Deliverance

RIP ROBIN WILLIAMS

Written over ten years ago.

RIP, Robin Williams.

 

HAVE A ROCKING RED MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope everyone has a merry, merry Christmas!

FIVE THINGS THAT I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF

1.  Anthony Weiner--great name for this idiot and what an ego he has.  I certainly hope that New Yorkers send him a message to go away.  If they don't do so they deserve this jerk and so does his wife for not kicking his lying, emailing, instant messaging, texting, tweeting ass out.

2.  News about celebrities--at least their latest arrests, divorces, fights, etc.  I couldn't care less.  And whoever started combining couple's names really needs to be drug off and shipped to North Korea.

3.  Any media outlet that uses the word se-ques-tra-tion.

4.  The U.S. Congress.  These guys and gals have totally lost the ability to legislate.  It's been so long now I doubt they even know how to create and pass a law that actually benefits the country instead of their lobbyists.  

5.  Software updates.  Do we really have so much happening that software has to be updated daily?  Or sometimes more than once a day?  It just tells me someone doesn't exactly know what they're doing. Either that or they have entirely too much time on their hands.  

THE NATURAL STATE

The Medlocks are heading to our annual trip to Hilton Head next week.  It's one of a handful of times each year that I really look forward to mostly doing nothing.

It's special for me when I go there. I can slow down.  My natual impatience gets dramatically reduced. And each day is pretty close to my vision of a perfect day.  

I like to get up early--usually as the sun is coming up or shortly after daylight. Then I head to the beach for a brisk walk of about an hour.  I like only hearing the natural sounds of the ocean waves breaking and the gulls calling. Sometimes there is enough of a morning fog that the sun is filtered leaving the sea and the beach in a monochrome gray.  I like that view a lot.  

I do a lot of thinking during my walk.  It seems to clear my head.  When I get back I'll dry off and cool down for a half-hour or so.  Then I'll have a light breakfast and a strong coffee.  Then Mrs. Medlock and I head to the pool or beach and we'll spend the rest of the morning reading and people watching and even an occasional nap.  I like to bring the newest James Lee Burke book to Hilton Head.  Often I'll buy it and leave it unread until I get to the island.

After lunch we may go back to the beach or head out shopping or sight-seeing.  During that time out we'll plan where we're having our evening meal, maybe going there while we are still out if it is late enough. We like to discover new local restaurants and revisit our favorites. Then back to the condo, more reading and sometimes we will do a late evening stroll on the beach or just sit on the balcony reading or listening.  

Some mornings I don't walk.  Instead I'll rise early again and just sit on the balcony looking at and listening to the sounds of the sea and thinking.  

It's a healing trip, a quiet time and almost reverent.  I'm drawn to the peace of nature when I'm there.

It doesn't get much better than that.

ON AGING

Aging humbles us all.

The days go by and before you know it the years are gone and you discover that you are old. You realize that many things you wanted did not and will not happen.  And as each new day goes by you know that you have less and less to gain and more and more that has been lost. You realize that you have less days to live and therefore you look back more at the ones you have lived.  Self-reflection is a constant.

The process is not necessarily a negative thing.  The world can become slower and perhaps calmer.  You look inward more and you find out more about yourself.  Some find more peace. Some find less.  Family becomes more and more important.  Past events become romanticized and made more important. Others become less important.  Your views may become less dimensional and therefore have more clarity.

But slowly and surely a detoriation of your body and mind occurs until you become a different person. You may lose your sense of worth and the role in life you felt was yours. And in the worst case you may become eventually dependent on others.  If you maintain your mental alertness you hope you can maintain mastery of your own self and avoid the feelings of helplessness as the slide toward the inevitable continues.

A good death, if there is one, is not a slow one, though one could correctly argue that we are all slowly dying.  A good death is a fast one that avoids any feelings of helplessness, lack of control and fear. And a good death is one when you are ready both mentally and spiritually.   Especially spiritually.

SUM TING WONG INDEED

If you have doubted that the Internet and all of the other forms of instant journalism has led to the demise of professional journalism you should no longer be in doubt.  

I'm referring to the recent San Francisco television station news broadcast which aired the names of the Korean pilots involved in the plane crash at SFO.   I have read that this particular station is one of the most respected news stations in the SF area.  I don't know if that's true but if it is then it's even more proof of the decline of professional journalism.  

