. With any luck they’ll stay involved in the game and have a good time. They might even have fun.
Of course I’ll have an encounter or two with a parent who thinks that they know how to do it better. I’ll tell them to “put up or shut up,” there is always space for them to coach next season. At least one time during the season the discussion will move from civility into promises of physical contact.
Those discussions are always great. I really enjoy telling a father that he should ask his son to come watch me kick his sorry butt up and down the field. They may even learn how to tear a man’s arm off at the shoulder and the proper technique for using the severed arm as a club.
But then again we just might avoid this discussion. It is always possible that the parents listened to my instructions that at eight-years-old all I am interested in is that the kids have fun. They’ll learn how to play and they’ll get an education about teamwork, but this is not the place in which they’ll earn a scholarship. No scouts are watching. The MLS isn’t going to come calling.
If all goes well the team will win more games than it loses, the kids will learn a thing or two and make a new friend. We shall see what happens.
For now we’ll watch and if anyone asks, you can call me coach.
CNN is running an article about how many younger guys are undergoing vasectomies. As it happens many of the boys have recently done this or are considering having it done. But not me, this old boy is not going to let anyone come anywhere close to that area with a knife.
When I die (at 265 years old) I’ll still have the ability to send out the swimmers. Call me superstitious, but once you do that you are just never the same guy.
Anyway, the article doesn’t focus on men who don’t want to have more children but on men who don’t want any. I don’t see huge advantages in it. You still have the concerns about STDs to address and it is hard to say that what you want at 25 will remain the same as you age.
“According to the National Institutes of Health, by 2006 one in six U.S. men over age 35 has had a vasectomy, with about half a million getting snipped each year. And while men in their late 30s or 40s are often the ones who opt for the surgery, Dr. Dale McClure, director of Male Infertility at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, says he sees “a fair number of people under 35” who have undergone the procedure.
“I’m actually seeing more people than I have in the past that are younger that had a vasectomy at age 21 or 22,” says McClure.
That doesn’t mean doctors are doling out vasectomies like condoms at a free health linic.”I jokingly tell patients it’s like buying a gun in Chicago,” says Dr. Lawrence Ross, professor of urology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “You can go look at the gun but you can’t buy it right away.”
That’s because, Ross says, “there’s no 100 percent guarantee in any case that we can reverse it.” Within 10 years of having a vasectomy, there’s a 90 to 95 percent success rate for reversal surgery. Beyond that, the success rate drops to 75 to 80 percent.
Given those stats, it’s best to consider a vasectomy “a permanent form of sterilization,” Ross says. “I will always tell young men that in my 38 years of practice, I’ve seen many men change their minds.”
Second — and third — thoughts
McClure says he spends most of his time “putting vasectomies back together,” performing more than 2,000 reversals since 1975.
“Over the last several years, it appears that more males under the age of 25 who’ve never had children and who had a vasectomy are coming in [for a reversal] because they’ve found a new partner and they want to have children,” says McClure.”