My Daily Pontifications

Things aren't great for Bart right now. I've got a badly bleeding ulcer. I might have cancer. My mother hasn't been given long to live. The trial of my niece is coming up very soon (and I pray she's convicted).

-Bart

All of my magic...
All that I can muster...
Goes to you...

I hope you hear me.
I pray you love me.

Every morning, I stare into the mirror into my hollow eyes and convince myself to keep going.

It will improve.
It will improve.
It will improve.

I pray that medication will help Megan know happiness and relieve her stress. Nothing we've been able to do has helped in the long term, and a kid should not be so tense that anything that goes against what she wants will send her into a fit of tears, screaming, and hitting.

Keep on moving. Keep going. Don't give up.

Things got tense this weekend. The grandfather of the kids wanted to talk to them. It's been six months and we don't have the court order barring it as yet, so this jerk starts talking to one of them about the adoption and how it'll be fought and blah de blah de blah.

GOOD NEWS!

I just got confirmation from the counselor that we can deny contact! All I need now is confirmation from the prosecutor and he's cut off as per the prosecutor!

I suspect this man may become violent with my family in the event that he is denied access. I'm not sure I'll say no, but think I'll just say that they're not in for the time being.

I pray he does not come to my house. I know he's already kidnapped his own child before (thinking he was acting in the child's best interests), and I know he's a violent felon. I will do anything necessary to keep him from hurting my family. I fear this man, I fear his lack of impulse control, and I fear what will happen should he come to my home with evil intent.

Bartleby

I think I almost got robbed today.

I was loading groceries into the truck when a guy started walking toward me really fast while grabbing a screwdriver out of his back pocket and yelling 'Hey!'. I happened to be reaching up to close the lift gate of the Durango when that happened, which I believe exposed my pistol. The guy's demeanor changed instantly, and he stopped dead in his tracks and walked away. When I called the police, they thanked me and said they'd look into it ASAP.

No idea what happened from there. I was reluctant to involve myself with the guy in case he actually needed me for something legit or worse, he was trying to rob me and would freak out of confronted. I carry for self defense, but if I don't have to pull it out and use it, I'm not going to...if the threat isn't immediate, I'm not (deliberately) making it visible.

Bartleby

One last thing:

I THINK I HAVE FREAKING POISON IVY! MY HANDS ITCH LIKE MAD!

Bart

I hack, slash, and stab
But my victim is myself
We all die alone

I own not my land
The enemy is within
Supreme Court took it

A teen conceives
A baby kills a baby
Parents never knew

Guns are dangerous
Cops are for after the fact
Shoot the Intruder

Taxation is theft
Out of fear, I pay it all
IRS took my cash


NOTE: I am not depressed and plan no violence against anyone - I'm just in a weird mood and had some odd stream of consciousness writing I needed to let out. M'kay?

Bartleby

I've been doing some thinking and I feel identification with almost everyone right now. Back when I used to drink, I'd feel this way once in a while when I was on a serious bender. Now, I'm just feeling...strange. It's kinda creepy and I've got creepy thoughts going through my head.

Have you ever been alone when you're in a room full of people that all know you and care about you?

That's the way I feel the vast majority of the time.


Here's some stream of consciousness crap that I just dreamed up:

I am the sinner and the saint
I am the monster and the victim
I am all voices and all experiences

I hear the echoes of the souls of the world
Rushing up from the canyon into my ears
I experience the crush of feelings

...they all hurt...

...even the good ones...

I feel sympathy for the foulest sinner
I feel contempt for the purest saint
I hug my enemy, I hate my lover

I am the outsider, and yet...
I see you, who are so popular
I see you...left out

From now on, this blog is for my personal ramblings. My political stuff is on a new blog that shall remain anonymous.

So go post somewhere for Pete's sake!

Bart

4 years: My daddy can do anything.

7 years: My dad knows a lot, a whole lot.

8 years: My father doesn't know quite everything.

12 years: Oh, well, naturally Father doesn't know that, either.

14 years: Father? Hopelessly old-fashioned.

21 years: Oh, that man is out-of-date. What did you expect?

25 years: He knows a little bit about it, but not much.

30 years: Maybe we ought to find out what Dad thinks.

35 years: A little patience. Let's get Dad's assessment before we do anything.

50 years: I wonder what Dad would have thought about that. He was pretty smart.

60 years: My Dad knew absolutely everything!

65 years: I'd give anything if Dad were here so I could talk this over with him. I really miss that man.




Bartleby

On this day after the day we have set aside to honor those great and wonderful men who stand tall as good fathers, I came to reflect on my parents:

My father - for a long time, a good man...decided to take off when I was twelve. Sometimes I think this was a bad thing, and sometimes I think it was a good thing. There were times when I'd have to sit outside until 11:00pm, doing my homework under a street light because I didn't have a key to the house, he couldn't be bothered to make me one, and I couldn't get inside after school. In the end, my neighbor went over and threatened to break down the door to let me in unless he took care of it, and the next day I got a key. Tip of the iceberg folks.

