MY OWN SYSTEM OF COMPUTER INSURANCE

Computers and peripherals, when they work, make life much more bearable. While my flat panel was working all day, tonight as I was about to write a blog, I could not get the monitor.to turn on. Not having the desire at 1 AM to stand on my head, search through the maze of tangled wires beneath and behind the desk, there is little energy to write of import, One of my laptops is playing stand in....Tomorrow I can either plug the monitor I use for my second desktop or go buy another after I check the warranty out on the one that is staying dark.

Obviously, if I were anything other than bleary eyed tired, I could write something worth reading right now...but it isn't going to happen. Instead, off I go to..... zzzzzzzzzzzz!

HELPLESSNESS

Many events and situations in life leave one feeling helpless. Having a friend so critically ill that all you can do is send a message of caring and love through a relative is among the top on my frustration list. It is good that doctor's will try to place odds on someone's chance of survival, I guess, when they are good...not so when the odds of survival are around 25%! Helplessly one can only sit around and wait for better news.

The impotence felt is akin to what is raised within, listening to political analysts. I have to keep reminding myself how often they are wrong, though they sound so totally convinced of their own faulty wisdom. Negative campaigning works; negative campaigning doesn't work. The race card is being played; the race card is not being played. Being young and bright is a plus; being young and bright is a liability. Being old, physically a time bomb, but a hero for having survived being a prisoner of war for years makes you ready to be President; age, poor health, POW status does n ready one to be Commander in Chief. Not having been in the Armed Services disqualifies you to be Commander in Chief. (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and GW Bush excepted, of course) Only those with sufficient ability to discriminate the hypocrisy have a fighting chance and that seems to be less than 50%.

ARE MEN OR WOMEN HAPPIER?

Attempts to find out whether women are happier than men have been made. Men base their happiness more on what they have amassed materially. Women tend to value family more. Sharon Jayson of USA today, reporting on research results writes: "Researchers analyzed decades of national data on 47,000 men and women to create a statistical model that shows women's happiness decreases, while men's increases, exceeding women's by age 48."

In a short film clip, a couple of older women were interviewed. One pointed across the street at her husband and grown twin sons and said 'while they carried out only the luggage, I was left to do everything else and I am tired'.

"Last year, a team of researchers added a novel twist to something known as a time-use survey. Instead of simply asking people what they had done over the course of their day, as pollsters have been doing since the 1960s, instead of the usual factual responses requested, women were asked about the emotions felt. Were they happy? Interested? Tired? Stressed? " This was written by David Leonhard.

There seems to be a growing gap between men and women. Women like visiting their parents less than men. It is suggested that men will sit and watch ball games with Dad while the women prepare food, cater, clean up, and wait on the men. There are without doubt, exceptions to that finding. There seemed no distinction between men and women as widows and widowers which seemed to me to be holding rather different criteria than married older people.

I was having difficulty accepting many of the conclusions. Women, presumably spend less time dusting than they used to do so the researcher concluded that the houses were nowdustier. He did not factor in hepa filters, vacuuming dust up rather than just moving it around, or central air conditioning requiring fewer open windows and thus letting less dirty air into the house.

Another assumption was that women were happier a few decades ago because they compared themselves only to other women, whereas they, today, compare themselves to men. How they reached that presumption was as clear to me as how Freud got so much mileage out of penis envy until the feminists pointed out that it really is penis pity. This writer also claimed that women haven't come as far as they wished and he finished the article with: "This weekend, I think I may volunteer to do a little dusting." He is all too reminiscent of John Gray who wrote "Men Are from Mars; Women Are from Venus." I think he was from the planet Uranus.

NATURE BALANCING THE ODDS

Life never goes in a straight, eventful line of good things and happy circumstances. The night I was called with the news that a very close friend had a heart attack and was in critical condition, I bit into a blackberry and found my mouth contained a floating tooth. A crowned tooth broke off at the root. I hasten to describe the blackberry as the soft kind that grows on a bush, not the hard kind that acts like a typewriter, phone, database, and all but cooks your breakfast.

My immediate first move, after picking out the rootless tooth, was to put my tongue into the space. There, between tooth #9 and tooth #11 (I think) was a replica of the grand canyon. Great shock and disappointment resulted when I realized there was not enough tooth left to have the crown reset. The cheek flesh that got sucked into the gap felt soft and fluffy, not like when my tongue roamed the rest of my cheek.

