Monday, July 31, 2006

...so sorry...

This must have been a weekend for apologies. Whether it was Israel apologizing for the accidental slaughter of up to 60 old men, women and children or Mel Gibson apologizing for driving drunk and being beligerant and anti-semitic upon arrest, some high profile "sorrys" hit the airwaves. The two examples I cited make my own forthcoming apology to my landlord that my rent will be a little late seem like small potatoes. Maybe if I had an official spokesperson or publicist to handle my groveling it would feel more important. Or maybe, just maybe if I was apologizing for the accidental death of scores of innocents or for having made a celebrity spectacle of myself it would be meatier, more substantive. I don't know.

I used to think that an apology, if sincere and not overused, required that the recipient forgive the mentioned act. As an adult (and frequent screw up) I've learned that making amends is more for me than for the person I've wronged. Airing my errors is good for MY soul - forgiveness belongs to the the soul of the one(s) I've wronged.

I pray that Israel and Mr. Gibson (irony anyone?) can both find healing for their collective souls. As for me, that seems a journey worth taking.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

broken.


Well...well, here again, at long last. I thought I woud be here daily, really. I thought that this BLOG held me in thrall so securely that I would never stray. Sad that "things" managed to derail my devotion to the only creative outlet in my crazy life. I was destined for the "artsy fartsy" and only abandoned my MUSE when LIFE decided that I needed to struggle. But this isn't about whining. LIFE (or SHIT) happens. It cares not for who (whom?) it strikes, it just strikes. I've felt like I have a bullseye painted on my back but that's just perception...not reality. Much worse things happen to other people.
I had always assumed that when beset by LIFE'S trials, I would find a state of GRACE. Instead, I became a mewling pitiful recipient of LIFE'S little dramas. HIV, Depression, Anxiety, Chemical Dependency, TMG, RLS, EIEIO and, oh yes, a couple of Heart Attacks at 42 just to make things interesting. I've asked "WHY?", but I know that is unanswerable. There is no WHY. Only WHAT NEXT?
And whatever is NEXT, I must be prepared to accept it and NOT medicate it. My pain can't lead to pills or alcohol or street drugs. I must confront my FEAR unaltered. The worry isn't problem solving, it's just an unhealthy excercise in repetition.
I don't know if I'm read at all. For now, that can't matter. I hope to deal with my PAIN & FEAR on this BLOG. If you've the stomach for it...read along.

Timothy

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Snips and Snails and Puppy-dog Tails on Ice