My mother - for a long time, a good woman...later she became incredibly selfish and self absorbed. This is a woman who used to scream at me on a regular basis, describing what she could do were it not for me and what I drain on her finances I was. I think she wanted to abort me...and know she didn't want me (my father lied and told my mother he was sterile to get her pregnant). An example of her fine love and care is when my car broke down fifty-four miles from home, and when I called for help, she hung up on me. I walked halfway home before I got someone on the phone to come get me. Also tip of the iceberg.


The thing that frightens me is that I see myself making stupid mistakes with my own kids. They're not the same mistakes (and are not on the same scale), but they're still profoundly stupid things that I later regret. I don't want these kids to remember how mad I was all the time - I want them to remember me taking them out for ice cream, to the zoo, fishing, and when they're older...hunting. I want to be an image of swingsets and catching fireflies - not the son-of-a-bitch who kept getting mad over trivialities.

So - how do I stop myself from being such an ass? Today it worked - the fishing poles are set up for tomorrow night (s'more fishing!), and on the way home I'll get some bait. When my wife gets home, it's fishing time!

...but what about the day after, and the day after that? I never thought I'd be a good father (because of my lack of patience), but know that I owe the kids better than I'm giving them. I'm rambling, and don't even know if I'm really saying anything. I guess the proof of the pudding will be in how I implement my new resolutions.

We'll see what happens.

Bartleby

This Father's Day was very interesting for me.  Besides being my first Father's Day where I actually am a father (something daunting in and of itself), but because I reflected on something someone had mentioned to me in passing that I hadn't thought much of until Father's Day. 

Being a parent is an important job. 

That may be obvious to the vast majority of people, but it wasn't to me.  The other thing I realized during my considerations was that I've never before had an important job before in my entire life.  Everything I've done until we got these kids was of middling importance at most, and most things I've done were of no importance or even of negative importance.  Now, I actually have a responsibility that matters.

Kinda strange really.

Rather than look at Father's Day as a day to pat myself on the back, I'm going to look at it as my day to make resolutions on how to be a better father to my kids.  They deserve a far better one than had them before me, and deserve one better than I am as well.  They're good kids and they try very hard to do the right thing.

While I had vowed to myself to make this a purely political blog, I'm throwing this out there as well.  I think I'm going to have to make a separate blog for my political stuff.  This one is already too burdened with my personal life to make it anything else.

So...here are my resolutions:

1. I will teach them more about God.
2. I will count to twenty before I grow angry with the kids.
3. I will take them out for ice cream more often (that this is different than giving them treats at home)
4. I will stop overreacting and getting mad over stupid things.
5. I will take them fishing as much as I did last summer (twice a week, minimum).
6. I will read to them more.
7. I will be more understanding when my middle child is extremely angry.

There it is.

Bartleby

The Moynihan Institute quotes Charles Ogletree thus:

"The purpose of reparations is to bludgeon white Americans into further guilt over slavery and racial segregation and thereby soften them up for a continuing river of financial swag far into the future. Like Martin Luther King Day, Black History Month, the war on Confederate iconography and the crusade against major heroes and symbols of American history and culture, the reparations boondoggle is simply one more part of the continuing political race war that blacks are determined to wage against whites."

Reparations - let's see...the last slave was owned some time back in the 1800's.  If any former slave from the antebellum south is alive today, I'll eat my hat.  So...how in the world do I, who had no relatives who ever owned slaves (sorry, but they were in Ireland at the time) owe a SINGLE PENNY to these people who were never enslaved in the first place?

I hereby grant that they were enslaved by others, and that those specific people that enslaved them and performed the original enslavement are liable for their reparations.  In many (maybe most?) cases, this was their opponent tribes in Africa.  So, the reparations for those people that were enslaved by their neighbors in Africa should come from the (now dead) people that enslaved them.  Mind you, I still think only people directly effected by enslavement (the slaves and their immediate descendents) should receive any monies for this...so if any immediate descendent of a slave is alive today, and they can find the person that originally enslaved their first enslaved ancestor, they have the right to ask for reparations from said person.

Otherwise, I'd say Prof. Ogletree is right.

By the way, he happens to be black.

Bartleby

OK - I've got to rant again...

Partial Birth Abortion...why is this legal again?  This is behavior that if it were done to PUPPIES, the person doing it would be in prison for cruelty to animals, but it's A-OK to do it to a baby!  Wait...how does that work again?  It's OK to do to a baby, but if you jammed seven inch scissors into a 90% birthed puppy's skull, you'd go to prison?

Description (and images) of a PBA:

1.  They initiate contractions

2. The baby, in response to the contractions, grows more active

3.  The baby is slowly pulled out with forceps in a deliberate breech birth

4.  Once all but the baby's head is out of the birth canal (were it not sedated, its legs would be kicking at this point), they take seven inch long scissors and jam them into the skull of the baby, murdering it.

