Strangeness of Tears

In keeping with what today is in anniversary of and the tone of my post last week (my first post in a loooong time), I had decided that this week would be in contemplation of what makes us people and how we feel. I shed tears as I made my post last week, and as this day has barely begun for me, I have already shed tears thinking about where I was on that day and where I was when it happened.


But it feels strange to cry sometimes. Perhaps it has been too long since I cried merely for the cathartic value of a tear shed. Maybe because for men to cry it is seen as a sign of weakness, and who wants to be seen as weak, right? It could even be that you don't want to have to explain to someone exactly why your face is so red and exactly you were just crying about because it would likely result in more tears.

I think we as a society are restrained in too many ways, and not enough in others. Now, maybe people like Laura Ingraham, conservative radio talk show host are right about the "pornification" of our culture. In that sense we are not nearly restrained enough. But for the mere concept of tears results in so much inner turmoil for a person, that is the true sign that something about our society is genuinely screwed up.

So go out there and let your feelings be known. All stifling your feelings is going to do is hurt yourself in the long term and diminish your usefulness to yourself and those that rely on you. I'm not saying go out into the world and become some sort of overly-militant activist for and be a complete prick to the rest of the world, but the only thing that's going to result from holding all those tears on the inside is mildew of the soul.

I Am A Rock, Yet Who Shall Be Mine?

I know it's been a long time and I hate to come back on such a downer, but I need to talk again.

I feel pain in my heart. It is no small wound.

Not any more, at least.

It has been gnawing at me for quite some time now. It has been as if some part of my soul has atrophied and fallen away, and the only thing rushing in to fill the gap left in its wake is more darkness.

The tears push outwards, inevitably working their way through whatever half-assed defenses I try and stall them with. I can stop the tears when I am around others, but it feels like trying to block the flow of an ocean with a beaver dam.

I fear the day that I know will one day come. The day I will burst into tears uncontrollably and fall into a whimpering heap on the floor in front of someone. The day I become useless.

I have never seriously thought of killing myself. That is not to say I have never contemplated suicide. In truth, I believe the thought goes through the mind of every person, no matter how sane they may or may not be. But I know that should I ever do that my absence would cause an irreparable harm to those who know me. And I have been raised better than that.

And I believe to some large degree therein lies the crux of the matter.

For the most part, I am a fairly generous person, constantly giving of myself and my time to almost anyone. I try to be everything to everyone because there is so much I can do and so much that everyone else needs, and many times I am the only person who can or will give. I give and give of myself to such a degree that I no longer know who I am. I stay so busy that there really is no time for me to figure it out.

I believe I am probably bipolar, or at least suffer from occasional bouts of depression. I know there are times that I display many of the symptoms associated with both. But I fear that if I go to a doctor, psychiatrist, therapist or whatever, they will say “You must take this pill!” and the second that I do, I will cease to be the man that God made me. I will no longer have the talents that God blessed me with and I will no longer be able to fulfill whatever destiny God had in store for me. I will ultimately lose the drive that keeps me going. And that is the last part of me I know that is redeemable. That is the part of me that everyone loves, or at least tolerates. And it is the part of me that they need. I fear I will no longer be the “me” that God has made me and will become whatever “me” the chemical makes me.

It just get a little difficult sometimes, being the “rock” that others rely upon.

Who will be my “rock”?

I ponder just walking away from it all sometimes. Just getting up from wherever I happen to be whenever the mood strikes me and keep walking. Not to any place in particular. Just some place else and watch from the sidelines.

Not that I’d ever really go. Too many people need me and would be hurt if I left, and I can’t let that happen. And besides, when it comes right down to it, there’s no place that I really want to go.

And there’s too much work to be done.

And never enough time.

For the Record, I'm Not Anti-Government, I'm Anti-Corrupt Government

And this is a problem that I often have while I'm thinking about the social and political dichotomies that exist in our world today. When I talk about what I and many others like me believe in, I always hear "You're anti-government, aren't you?"

And my response is "I'm anti-corrupt government. Are you saying we can't have one (governemnt) without the other (corruption)?"

Which is something that you really have to think about hard. The old adage is that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." And this seems to be eternally true. Our elected representatives are, to a certain extent, placed into power over us. And it seems inevitably that with this power we grant them to reflect and enact our collective wills over each other they go to expand their powers beyond those originally granted them, allowing themselves to do things (they believe) that they have no business doing.

Once again, its just a question of where do we as a people draw the line? Where can we draw the line? I'm not entirely sure, but we need to do it and we need to do it soon.

Not much, just a thought for the day.

Social Attrocities On The Part of the Current Administration

Everyone knows I hate Bush. Trim it, wax it, I don't care. Do what you've got to do, but get rid of it.

Oh, and then there's the matter of our illustrious president and his staff. I'm no fan of this group of cretins. At first it was my disgust with their collective lack of intelligence. Then it moved onto their abuse of this "war on terror" nonsense.

