A Little Fun Today

Theft
Saturday 05 May 2012, 6:45 p.m.
Owner of a local business reported that an  individual had asked to see a $70 necklace from display case. The patron grabbed the necklace and attempted to flee the store. The Darwin Award nominee was unable to operate the front door which he pushed when it required that he pull. The clodpoll returned the necklace and apologized. The business owner declined to pursue charges.

And so goes entry after entry on the Unalaska Police blotter, published weekly in the KUCB community news letter. A wonderfully inventive Sargent named Jennifer Shockley manages the blotter for the department. Jennifer uses her ability with words and a pretty interesting sense of humor to report the daily calls her department answers. I check it every week, and always find something to laugh about. The third link takes you to the NPR article that led me to the blotter.

Image: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/04/07/unalaska.jpg?t=1333803740&s=2

http://kucb.org/community/blotter/?page=1

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/07/150148340/small-towns-police-blotter-is-a-riot

Sex Workers? Oldest Profession

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What Did I Just DO!!??

Well, with the best of intentions, I had a quick look at some of my older essays. Then more, then more, and before I knew it I was back to 2009. An hour and a half reading stuff I wrote years ago. And you know what? Some of it is really interesting. The funny thing though, is that I couldn’t figure out where some of them came from. I mean what the motivation was for writing them or even where the idea came from. Some of them seemed like someone else must have written them. But I did.
I had an urge to bring some forward.  To say “SEE!! I TOLD YOU SO!!” or to share a thought again, or a story like the tortoise and the owl. I left them where they were. I figure if someone wants to know what I wrote 3 years ago, they are there. Some very interesting, some timed out by history, some very personal and some, well, just there.
I was struck by a few that found good news in the morass of crap in the world. I am looking for some good news now, and I gotta tell you, there ain’t much around. One bit of good news though: there is plenty of good IPA available in the Tallahassee market. Some bottles, some draft and one micro brewed. Life will always be worth living as long as there hope for good beer. That might make a good epitaph.

Image: http://assets0.pulsdcdn.com/system/images/10989/original/statue-liberty-beer.jpg?1311631328

“God” set us up - - Again.

Remember the commandment that forbids coveting your neighbor’s ass or wife or other stuff? Sounds good, right? Who wants his ass anyway? Well, ummm, never mind. Here is the problem: it seems that the human brain is hard wired to covet. This has to do with the parietal lobe and the premotor cortex and the ventral striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain. You remember these from biology right?
The bottom line is this: when you see a behavior or object that someone has, your brain evaluates its worth, and because of the way the parts are connected, your evaluation is nearly always that whatever it is is valuable because someone else has it, and that increases the desire for you to have it too. Covet it in other words. Hard wired. No choice.
Of course you can always just say “no” and move on, but that is very difficult with a hard wired brain. Try saying “no” to hunger for very long. And how many times have you changed your mind about what to order in a restaurant when someone else orders first? You were going to have the fish, someone orders the prime rib and you think “prime rib. That sounds good” and you order it instead of the fish. (The solution to that particular problem is to order first.) Your brain just mirrors what it perceives, evaluates the information and creates the desire.
So don’t worry about the tenth commandment. Or put another way, “covet away pal, covet away.”  The reason you should not worry? God loves you unconditionally. Un-con-dition-ally. Oh, wait a minute. This is the same god that in the second commandment says “I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.”  So a fourth generation child will be punished for something that a great great great grandparent did. Now THAT’S LOVING!!!!

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340905/title/Thou_can%E2%80%99t_not_covet

Image: http://www.the-goldenrule.name/Lust_files/image013.jpg

Part of My Story

Was talking to a friend the other day and had a real epiphany about my mother. Really. For many years I have on occasion talked about her in sometimes not glowing terms. She was a troubled woman from about 1950 on. I always assumed that the relationship she had with my father was the reason for her alternating depressions and bouts of protectiveness. And she was a lapsed Catholic and never recovered from that. And she was sexually abused by her sister’s husband when she was 10 to about 13. All reasons for her being the way she was.
Now I think there is a new element in the mix that could explain the timing. I was sexually abused by a cousin when I was 5 or 6 or 7, and she insisted that only she and I would ever know. So she never, as far as I know, told my father, his sister or anyone else. It would make sense if she felt guilty for not protecting me from the cousin. Her behavior viewed from this angle fits.
My behavior as a10 year old and up was rebellious and I wonder if she felt responsible somehow. And possibly every time I got myself in trouble she felt somehow that she had let me down and blamed herself. Then got depressed. This would make me an unwitting cause of her suffering.

She died youngish, 67, of what amounts self-abuse. She was a heavy smoker and user of many prescription drugs for depression, asthma and digestive issues and pain, all except smoking started around 1950.  Who really can know what was going on in her mind after years of electroconvulsive therapy, “happy pills” etc.? The answer is “no one”. I think, though, that the guilt she must have felt was a part of who she was, and how she was. Looking back from my perspective now I say to her “Ma, you did the very best you could with what you had. You did nothing wrong. The only thing you are guilty of is loving me. If you need to be forgiven then I forgive you. But please, forgive yourself. You were the best Ma you could have been. That is enough for me.”

And strangely (or not) I have lit candles for her in most Catholic churches and Cathedrals I have visited in Europe. I am not a believer, but somehow it felt right to do that simple act. Probably my behavior and hers are tied in some intricate knot of emotion, love, guilt and survival.

Anyway, that’s part of my story.

Image: http://somethingburning.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/telephone_shhh.gif