Archie Bunker was television's most famous grouch; blunt, blustering, and untouched by
the PC crowd. The archetype of the conservative male. Michael tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.
35 years later we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!
Of Deafness
Those of you who aren't from some type of religious back ground may not understand this post. That's OK. I'm finding that many of a Christian background don't get my point of view on it either.
Back in 02 I lost over 80% of my hearing in my right ear and around 10% in my left. This was particularity hard on me since prior to the loss I had above average hearing. The reason for the loss was in part due to a viral infection and in part due to medical malpractice on the part of a self absorbed doc with an overinflated view of her medical skills. Of course being 7 whole weeks out of residence means that you're smarter than God Himself when it comes to all questions concerning the human body. She was very eager to point out her superior abilities to those of the man who left the practice about 10 min after meeting her. In addition to the treatment of a viral infection with antibiotics she refused for 3 weeks to give me a referral to an ENT. Once I got into the ENT his recognition of my condition and treatment saved most of the hearing in my left ear. I'm still bitter about the whole deal.
When this all happened in 02 I was given a first rate recommendation by my ENT to get me into a Stem Cell regeneration research program. The university called and I was able to talk to the man heading up the program. They were interested in my case because the nerve cell death was recent and there was reason to believe that I had only lost a portion of my hair cell's ability to transmit signal to my brain. I was very interested. We talked more. My prospects of being accepted into the program were good. They even had funding to pay for me to make the 1,100 mile trip to the University Hospital and cover my expenses. It all looked like an answer to a prayer.
Did I have any questions? Yes. Where did the University get the Stem Cells for the research? Embreonic donors. I said I wasn't interested in joining the study. My response puzzled the researcher. The program harvested the best embryos at exactly the right developmental stage for the optimum chances of success. After hearing how scientific and wonderful the embryo harvesting was, I said "I'll be dammed if I will". I hung up. Thus ended my chance of having my hearing restored and having someone else pay for it.
My guess is that about 90% of you reading this post don't "get it". That's fine. If you're a Bible reading sort of person I have a passage for you: Mark 9:42-47. If you're not a Bible reading person, just skip to the comments and tell me what a fool I was.
For you good Bible believers out there, do you get it now? If not skip to the comments, etc.
What brought this rant on? A good bible reading type person, who normally is very kind, proceeded to butt in on this subject with me yesterday and let me know what a fool I am. I agree, I am a fool and any number of choices in my life bear this out. I will not profit from the death a person not yet born. I would rather be deaf, including losing the rest of my hearing, including not being able to get a better job, including any additional hardship that may be placed on me and my family than have a baby die to harvest some cells that might make it so I could hear.
A hat tip to Farmer Tom. I was visiting his home 4 or 5 years ago and told him this story about my hearing loss. So far he is the only person that I have shared this with that had a response that seemed to instantly understand and sympathize with my stand. That conversation with him has meant a great deal to me and has been a source of strength in the intervening years.
I know I've mentioned my shooting hobbies here before. Recently Mark Hampton published an article in American Handgunner about this last summers 1000 yard pistol shoot in Sundance.
Some how he remembered that he received much, and I do mean much, spoting help from the guy shooting next to him on the line. He even said thank you. He just forgot my name. Other than that its not a bad article.
And yes two fifteen year olds did win in both the heavy and light classes. Becky is a fine shot. Eric's winning 8in group would have been more spectacular if he hadn't blown one of his shots. 4 of his 5 shots were sub 2 inches at 1,000 yards, incidentally that would have beaten the current 1,000 yard world record for 5 shots from a rifle.
I can say with pride that Becky didn't beat me. Mostly because I didn't have a light gun so I wasn't able to shoot in that category. This year will be different. This year I own a Thor so Becky will have a fair shot at kicking my butt too.
I was recently asked to become a NRA qualified instructor. I turned it down since I don't have the time/money to get the credential and teach classes. I'm really hard pressed to prep for the 2 shoots I've committed myself to compete in this year. If I was to start teaching classes for CCW pistol and home defense I think I would include this video in my curriculum.
The video is 10 min long
It's all about mind set.
1. refuse to be a victim. 2. do whatever it takes, training, paperwork, or practice to make #1 a reality.
A blog is kinda like a diary, except you put it out there for everyone to read. Tonight feel like I'm writing in a diary. Dear diary, I almost got killed at work tonight.
I was doing my job safely, just like normal and another guy was doing his job safely just like he's done a million times before and still, I almost got killed when one of these nearly ran me over. I'm told, not tonight but I've heard it said, that it costs $20,000 per MINUTE when the mine shuts down a run. That's what they spent for nearly 2 hours because I nearly got kilt tonight. $2,400,000 spent to set down a bunch of miners to talk, because I nearly got killed tonight.