 

Somehow this is not murder.  Somehow this is worse if done to a dog.  Somehow...people view this as the exercise of a right!  This can be done by a child without parents being notified, regardless of the age of the child!  These kids cannot get prescription COLD MEDICINE without parental consent, but they can deliver a baby and have it killed without the parents ever being informed!  THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

Bartleby

 

Rant about an old drug but that pertains to an existing (and I think critical) problem. Fen-Phen and drugs in particular:

FenPhen caused (as the huge problem) primary pulminary hypertension (see the Condi article above).  It changed the risks of getting it radically and actually made the chances go up by several hundred percent.  That means that out of the people who took FenPhen, one person in several million would get PPH.

The second, smaller problem that FenPhen caused was cardiac valvular dysfunction. 

How many people out of the millions in the USA that took FenPhen got CVD?

The FDA had reports of a total of 85.

The mean time the people took FenPhen in the FDA study?  11.9 months.

The time recommended to take FenPhen (by the manufacturer)?  6 weeks (this part is from memory folks, it may have been 6 months).

http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/slides/

So - who was at fault here?  Was it the FDA, who signed off on the drug as being safe?  Was it the doctor who continued prescribing the drugs far beyond the time range specified by the manufacturer and recommended in medical literature?  Was it the pharmacist, who saw people using the drugs far beyond the range recommended in the medical literature?  Was it the users, who used the drugs far beyond the time range specified by the manufacturer and recommended in medical literature?

The feds, the voters, the users of the drugs, and the medical personnel...who continue to complain about the high cost of drugs...decided it was the fault of...THE DRUG COMPANY!

The drug company...that spent considerable time, effort, and expense to find a safe usage range of the drug and issued strict recommendations of usage...THEY were the ones at fault.  This despite the fact that their instructions for use were repeatedly ignored.  This despite the fact that they followed the FDA's instructions for testing and compliance for sale within the ever-stringent USA.  This despite the fact that people in europe who had used the drug for years as recommended by the manufacturer had no problems.

The likelyhood of this actually being because the drug company was at fault is pretty freaking slim.  The likelyhood of this being because the drug company has a lot of money is huge.

Bartleby

There's a discussion on Vox Populi's blog about public breast feeding.  The argument is over whether or not it's courteous to openly breastfeed in public, rather than being discreet and either use a blanket to make it more private or to go to a more private location to keep it out of everyone's face.

My perspective?  Simple - keep it out of our faces, don't make me answer questions my kids shouldn't have to ask, and be polite.

Why is it that so many people lack so much of basic courtesy.  I don't care if you do it, but don't be obvious about it, please.  I don't cut my toenails in the restaurant, please don't expose your breasts similarly.

 

Bartleby

The nephew got ninety years! It's confirmed! He'll serve a minimum of 45 years behind bars. The kids found out last night. No sleep, yet again. *yawn* At least they get a chance for a nice safe life with a dad who is going to be a dad and not an abusive jerk.

I've gotten two new guns...an AK-47 and a Taurus .38 revolver. The Taurus is going to be my carry weapon. We'll see how it works out.

That's all folks,

Bartleby

OK - quick rant:

Why are fully automatic weapons so difficult to get? They're NOT THAT BAD!

They are:

1. Inaccurate
2. Expensive to fire with any regularity
3. Not that much faster than a semi-auto of similar construction
4. Cheap to get so long as you don't want a legal one

So...the people we don't want to have them can get them cheaply, but the people who aren't criminals can't, because they're too expensive.

Yeah, I understand...

...oh wait, no I don't.

Idiocy.

Bartleby

I read a post on another blog (ZeroIntelligence.net) where a person called the tests used in uniform testing of schools racist. His reasoning was fairly shocking...the tests must be racist because blacks and hispanics don't do well on them.

The fact that blacks and hispanics tend not to do as well on a particular test does not indicate that the test is racist. All it indicates is that blacks and hispanics are not as well educated on the subject matter of the test in question. So long as the tests are measuring objectively valid areas of knowledge, they are not racist, and anyone who does poorly or fails reflects another problem altogether...whether that problem reflects poverty, an unsatisfactory home life, a failure on the part of the parents to properly commit the child to doing the homework, or other limiting factor.

During the critical years of my education, I was exceedingly poor (my mother earned 60% of what welfare paid and refused all governmental assistance) and yet my knowledge and intellect reflect a wildly different story than is typical for poor areas. The schools and the testing criteria maybe a small part of the causes of poor educational performance, but the vast majority of it rides on the student and the student's parents.

Children who make a commitment to work hard and do well in school will usually do so. While there are exceptions, the vast majority will do just fine. I made a commitment to do well while in circumstances that were less than ideal, and I have done so. There are thousands of kids like me throughout the country and the world who do very well despite meager resources. That's because the kids decide to work hard and/or the parents decide to make the kids work hard.

In short, if any child with ordinary ability can succeed in those circumstances, then most other children can as well...it just requires work and dedication.

Bartleby

I just got slapped down by someone.

I'm not even sure they realize they've done it.

Other than that hulking thing sitting in the back of my mind, I'm doing well...I just bought an AK-47. We'll see how that works out.

Bartleby