The Price of Fame

This past weekend, I read plenty of articles on the Huffington Post about Michael Jackson's death as well as remembrances by Deepak and his son Gotham Chopra, and others. There was one lengthy article from a British newspaper that was particularly revealing. The journalist who wrote that article claims that greedy bankers are the primary ones to blame for Michael Jackson's death. The article was pretty fair in its assessment of Michael Jackson (not glossing over his dark side). The descriptions fit what we pretty much know about the singer: after his 2003 molestation trial and acquittal, he pretty much was a broken man. He left the country to be a guest with a wealthy Arab from Bahrain, who ended up suing Michael Jackson for living expenses (Michael claimed that he believed the offer was a gift).

Anyone who has seen Martin Bashir's damning documentary on the superstar can well remember the scene of Michael in an expensive store in Las Vegas after hours, pointing at objects he wanted to buy. It was shocking in its extravagence and taste. Why would he want stuff like that? That was a major problem for him. His lifestyle simply became too expensive to maintain and he wasn't selling music like he was in the 1980s. Not only did he buy a lot of expensive and unnecessary baubles to fill his mansions, he would rent entire floors in Las Vegas casinos, despite his having a Neverland Ranch to maintain (with the assorted employees and security details, not to mention amusement park operations).

It has been known for years that Michael Jackson was in serious financial trouble. And the trouble with being so super-wealthy with mega-mansions galore is that they are notoriously hard to sell because very few people could afford what he might be asking for.

According to the article, financiers who are trying to deal with Jackson's debt came up with a plan to have a series of 50 concerts at London's O2 Arena starting in July and running through March 2010. Jackson apparently claimed to have agreed to 10, but was pushed into accepting 50. The journalist found this baffling as it was common knowledge that Jackson has been sick for sometime and could no longer sing. That wasn't a problem, because the high tech stadium was equipped for lip synching. All Michael had to do was dance and people would pay hundreds of dollars to see one of his last shows. The concerts were to be called "This Is It." How prophetic!

Getting back into shape and rehearsing the show proved too much for him. He was in a lot of pain and had to use a variety of drugs daily just to cope. There is speculation that Jackson knew his talent was gone and he didn't want to expose that fact to his fans, so death might have been a blessing for him. However, I think there ought to be investigations into the entire deal that was set up. Who was involved? What did they know? What was their intent?

I've read some comments online by people discussing that article and it was interesting to read some ideas thrown around. Basically, many people don't seem surprised at the way music execs behave. Its all about their greed and Michael was their Goose who laid the golden eggs. It wouldn't surprise me if someone who arranged this deal knew that having to perform these concerts would eventually kill Michael Jackson, who will still make money in death. Because of the amount of money the record company will earn on sales of his music, at least now they won't have a high spending Michael Jackson to pay. More money for them! Well...if it is true that greedy people pushed Michael into accepting this performance gig in the hopes that he would die so that they can have his assets for themselves, they might be the ones who will be in danger of going to hell someday. It is wrong to leach off of a talented artist like that.

Michael Jackson is not the only person who was screwed out of what's rightfully his. In the 1990s, Prince went through the same thing of wanting the freedom to create his own music and reap most of the profits. George Michael and Madonna also had the same fight with their record companies. This past weekend, I watched Great Balls of Fire for the first time in 20 years. I forgot about how good it was (I love biopics, what can I say?). Even Jerry Lee Lewis and many of his musical peers from that era of rock n' roll's beginning were ripped off by their record companies. Is it right that some no-talent business person gets so much of the creative artist's earnings? Don't they realize what leeches they are?

Its funny that many people desire fame, especially in today's "reality" show environment. There's a huge cost to fame that many don't consider. In Gotham Chopra's essay about his friendship with the King of Pop, he said that Michael seemed to envy his easy ability to hang out with his friends in public without strangers and fans noticing him. Another article I read indicated that Michael spent his entire life trying to recreate a normal childhood for himself and the author reflected on the irony of that. It kind of makes you think of Citizen Kane and the mystery surrounding "Rosebud." They have anything they desire, yet its not enough. Sometimes, the simplest thing matters the most.

During the 2003 molestation trial, a few of us would talk about it at work. When I made critical comments about Michael, one lady would always defend him and claim that I was jealous of Michael Jackson. Jealous? I nearly laughed. She did not know me at all. There is no way in hell that I'd want his fame. His whole life testifies to a deep-rooted unhappiness that all the money and fame in the world could not solve. There is something to be said about living a normal life.