The station said they had confirmed the names with the NTSB.  That apparently is true (supposedly a summer intern) but it's hard to believe that if someone had only pronounced the names before going on the air they would have figured out they were being pranked.  In other words every indication is they did no further fact-checking, discussion or even pronunciation before going with the names on the air.

I can't imagine Murrow, Cronkite, Brinkley, Brokaw or any big city news organizations ever doing this in their time. But cable news, the Internet and the economy have changed things. And not for the better. We don't have journalism anymore; we just have broadcasting.  There's a big difference.

ACT NATURALLY

It would be nice to say that I've been too busy being fabulous. Or just having too many other important things to do.  But neither of those excuses would be true. 

Over a year ago I decided to get off the proverbial pot because I found myself posting when I felt that I needed to rather than posting when I wanted to.  That's a big difference for me.  I write best with some stream of consciousness flowing from my pea-brain naturally through my arms to my fingers.  Sort of like water flowing downhill.  You can force it down or just let it go down naturally.  I finally realized over a year ago that I was forcing it.  It becomes a burden when forced instead of a release when not.

So I have decided it is time to return.  Kudos to Alecto who helped that decision along with a little poke in the ribs.  Yes, I'm actually alive and well, Alecto and Jules.  And many thanks for asking. It's nice to be missed.  Luckily for me I have kept up with the old group via Google Reader before its untimely demise and now through Feedly.  I even found Ridgerunner but under an alias.  He still writes well.

I'll see how it goes from here.  This post was easy and that's a good sign.  All I have to do is act naturally.  Someone should alert the authorities just in case.  

TAKE A LOAD OFF, LEVON HELM

AN AMERICAN HERO

Yeah, it's been quite awhile since I've posted.  I've wanted to but simply didn't have the time, mostly work-related issues.  Sometimes one has to take on the Big Blue Ball and when you do it takes time and a lot of energy, in this case four weeks of my time.  Worked out good in the end though.  Enough said.

You knew I wasn't going to let this go by with commenting. God bless Greg Smith.  He refused to drink Goldman's kool-aid any longer.  It's a big deal for someone to resign their job based on principle and even bigger to do it from as big a name as GS and as public as he has.  He has written so eloquently about what I have known was a cancer in American business and tried to say in this blog for a very long time.  He says it much better than I ever did.  I dare say he will be blackballed from any major American company from this moment on.  

I want to emphasize that Goldman Sachs is only an example of the malaise that not only affects American business but affects this country as a whole.  Simply put we put personal wealth over everything else.  Love thy neighbor?  Only if he is generating profits for us.  We have lost our values and our sense of purpose.

We didn't get to this point overnight and it will similarly take a long time to get out of this mess. But it has to happen. Businesses and people can make money, even lots of money, without losing their integrity.  They just have to focus on the integrity part first. Doing things the right way with respect for your customers and others isn't always easy and it doesn't necessarily equate to financial success. But it can be done that way because we did exactly that for many years.  It has only been in the last twenty to thirty years that greed has overtaken the respect of customers and our fellow man.

I have to say it again.  God bless Greg Smith.  

He's an American hero. 

FIVE THINGS I THINK

I'm back.

1.  Take a look at this and if you think that was bad then you need to read this. Obviously anything goes.  We clearly have lost our way in terms of having political disagreement in this country and the media is the ring leader.  What happened to respect?  Shameful and disgusting in both cases.

2.  My doctor says it's time for me to renew my relationship with my gastroenterologist. We last were, shall I say, "intimate" about 10 years ago.  It had to better for him than me though because I don't remember a thing after he had me roll over to one side.  For those of you who have yet to experience a colonoscopy and you are over the age of 50 you must do so and the absolute best way to prepare for it can be found here.   Read and make an appointment soon.

3.  The stock market is up and housing sales are improving. Auto sales are booming. Gas prices are rising again even though demand is down.  And because demand is down U.S refiners are shuttering plants and exporting gasoline.  Bank of America is apparently looking at imposing fees for providing checking accounts to consumers. That's right. They want you to give them your money so they can charge you for doing so.  It's an economic bizarro world out there, sports fans.  I wish Professor Milton Friedman were still alive. I would love to hear what he had to say about all of this.

4.  And speaking of bizarro what exactly was the deal with Angelina Jolie and her right leg at the Oscars? She looked like a hooker in a lineup of hookers trying to pick up a john.

5.  There's one thing that I think could really help this country and that's a fair and just tax system.  It's not that hard to do.  I believe everyone, including corporations, should pay at the same rate so that if you make more you pay more.  It's Congress and the lobbyist who prevent it from happening.