All that having been checked out, my next magnet was the mirror. Why does a missing tooth, next to a front tooth, instantly profile an identity out of Disney as the wicked stepmother traveling incognito. Back to the mirror, I practiced just how large a smile I could allow before the old hag appeared. Apparently not much. My greatest pleasure in life is a good belly laugh so I fantasied using a fan in front of my face but knew that wouldn't fly in the office.

Off to the dentist who was to pull the root out. His nurse held up a full set of x-rays and it looked like an archaeological find. He said he thought he should do the implant immediately after pulling the root, before the bone had time to crumble around the hole. He suggested, when he saw my shock, as I was thinking how long I would be sporting the Big Dig every time I opened my mouth, I should see my regular dentist to have a 'flipper' made. In six days I could get the next available appointment to have an impression taken, whereupon a new group whom they have not tried before will make up the flipper (hopefully not in New Delhi) but they could not tell me just exactly how long I would have to blow air through the channel between my teeth when I try to say anything with "Eff" or "Ess" in it.

My root extraction and implant will happen on September 4th as someone had canceled. I quietly wondered what would have happened if the root were giving me pain. However, respectfully unwilling to take a time away from someone who truly might have been suffering, other than vanity, I accepted the offer, made the appointment to be measured for the 'flipper', and went on my merry way happily escaping a sore jaw for another month, I hope.

US FACES RECORD BUDGET DEFICIT

What can one expect from a person who never felt the pain of poverty?
Bush has been an impotent figurehead who has been charmed by his handlers into thinking he will go down in history as a great President. Instead, he will just go down in history.

If Al Jazeera can figure it out, why can't our own media speak a bit more honestly?

WHAT SEPARATED MCCAIN FROM LOWER AND MIDDLE CLASS REALITY?

For the first time in a very long time, the nightly news had an Amber Alert, and seven swimmers sucked in by dangerous waters creating an undertow, rather than a rehash of political news. I remain saddened that John McCain has resorted to such dirty politics for a man we had come to revere for his long suffering in capture while fighting for his country. While respecting what he had come through, I never thought it made him presidential material. Instead, I thought some of his work as a Senator might qualify him, but he has managed to disqualify himself with his present positioning on too many issues.

He accuses Obama of a political decision about the war rather than what is best for the country while he shows his ignorance of the thinking of the majority in the country by insisting that a family consists of a father and mother. He insisted on the George Stephanopoulos Show that, rather than have a gay couple adopt a child, he thought it better that the children stay in foster or institutional care. The man hasn't a clue to what he subjects children nor a clue to the wonderful children some of whom are being raised by a single parent or gay parents become.

Huffington Post: "At another point in the interview, McCain was asked to specify his position on gay adoption, an issue where the Senator's political leanings remain somewhat opaque. He did little to clear the air. McCain stumbled in his response and wouldn't answer the question definitively one way or the other. Also, after saying initially that the gay adoption issue was "not the reason I am running for President of the United States," he made an about-face, claiming,
"I'm running for president of the United States because I want to help with family values. I think family values are important when we have two parent families that are parents of the traditional family."

Instead of furthering an understanding of issues for which people should vote for him, he remains negative and gives his reasons why Obama should not get votes. It is a pity he didn't stick to what he said he would not do...negative campaigning Today he did a great deal to prove why he will not make a good President.

POT-POURRI

Condoleeza Rice is in Australia and New Zealand at the invitation of Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, Caught on BBC News today, it describes: Students at one university are offering a reward of NZ$5,000 ($3,700; £1,870) for anyone who carried out a citizen's arrest on Ms Rice. Her arrest is being sought for "overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation" of Iraq, said Auckland University Student Association (AUSA) president David Do.

Brattleboro, VT, has put out notices that there is a petition making President Bush and Vice President Cheney subject to arrest for crimes against the Constitution. E-mails were being sent from all over, some positive and some negative. Many reflected this message in one form or other: You do have many supporters out here in the REAL WORLD.

Girls are making their mark at the Soap Box Derby. An article by Sarah Hollander in the Plain Dealer, an Ohio paper, indicates that it is definitely no longer for boys. Perhaps it is because boys are too busy playing the war games produced for every 'hand-held' toy that is produced to seduce them to buy a new media on which to play it?