The pit boss came told me about all the changes that they were doing, as he was speaking, to fix it and make the area safe. I had to tell him that none of the things he was doing (although needed) wouldn't have helped a bit because they weren't in the area, where I almost got killed tonight. So he stopped the whole deal again and got men and equipment to the right spot and doing the right stuff to make the job safe. He refused to release anyone back to work till I said I was satisfied with how it was fixed. Which I very much am, this man is a class act when it comes to safety.
Dear diary, my life didn't flash before my eyes. The first part of my day did. I put in a 18 1/2 hr day yesterday and forced myself to set an early alarm so I could see my kids before work today. If I don't do that they forget who I am because they go to long without seeing me between my days off. I got up this morning and Jr was watching a cartoon. I went in and held him on my lap. He wanted "his" mommy. Then he wanted to "go to mommy's work" ie daycare. About then he noticed that it snowed out. Instead of giving daddy a hug, like I asked for, he ran out to play in the snow before they had to "go to mommy's work". I was cold, tired and feeling a little rejected, so I sat in the chair in my PJ's. They left.
If I HAD died tonight, and IF God would have given me any 15 min of my life to live over, I would have run barefoot into the yard and thrown snowballs, chased a little boy, rolled around on the ground and I would have gotten my hug or tickled him till he couldn't stand it. Because I almost got killed tonight.
I didn't need to see my whole life, I saw one little bit of one day. It was enough. I wish I was a better man.
Happy Saturday everyone. Yes I know its really Tuesday, but in my world of mixed up work schedule today is my Saturday. So I'm doing my best to avoid Mrs. Ipsa's honey do list while accomplishing some things on my own to do list. Item #1 is recover from the 18 hrs I spent away from home yesterday. Item #2 is write the rest of the list.
Suppose you were assigned the task of giving an one hour (perhaps longer or in two sessions) speech. The working title of this talk is: "Have Great Sex". The talk will be advertised to the target audience for about two months prior to the event. The day of the event will be either the second or third Saturday of September, this year.
What would you say? What topics would you cover?
I am intentionally not telling you who the audience is, or the event that this is part of, because I don't want to prejudice your input. The purpose of the speech is to encourage people to have extraordinary sex lives. You can assume that both men and women will be in the audience and that the age range will be rather large from teens to possibly mid 60's. For purposes of this post, assume anything and everything goes at least topic wise. In addition to your thoughts, you might want to include some "what I wish men knew or what I wish women knew" about sex comments. Private emails are welcome as well, please put "odd topic" in the subject line, so when my email filter flags your message I will know to send it to my mail box.
I'm especially interested hearing input form the ladies.
I made a commitment when we started having kids, that I would cut back on a number of activities that I was part of. I did this because as a DINK (Dual Income No Kids) I was free to do way more stuff than most folks. Mrs Ipsa and I were married for 10 years before we had kids and we both had decent professional jobs, so we got to play a bit more than others our age with kids. One of the things I used to be overly involved with was church stuff.
I'm still involved with the running of things at church. I still serve in various activities, but I have cut back on how much I do. However I do still take the time to look into new things that come along that might prove helpful. I was checking out stuff for our teens and I stumbled across a book written by two brothers. Alex and Bret Harris wrote Do Hard Things as teenagers.
The basic premise is that kids have life too easy, they do to little and they need to suck it up and start doing something worthwhile. In their words; teenagers need to start doing hard things. As a kid growing up my father used to say basically the same sort of thing to me. The difference here is that its not a grown up on a soap box gripping about "kids these days". The book was written to kids by kids. As an adult I found the book a tad on the simplistic side. Life, after all has many more ups and downs than a couple of home schooled boys form a upper middle class background have experienced. These kids have yet to experience the "kick in the gut" moments that leave you gasping for breath and questioning if you have the testicular fortitude to get out of bed and face it again.
That is where I am wrong.
I'm a grown man with my own kids. I have grown man concerns. I prepare to face a grown up world that I know about because I've been on the receiving end of grown up heartache and frustration. This book was written by kids to motivate kids. Kids don't see life the same as adults, because they aren't adults. The point of Do Hard Things is that they will be adults and they need to get ready for it, by doing more, taking on tougher stuff, setting higher goals, not listening to the adolescence until your 30 culture and doing hard things.
I'd loan you my copy of the book, but its getting passed around our town right now. Get your own copy, they can be had for less than $10. Read it if you want, just be sure to get it in the hands of a kid. You never know they just might join The Rebelution and that would be a good thing.
I know its a late post. I worked this Christmas and a 15 1/2 hour day after not getting any sleep the night before led me to not get a post up, until now. I'm finally on my days off.
A special thanks to those of you who dropped by to say Merry Christmas. Thank you.
