LIFE COMES 'AS IS'

Life is really a 'handyman special'. We start with potential only; what we make of it is up to our own efforts, resources, opportunities and skills. There is much we can change in our lives and it is a challenge to recognize that which we cannot change, accept and keep learning and living. I don't mean 'just living', I mean living as happily and well as is possible for us.

Opposites may attract, as the saying goes. However, in order to get along with one's opposite, there has to be an ability to adjust to change. As one ages, it would appear that the ability to change or adapt lessens for most. Relationships suffer by the demand for people to accept the unacceptable and unfamiliar. Since most women can work and survive on Social Security, pensions or savings, the need for being a couple for financial survival has decreased. The emotional need to be a couple may remain.

Factors which keep people lonely and alone, or able to find ways to rid themselves of loneliness without having to attach to another vary greatly. Loneliness may be a feeling from within or a reality from lack of feedback or satisfaction from without.
you think a romantic resolves loneliness by getting married....think again. It is rarely the case. The urge for people to take on a spouse or partner and then try to turn them into what they think they should be is a powerful one that rarely sees success.

We come 'as is' and not 'one-size-fits-all."

DECEIVED BY HYPOCRITES AND LIARS

Bill O'Reilly was sued for sexual harassment. Read here. Not surprisingly, the suit was settled out of court. Click here for more. Recently O'Reilly took on a bunch of girls for their lewdness in dancing. To read an interesting article on his moralizing to sexy high school dancers, read here.




On 8/30/07, top Republicans were trying to get Senator Craig to quit in disgrace.
Read more on it.
Larry Craig is not longer a Senator but he was listened to for years spewing his hypocritical nonsense and asking people to believe in a morality he did not follow.

Sir Allen Stanford is a disgraced Texas billionaire. There was tremendous impact on English cricket. The consequences of evil people go far. Bernie Madoff is another example of the easy way people have of believing a con artist.

What people fail to see is that con artists are everywhere. They were in the Catholic church and molested children of both sexes for years before law suits forced the church hierarchy to stop their cover ups. The tobacco industry lied about the toxic effects in their cigarettes until the law, once again, began a truth campaign. For many years, homosexuals have hidden in heterosexual marriages, while preying on organizations catering to boys. They have hidden themselves in Boy Scouting, De Molay, Family Institutes, and other organizations, like cancer....doing their silent damage until the prey is often beyond repair.

We are all potential targets of people like the above mentioned. If one were to try to list the most dangerous, we would not be able to read the length of that list. We all need to be wary, especially of those in the fringe who seem to be marching to the beat of a different drummer.

THINGS I CAN'T EVEN GIVE AWAY= OBSOLESCENCE

There are people who have a knack of staying ahead of the curve and who sell things while they still retain some monetary value. Alas, I'm not among them. For too long I kept (and still have, I believe, some) film cameras. What prevented me from realizing that I hadn't used them after I bought my first digital camera well over ten years ago? After finally giving away hundreds of dollars worth of good lenses thinking I would not be able to use them, along came a line of digital cameras that act like SLRs that can adapt lenses to them. All the rest of the equipment that filled many drawers sits there...polarizing lenses, slide mounting accessories, slide projectors, stuff to make things big, small, crop...all that was also made obsolete by Adobe PhotoShop.

VHS tapes are just as useless. Those that I was going to see 'someday' are now like yesterday's newspapers. Those that I took with my own video cameras, I have turned into DVD and have gained an enormous amount of space in the process.

Even more difficult to give away are audio tapes. When we were thrilled to have them in our cars, we had hundreds of tapes. We then bought CD players that connected to tape player so we could play CDs as we rode. One of the significant reasons for buying my last car was that it had a CD player. Now I have hundreds of audio tapes I must plow through then convert important family ones and others which I recorded myself, to CD.

The above doesn't touch that there are electronic devices to accompany many of this obsolete media. We haven't counted reel-to-reel tape, LPs, and I even go back to wire recorders but not Edison's cylinder recorders. They came out in 1877, I just missed that! Whew!