Have you ever been getting over a head cold? You know the kind that lingers for weeks - nose running, clearing your throat constantly, oozing, watery eyes and every once in a while a cough that brings up your socks? Now I'm sure we're all far too Lady & Gentleman like to dispose of the "progeny" of our bronchials and lungs anywhere but in a sterile, designated area, but sometimes events do not allow us a polite hack into garbage-bound tissues. I'll venture that either outdoors or possibly in the privacy of the shower, one or two of us may have let the "farmer's blow" go! One finger to the nostril of your choice and clear the other with compressed exhalation.
You may not have ever given what comes out a second thought, but did you kow it contains enough DNA material to identify you from among 6.whatever billions of people on this earth? That green, bubbling looghie has all of your DNA information. Someday SCIENCE will be able to clone you from your snot!
Today, President George W Bush issued his FIRST presidential VETO in six years to block Senate Legislation that would have allowed Scientists receiving Federal money to expand their studies into Embryonic Stem Cell Research utilizing the hundreds of thousands of "waste embryos" from our Nation's Stockpile of frozen "Maybe Babys. - little assembledges of goo smaller than what you blow out your nose. Now did our FEARLESS LEADER just discover the pen marked "FOR VETO ONLY" at the back of his oval office desk drawer, was he practicing spelling it (sounds like 'neato!') Why his first Presidential VETO, against the wishes of his governing party (Hell, Nancy Reagan endorses it?)
Now I admit, I have a hard time with Sally and Sam Saved, the classic "born-again" fertilizer chasers spending hundreds of thousands of largely donated dollars so that they can conceive "litters" of six or more of their own "biological" offspring and audaciously saying that the herd they spew forth is somehow GOD'S WILL (P.S. anytime someone says or writes those two words to lend power to their will or point of view, you can bank on the fact that they are LIARS and wouldn't know GOD'S WILL if she suddenly reached down and smote them) and that producing these swarms of FRANKEN-Babies is preferable to adopting any of the hundreds of thousands of children who wait worldwide for parents. So somehow this ridiculously expensive procedure has been shoe-horned into the idiot panoply of "Blessed Science."
But be that as it may, artificial insimination is not something done with laser-like precision. A couple comes in asking for a baby and nine months later has a baby. Nope. In fact the various fertility strategies succeed by over-fertilizing donor tissue in the lab and trowelling as much of the viable material into the uterus as possible. With any luck eight or ten of GOD'S little blessings will take hold, a known percentage will fail (who cries for them?). If over a dozen take, many may be "harvested" from the Mother's uterus for the health of their siblings (again, no tears, no little coffins.) Except for those really weird couples who decide to bring some number of offspring more akin to rat reproduction rather than human to term.
"I belive it's GOD'S WILL that I bring all sixteen babies to term. I've named them after all of the books of the New Testament that I could remember except the ones that sound like ghetto-names you'd see on a tag at a convenience store. My doctors tell me I will have to sleep at an angle with a specialy formed foam cork held firmly between my knees until at last they can be delivered. We are accepting your generous contributions at CHRIST'S HOPE FOR A CROWDED HEAVEN BAPTIST CHURCH in Euless, TX."
Whatever the individual outcome, however, EXTRAS are made and EXTRAS must be dealt with. They don't get donated to other couples or stay frozen forever with Walt Disney waiting for some childess world when we'll need that biological stock. We don't have herds of maidens on deserted islands birthin' GOD'S WILL'S EXTRAS. They are routinely destroyed. Not buried, no headstone or service...thawed, scrambled and tossed. Not all that atypical for eggs, I guess.
But let an unusually thoughtful Congress listen to the 70% of the American Voters who want these spare embryos used in the research of real human diseases that kill people named Bob or Gloria or Ronnie or Michael J. Fox suggest an expansion of research into the as yet untapped potential of Human Embrionic Stem Cell Research and a MIRACLE happens! W finds his VETO pen and within days has practiced writing it AND the extra embryos are destroyed anyway. W isn't rescuing them from being used in research or prolonging their little frozen tour on this planet. They are simply destroyed without potential. It is a given that they lack the potential for their own lives - they didn't make the cut. They are not babies. They have NO FUTURE. Not even the Roman Catholic Church has written in some low-income housing in LIMBO for the "unwashed and not quite conceived" to float around in until someone prays them out to Heaven where I guess the little balls of goo would have special seating to avoid accidentaly being wiped up.
For the Blessed Science of Artificial Insemination they are waste, accepted. For the Potential Science of Embryonic Stem Cell Research they suddenly become little balls of boy and girl goo...cute little spitballs all.

Blasphemous...Nyah. Stupid...Not compared to the Right to Life "Regardless How Remote from Actual Living"

Doubts never occur to those afraid to challenge their own Beliefs. Wisdom from a distance may be madness close up.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Undead or just Living Challenged?


Recently, my roommate has become Dracula, Prince of Darkness or at least Duke of Dusk, Dauphine of Dawn...I'm uncertain. All I know is that he sleeps during the day while I am at work and is nowhere to be seen at night when I go to bed.

As roomie situations go, it's not a bad gig. We've known each other for nearly sisxteen years, it's okay if we don't watch reruns of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW together. It's hardest on the cat, I think. She was accustomed to sleeping with him at night. Now her poor little feline diurnal clock is askew. She just prowls the high shelves in the apartment howling at the invisible...how I envy her.

Funny thing though, recently my roommate's Mother called me. She doesn't bother calling him since he won't answer. As always she asked how he was doing and as the light was just fading, I said in a clear strong voice,"You just missed him, Judy, He just finished rising at night so he could go out and suck the blood of the living."

Shortest conversation I've ever had with the woman.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Shield the Younguns' Marge, the Blog's going ADULT


Someone's Xmas goose a couple of weeks early, or was it a bad year for growin Yule logs. Couldn't be more than a week of tree rings on cousin Branch. Al Gore said it, "I WAS SO FREAKIN' ROBBED!" no we mean "It's an Inconvenient Truth" Global Warming has begum to diminish the returns of a Holiday glutted with Arabian oil, featuring Arabial "pipework." Mideast, been there, n* d*cks, watched a lot of TV.

The fact that some warpped soul, Idahoan probably (Female populous has never even seen a real penis!) had to circle it with a pen in utter disamazement. "Josephine! Will ya look at the ghostly size of that mother! Shees and you'll be orderin' me them special vitamins, next!"

SEARS, sorry I can't talk to ya now we're hangin' proscciutto, ROEBUCK & COMPANY, we Salute you!