Politically Correct 12 Days of Christmas
On the 12th day of the Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival, my significant other in a consenting adult, monogamous relationship gave to me:
TWELVE males reclaiming their inner warrior through ritual drumming,
ELEVEN pipers piping (plus the 18-member pit orchestra made up of members in good standing of the Musicians Equity Union as called for in their union contract even though they will not be asked to play a note),
TEN melanin-deprived testosterone-poisoned scions of the patriarchal ruling class system leaping,
NINE persons engaged in rhythmic self-expression,
EIGHT economically disadvantaged female persons stealing milk-products from enslaved Bovine-Americans,
SEVEN endangered swans swimming on federally protected wetlands,
SIX enslaved Fowl-Americans producing stolen non-human animal products,
FIVE golden symbols of culturally sanctioned enforced domestic incarceration,
(NOTE: after members of the Animal Liberation Front threatened to throw red paint at my computer, the calling birds, French hens, and partridge have been reintroduced to their native habitat. To avoid further Animal-American enslavement, the remaining gift package has been revised.)
FOUR hours of recorded whale songs,
THREE deconstructionist poets,
TWO Sierra Club calendars printed on recycled processed tree carcasses, and
ONE Spotted Owl activist chained to an old-growth pear tree.
Merry Christmas. Happy Chanukah/Hanukkah. Good Kwanzaa. Blessed Yule. Oh, heck! Happy Holidays!!!! (unless otherwise prohibited by law)
Unless, of course, you are suffering from Seasonally Affected Disorder (SAD). If this be the case, please substitute this gratuitous call for celebration with a suggestion that you have a thoroughly adequate day.
I wasn't sure what to title this post, "Women at Work" or "What America Would be Like if Hillary Was President". I think I used to work for this chick.
Profits are down, sales are down, and the workload is slow. Our prices are competitive, so I'm not sure what's wrong. What I'd like to do is boost our sales. Unfortunately I know nothing about sales! So I've decided to cut operating costs, which will force me to squeeze maximum productivity out of the few employees who remain. But that's not as easy as it sounds! In fact, it's become a rather depressing game of "divide and conquer"!
I began by drawing out a big chart. I wrote down everyone's name and drew lines connecting who was friends with who, who takes lunches together, and who chats around the coffeemaker. I put a red mark by anyone who I think may have been part of last year's failed unionizing effort. I also made notes on the chart about popularity, niceness, and physical attractiveness.
Then I started managing people out of their jobs. I wrote folks up for every single 30-second tardy. I documented every website they visited that wasn't work-related. I monitored their calls, and rummaged through their desks. I even sent a few people in for "random" drug tests. After only three weeks I'd fired one person out of every identified friendship in the building.
The best part was how I avoided an ugly, newsworthy mass-layoff situation. Instead I spread all the firings out over a month of Fridays. This not only helped our company avoid embarrassment, (as well as expensive severence packages) but it also helped develop a sense of self-preservation and paranoia among my remaining staff. Of course everyone is depressed and worried, and I'm the only one who knows that the firing spree is over!
Link to her blog. Warning: the rest of her blog is equally classy.
Donna Jackson, 57, was on the phone with 911 for more than ten minutes reporting an intruder at her home when she shot and killed the man, Billy Dean Riley. The incident was captured on tape by the 911 dispatcher. Riley entered Jackson's home after breaking a glass door by throwing a patio table through it. Jackson shot him once in the chest with a 16-gauge shotgun.
Excerpts from the 911 tape.
Dispatch: "Do you have a gun"
Donna: "Yes ma'am"
Dispatch: "You have to protect yourself"
Donna: "Dear God Please hurry"
"I don't want to kill him"
"I will kill him...graveyard dead, ma'am
Hear it for yourself.
At the end of the tape you hear Mrs. Jackson praying for forgiveness after killing her assailant. Some observations:
1. The 911 dispatcher told Mrs. Jackson that it was OK to defend her property and herself. GOOD JOB!
2. The 911 dispatcher told Mrs. Jackson that it was OK after she killed Billy Dean Riley and that she had to do it. Again GOOD JOB!
3. Apparently the cops refused to arrest Mrs. Jackson. GOOD JOB!
4. The prosecutor has said that this incident must be investigated as a murder. However, he is declining to press any charges against Mrs. Jackson. GOOD JOB!
5. Mrs. Jackson's parents raised a women who remembers to say ma'am and be proper on the phone even when someone is trying to kill her and who prays in the midst of battle. GOOD JOB and God Bless the South!
6. Mrs. Jackson did what she had to do. I am tremendously sorry she had to go through this. I cannot bring myself to honor a killing no matter how justified with a "good job". I am very grateful that we still have Donna Jackson with us and that this encounter turned out as it did. I can't see Mrs. Jackson accepting a "good job" from me. No doubt she would have been much happier with being left alone.
7. Oklahoma's "Make My Day Law" seems to be working as it should. Good Job!
It will take you all of 5 min to find Mrs. Donna Jackson of Stroud OK address if you want to send her a card.
"I wish I watched more 'All in the Family' in the 70s.
Archie Bunker was 1/3 Visionary, 1/3 Lunatic and 1/3 Genius; I just wish I knew which third I was dealing with."
