It is Memorial Day

Summer is book ended by two holidays, Memorial Day and Labor Day. Every Memorial Day I have high hopes for the summer, but usually by Labor Day I am disappointed. You would think by now I would have learned my lesson. This year, my expectations for summer are very low, not because I learned my lesson, but because COVID-19 is here and it is not going anywhere. Sure there will likely be a slow down the infection rate, but it will not go away and come fall, we will see the second wave and everyone will be surprised.

So I would like to turn my attention to Memorial Day itself, not as the beginning of summer, or a day of BBQ, but rather as a solemn day of remembrance. To be clear, Memorial Day is for soldiers who lost their lives during conflicts. Veterans Day is when we show our gratitude to those who survived those conflicts.

I am a veteran, I have been to war, but more importantly, I have seen the results of war. I am going to state clearly and without regret, that war is never worth the end result. I am not going to tell you the United States should not have entered World War II, we had no choice and it was the right thing to do. However, World War II never should have started in the first place. Adolf Hitler's dream of world domination was not on any level worth the lose of even one life, let alone millions. I say the same thing about the 2nd gulf war, whatever reason George W. Bush had for starting that war, was not worth the end result.

I am certain I will receive criticism for this point of view, after all, isn't the world a better place without Saddam Hussein? The answer is, no the world is not a better place, because nothing has particularly changed. The middle east is still a mess and has turned into nothing more than meat grinder for American troops. Certainly Iraq is a democracy now, but it is one that is being propped up by 25,000 American troops who remain stationed there and the billions of dollars a year we send in aid. If we were to withdraw, the people of that nation would likely vote themselves into another dictatorship in just a few years, so no meaningful change has occurred in the world as a result of that war.

I do believe we should remember these men and women who sacrificed themselves and we should show them the respect they earned, we should not fool ourselves into thinking their sacrifice had meaning, because it did not. War should not be glorified, it should be viewed as a failure of humanity.

Edit:
So think about this when deciding if the Iraq war was necessary or not. If Iraq's primary export was strawberry jelly rather than oil, but everything else was the same, would we have still found it necessary to invade?

I wsh I were a better man

Okay so, I try not to slut shame and what I mean by that is I try not to denigrate women for expressing their sexuality. In fact I will be the first person in line celebrating women's sexuality. I like it when women fearlessly show themselves as sexual beings and I appreciate the feminine form. Of course the problem for me and all men really is where to draw the line, because we also do not want to objectify women, women are more than just a set of boobs. I of course fail at this more than I like to admit. This is a good example of one of my failures. When this picture appeared in my FaceBook feed, my first reaction was, "Really, so we are going for Artist are we?".

That was really not a fair reaction to her, it is really none of my business what she considers her profession and my response to the picture she uses for her page is not her fault, but rather my own.

For those of you who want to know, I did not click on the link for her page, nor did I follow her.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day I think gets a bum rap. Lots of people don't like it because it is a greeting card holiday, meaning it was created as a way to sell greeting cards and it is a total commercial fabrication. Others do not like it because it is only for women and men are not into it. I disagree with both of these opinions.

Now don't get me wrong, my wife and i do not celebrate Valentine's Day in any significant way, but I do go out of my way each year to specifically tell her that I will love her until the day I die and this will be true unless I receive a brain injury that erases the last 40 years of my life.

My thing is, Valentine's Day is a holiday meant to celebrate love and friendship and yes, I think little kids in school should be expected to give those cheap little cards to each other and even as adults we should give them to the people we love and even our friends to remind them that we care. Love and friendship is something we should celebrate, especially when you consider how many holidays we have to commemorate various wars and don't even get me started on Columbus day and Thanksgiving.

I really don't think it is too much to ask to have one day a year where love is celebrated and we show appreciation for the people who loved us throughout our lives. So the next time someone complains about having to buy some chocolate and flowers for his wife, remind him that she is the mother of his children, remind him she has been there for him through the hard times and even the times when he was not a very nice person to be around.  If you hear a woman complaining that her husband never does anything for her on Valentine's Day, ask her if she is making worth his while to celebrate it, remind her that it is not just a day for her, but it is a day for him as well. Believe me ladies, if you give him a blowjob on Valentine's Day, he will have flowers in hand the next Valentine's Day.

Review: Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Looking for Alaska starts off a a light hearted coming of age book, where a young nerd boy goes off to boarding school and much comedy ensues. The book covers first love, first kiss and yes, first blow job. All of this works well, I did not just identify with the main character Miles "Pudge" Halter, but I also identified with Chip "The Colonel" Martin and Alaska Young (her real name), who are his best friends and the primary instigators of all the teenage antics they perform. Up to this point, it is a fun book, well written and beautiful characterizations. The book very much reminded me of the good things about being a teenager.

About halfway through the book, the unthinkable happens and Alaska Young dies in a car crash. I have to say, this is one of the best deaths I read in a very long time. Not in terms of interesting or spectacular or anything like that, but in terms of emotional hit. Because it hits like a bull out of no where and leaves you thinking what the fuck just happened. Now, with just under half the book left to read, the reader is no longer reading about the fun loving teenagers sneaking cigarettes, but suddenly left with sullen and remorseful teenagers coming to terms with the death of their friend and deal with their grief in their own ways. No teenager should have to read this book, but they probably should.