LIZ CHENEY

What in the world can Liz Cheney think she is doing? Is that evil stuff in her genes? So far she seems to be continuing to speak only denigrating remarks about our President. The attempt to brainwash the public into thinking that it was her father's decisions that protected American soil from attack through his Vice Presidency is really rather laughable, if it weren't so troubling that people listen to her. In 1988 she wrote her senior thesis from Colorado College on The Evolution of Presidential War Powers. Is it coincidental that her father never accepted what the Constitution of the United States granted while her father was steering George Bush like a puppet. It is also not surprising that she served in the State Department during the Bush/Cheney reign. Unlike Sarah Palin, this woman knows Washington well and the art of political manipulation. Remember, William Kristol who hasn't made an accurate political prediction yet, thinks Palin/Cheney should be the 2012 Republican ticket.

If there is still sanity among historians, Liz Cheney will go down in history sharing her father's popularity. At his knee, she must have learned the power of spreading fear in her audiences and thus gaining some measure of fealty from them. It is a pity that those who respect her are fringe members of the Republican party.

Read here for a Michael Wolff article Liz Cheney is the New Dick.

MORE ON WAITING

I've been reading a history book for some months now. I only read it when I am waiting, as in doctor's offices, It has taken me four months to read 64 pages of a 207 page book. However, my plan got even further side-tracked when my eyes were dilated by the ophthalmologist's set up staff. I figure that has to be good, though, because it says I don't have to see too many doctors, and at my age that is call for celebration, is it not?

My life is not spent waiting for Godot. At any given time, I have what I want except enough time and energy. (Perhaps patience gets thrown in there, as well) I lose patience when I am wasting time and energy trying to make a call to a service representative. This is how it goes. I dial the number, it rings, and a robot answers. Then the 'if you...press 1'etc., starts. More often than not what I want is not on the menu. When I get to the end of the menu and haven't responded, I frequently have gotten hung up on...not even a weak 'You're call is important to us' has been heard. I dial in again and try pressing '0' (not a given option) but sometimes a secret code to get to a service rep. The test is whether you get a hit or get hung up on again.

However, we all know that the service reps are busy taking their time being screamed at by irate people and not anxious to take the next call, so now we hear, "You're call is important to us and will be answered in the order it was received."

Have you ever noticed that by the time you get to a cashier, somehow all shoppers in the store got there before you and every aisle had a bulging cart filled to overflow with what looks like groceries for the entire neighborhood for a month.

In places where they bring on a new cashier, it is always. "Next in line please" and all of a sudden both lines are longer in front of you than the single one had been before the cashier's arrival. Life just isn't easy out there these days, which underscores why I love to stay home.

COLONOSCOPY MADE SIMPLE: LOOK, MA, NO TUBES

By now there should not be an American left who has not seen Dave Barry's description of a colonoscopy. Science has invented a camera dubbed a 'spider pill' that is a wi-fi,cordless version.

We are advised that this will be in production, and available to you through your doctor, in about a year. Hang in until after the Alaskan Troopers commercial for a thorough explanation of what we can expect in the next colonoscopy adventure on our calendar. For this description, click here. You can just add this little bug to the billions we already host on our person. It sure saves the yards of tubing stuffed up where the usual direction is out, not in.

REACTION FROM THE RIGHT TO THIS YEAR'S PEACE PRIZE AWARD

The Nobel Awards Committee saw fit to award this year's Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. The Russian President congratulated President Obama, perhaps a reflection of some world opinion. However, in our own country, much to the shame of the Republicans who seem to be working towards making themselves even a greater useless majority in public opinion, if not on the few legislators who think they will retain their seats by continuing their lock-step Republican march of the past nine years. Their behavior is so derisive of our President that many are beginning to resemble sour grapes, recreating the Fox in the old Greek Fable.

Even SNL made a joke commenting to Michael Steele that he would not have his job if it weren't for Obama. Someone played James Carville who sounded like he was roasting the Republicans, in a chillingly humorous way. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had a different view. He said the award will encourage further U.S.-Russian cooperation. Has anyone noticed the lack of patriotism and team play in the group who claim they could run this country better though they failed to do so in the eight years they were in power.

USA Today wrote an interesting article, showing the important of the prize to continues good working relationship with Russia. Click here. To read an excellent blog description of the gains Obama has made with Russia alone, check out The Relentless Liberal by clicking here. It seems that once again, some of us fail to walk in step with the world majority opinion.