But now, my disgust has gone to brand new levels. These people need to be removed from their positions as soon as possible.

Consider for a moment the recent allegations of the electronic monitoring of communications of American citizens. Yes, we all know that its "to fight terrorism" and is only done to "suspected Al-Queda affiliates." That is complete and utter bull, and has been shown to be such. We know that its used on American citizens and extends beyond terrorism and even the pretense of crime=terrorism.

But there is one thing that makes this worse: the obvious misunderstanding and misuse of the President's "Commander-in-Chief" status. They apparently think that this gives Dubya carte blanche to do whatever the hell he pleases. A staff member was even caught on tape at a recent speech at a major university saying that, if he wanted to, the President could order the torture of a suspected terrorist's child to illicit information from the suspect, even by such means as crushing the child's testicles.

No, I'm not lying. A camera was snuck into this speech / presentation which cameras were not allowed at (no wonder why) and this person was caught on tape saying these things.

Tell me this is not wrong. Tell me that we as Americans are not so collectively numbed down that we can accept this. Even having this on our television shows is one thing (not an okay one), but to let ourselves become so dead inside, so numb to this sort of thing due to overexposure from the media is almost as bad is it happening in the first place. Its almost as bad as saying that is okay, that he has the right to be order that it be done (even in the broadest, most theoretical sense).

American society is dying inside.

Its time we all stand up and say "This is not okay. This is not acceptable. Leave your office so we can put someone sensible, moral, and still human in your place."

The Start of Daily Posts

Starting today I'm going to be back on daily weekday posts.

Honest.

Hand to god!

I figure since part of my resolutions are to become more disciplined for the new year, part of executing that resolution is setting and adhering to schedules. So part of that scheduling is that I'm going to set aside time to post each day.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. "He's not going to. He's blowing smoke up our sphinctoral orifices."

We shall see.

We shall see.

Happy New Year All! I'm Back, Refreshed, And Ready To Take On The World!

I've gotten all the bad funk out of my system, got the good funk on. It was a funk-transplant!

And, like everyone else, I've got a few resolutions for the New Year. Let's go over them in order, shall we?

1) I resolve to be more disciplined. I've really let myself slide a lot, especially over this past year. I'm not proud of it, and it really hurts me physically and emotionally.

2) I resolve to keep my cool. I let my emotions, anger especially, get the best of me more often than I'd care to admit.

3) I resolve to act with more common sense. The rest of the world could also be better off for following this one. I just need to think things through more logically and look at all the facts before rashly jumping to conclusions.

4) I resolve to live by one simple inspirational quote.

This is the note I'm going to leave on for today. Its a quote that I've long drawn inspiration from and most everyone, especially everyone would do well to follow. And here it is...

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and if it were possible, to speak a few resonable words."

~Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

Man, I HATE Finals Season!!! Flaws In Electronic Testing System

I try to take everything in stride, but this really just gets my goat so to speak.

I know "Finals Time" is something that everyone in higher education has to look forward to, or dread. I know that, especially in a technical college, they like to do everything electronically. And I can deal with that.

What I am tired of, however, is the rather lack-luster online testing program utilized at my school. Truth to be told, I have never taken a test via this method that has not had a number of istakes as well as repeated questions. I'm sure a lot of this is due to human error, but there has to be some of it that could be caught if the program itself were structured a little differently. But, then again, the poor structure of the testing program goes back to human error, doesn't it?

It's like that old saying goes... "To err is human. To really screw up, you need a computer."

I'm just venting right now, but it really is horribly done. All of the questions are created and input manually, and from the looks of things, without the aid of a spell-check utility. The interface for students is simple html encoding: questions are done in 100 small tables ( 1 per question), answer choices are done in simple radial buttons.

Seems simple enough, no?

But here's where the fun comes in. It is essentially set up merely for multiple choice questions. Multiple choice - multiple answer questions are accomplished by use of a button that lists the potential multiple choices (such as A and C, A and B, etc... you get the idea). It wouldn't be so bad if it were not for the presence of blank questions, blank choices, mis-spellings, and duplicated questions. Seriously. Exactly worded, question and answer, multiple times. Exactly worded, question and answer, multiple times. Exactly worded, question and answer, multiple times.

See, that was annoying, wasn't it?

And that was what I felt the entire time.

I have no problem taking an electronic examination that basically serves little more function than to tell some bureaucrat that educational standards may or may not be being met. I am so completely fine with that. What I am not fine with is when I sit down to take it, I basically have to stare at what looks like a poorly created webpage by a fifth-grader with not nearly enough time to go back and double-check his work like he should.

I know there no real relevance to this post. I just needed to vent for a sec. But I suppose that it does, if nothing else, show that not caring about your work always affects (and likely annoys) someone (if not many people) waaaaay down the line.

***Note: I would like to point out, that in this particular post only, ALL mistakes were intentional. Honest. Not so for the others tho.***