There are uncomfortable moments in this book, subject matters that teenagers probably should not be reading about. The problem with this view point, is I am an adult and I am viewing this story through the lens of an adult whose memories of being a teenager are not as clear as they once were. There is a semi graphic scene describing oral sex, these kids also engage in drinking and drug use, as an adult, this bothers me. However, this is what being a teenager is like, these kids taking their first tentative steps into adulthood and are exploring the possibilities. This is what it is like to be a teenager and we should not avoid these subjects, rather they should be included in stories like this, because oftentimes it can be a jumping off point for parents to talk about these subjects with their kids. Being uncomfortable was good for me and made me realize, teenagers have really not changed that much since I was one.

This book was better than I was expecting. While it is classified as Young Adult, this is a book even an old ass adult can enjoy.

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Hello Darkness My Old Friend

I can't sleep, I hate it when I can't sleep. I have no idea why, I just woke up at 2AM and could not go back to sleep, I laid in bed for a good hour before finally getting up, hoping occupy my mind with something for a bit. That really didn't help, I just wandered the internet aimlessly, not really doing anything useful or even interesting. Even Reddit and Pintrest have failed to amuse me. This has been happening to me a lot in the last year or so, I think it is a side effect of when I was working the graveyard shift, when my peak functional time was around midnight. I think I just never quit bounced back from that experience. In some ways, living life like this is not a bad thing, if you think about it, you have half the world to yourself, no one bothering you with the useless drama that is their lives. On the other hand, it is also lonely and things you normally enjoy, like music, can become irritating, because it breaks up the quiet.

Nurseferatu Podcast #5

In this week's episode we start with Viagra and end with hemorrhoids.

https://nurseferatu.net/2019/04/30/ask-a-nurse-practitioner/

Just as an insight into this weeks show, I literally made up those questions 5 minutes before we started recording, Leigh had no idea what I was going to throw at him.

Nurseferatu Podcast #4

https://nurseferatu.net/2019/04/15/this-weeks-podcast/

Nurseferatu

Leigh Sampson-Seitz invited me to co-host his podcast, to add a laymen view point on medical healthcare. While I know nothing about healthcare, I do have an opinion on just about everything, which makes me at least as qualified as Jenny McCarthy to talk about such things, so I readily accepted the invitation.


https://nurseferatu.net/2019/04/02/podcast-3-better-than-2/

Review: The Power of Now

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The good: There is a lot to like in this book. It puts a modern spin on some old ideas. I like the idea of not letting the regret of past actions or worry for future actions take you out of what is important right now. I really do think we spend a lot of time and energy worrying about things we really have no control over and it is a good thing to concentrate of the things we do have control over, which are all in the here and now.

I would dearly love to be able to shut down my thinking, at least occasionally and just be happy with where I am and what I am doing. I have never been able to meditate, more because i never understood why I should, but this book gives a good clear answer as to why meditation is good and can help you, although he does not go into meditation directly, I can see where it would be helpful. It also explained very nicely why some processes I use seem to work so well for me. Like when I have a problem I cannot solve, setting it aside and doing something else allows the answer to come from somewhere deeper inside me. I knew this worked for me, but I did not understand why it works for me.

I also really liked the idea of listening to yourself talk in your head and separating yourself from it so you can judge if what it is saying the correct thing, or if its just going off into directions that may not be the best option. I have always known there were two voices in my mind, the loud one and the one that is much softer and is often more like feeling than conscience thought. Reading this book, I realized the loud voice is basically a hammer I use to pound on problems with, while the other is more nuanced, that I often ignore.

The bad: I kind of felt like he was talking down to me throughout the book. I felt he expected me to "Just Get It" and when I did not, I felt myself resisting what he was trying to teach me. I also felt he was trying to sell me on something, which also caused some resistance in my acceptance of his message.

The ugly: The author is really not a very good writer, besides the above mentioned condescension, he also tended to repeat himself and towards the end of the book I found the repetitive nature of his writing style to wear thin. I also did not care for the question and answer format of the book, it made it feel like I should have already been familiar with his work and that I was missing something important, like I had not done my homework so to speak.

Overall, it is a pretty good book, it was well worth the read. However, if this is your first book of spirituality, I would suggest going for something a little simpler, perhaps a good book on meditation. This will help you understand some of the concepts he kind of expects you to have already grasped. He does have a book he wrote later Practicing the Power of Now, which I have not read, but is supposed to give you a basic framework and help you integrate his ideas into everyday life. In retrospect, I should have read that book first.

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Some days I am embarrassed for humanity

Things you see in museums

I came across this on FaceBook today. If I ever play a Bard in D&D, this is totally going to be my instrument.

Thanksgiving Vacation

This my last day of vacation, I traveled home to Billings and spent some quality time with my family. I got to meet the newest member of my extended family, Haley, my Great Niece. Seeing the look on her mothers face as I was telling Haley that I would be the one showing her how to be weird, teaching her to swear and on her 16th birthday I would give her beer, cigarettes and condoms, was priceless. The whole trip was fun and after I got home, I immediately wanted to go back.

To the Internet with Love

Sometimes when I am surfing the internet, I come a crossed a picture that makes me stop and think for awhile. This is one such picture, when I saw it, I thought it was a picture of a 60's hippie chic, after all, she is obviously naked under those coveralls. As I thought about it though, I came to the conclusion that perhaps she was a country girl, with her dirty feet and unkempt hair. Of course my mind did not stop there, she is obviously posed and seems comfortable in front of a camera, it is also possible she is a model.

I finally broke down and did a reverse image search and found this woman is Bessie Love, a silent screen era actress, the picture was taken in 1923. She was in fact all of the things I considered, she was born a Texas country girl, who was by all accounts a woman a head of her time and an academy award nominated actress. This picture is endearing because of its earthy innocents and time transcending beauty.