In honesty, though, there was a time when I did want to be famous. Back in high school, I often thought of fame as a fantasy game. I saw it as a solution to not being part of the "in" crowd or being rejected for dates. Fame would be a perfect revenge. A look at me now kind of thing to show all those who were mean or indifferent that they made a huge mistake not being friends with me. Yes, at that time, I did desire to be famous one day. Then something happened. I graduated high school. The shallow superficial people were out of my life. And I did my own thing and racked up some amazing experiences in my young adulthood.

I even got a taste of fame. Granted, it was very small, but it was enough. When I lived in La Maddalena, Sardinia, I happened to be assigned to Submarine Squadron 22. I was actually part of ship's company (the USS ORION), but because they needed a Yeoman and I happened to be arriving to the ship as the Squadron's Command Master Chief was heading out for an evening on the town, it was serendipitous luck. However, it came at a cost. One Yeoman was already set to be assigned to Squadron but because I had arrived, it didn't make sense to have to train me while he would be trained in Squadron. I think he hated me for taking his job, but it wasn't like I knew the difference between the two commands. I'd learn soon enough. To this day, Squadron 22 is the best place I've ever worked. I mostly worked with Chief Petty Officers and Officers. Only a few E-6 and below worked there. I think we could all be counted on one hand.

Because of my job, I was well known among the Americans who lived in La Maddalena. I think the town had 13,000 Italian residents and 2,000 American servicemembers (not sure how many additional Americans in terms of dependents). So, my fame was limited to the 2,000 member community. Anyhow, I couldn't go anywhere without people knowing who I was and where I worked. It proved embarrassing when I didn't know the person's name or where he worked, yet he knew a lot about me. When the next ship replaced the ORION, it had a crew made up of 30% females. So, my fame continued, but this time, every woman I went out with would be noticed and talked about. I did not like being subjected to this kind of scrutiny, where people knew what I did and who I did it with. I learned that I liked being anonymous.

There were moments when I felt like a celebrity, such as in Alexandria, Egypt when a young kid attached himself to me during my 3 hour walk around town looking for cool souvenirs. I would mention wanting something (a prayer carpet, a robe, sandals, hieroglyphics on papyrus) and it would appear instantaneous. I guess it was a lot like Michael Jackson's point and spend manner of shopping. But, the kid wasn't interested in me as a person. Just me as an ATM machine. That's what people who seek fame don't understand. Yes, its nice sometimes to be noticed for who you are, but famous people generally aren't noticed by fans for who they really are. Its an image or brand that the fan has in his or her mind. If you don't live up to their expectations, you end up dealing with some angry people. Who wants that?

In the downside to fame, I saw it up close and personal in D.C. A lot of mentally ill people hang out near the Capitol and harass members of Congress every day with their weird requests. I hated dealing with them in the phone calls Vice President Gore's legislative affairs office used to get from crazy folks who made unreasonable demands.

It's no wonder that fame made Michael Jackson very paranoid. You simply don't know who to trust because everyone wants you for some reason or another. Very few want your friendship without attachments or expectations.

So, I consider myself blessed that I got to experience fame on a minimal basis. It satisfied the urge and made me understand the larger implications. Besides not desiring fame any more, I also learned that part of the reason I desired fame was to be able to get things easier or to meet people who are famous that I happen to like. What I learned was that I was able to experience all that without having to be famous. I've met plenty of the famous people I had been wanting to meet and I have been able to experience a lot of the things I wanted to experience. I've traveled to many places and I've met plenty of "star quality" people who aren't famous.

Truly, life is enjoyable as a nobody. The fame thing is a bad illusion. It attracts the wrong people into your life and for some famous people, they need a security detail to protect them from the crazies out there (like Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon because he believed himself to be the real John Lennon). Nope. I don't envy famous people at all. The biggest trade-off fame requires is personal freedom. I'm all about my personal freedom. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Below is an interesting picture of Michael Jackson. Even heavily disguised, you can tell its him. He's such an odd person with all the disguises. But, considering how horrible his face became over the years with the endless plastic surgeries, its not surprising that he would want to hide it. Hopefully, in the spiritual realm, he's finally free to be himself as he envisions his ideal reality. I can even imagine that the souls in heaven are in for a special treat. They will get to hear him give a concert, if such things exist in the spiritual realm. That would be an awesome site to behold.

Music Video Monday: Michael Jackson

In honour of Michael Jackson, this week's music selection is a performance he gave in January 1993 for the President Clinton Inaugural Gala. I was hoping to find a music video tribute to Michael Jackson featuring his melancholy song "Gone Too Soon", but this performance will do. It shows Michael Jackson in the face we know best (before plastic surgery turned him into an unfortunate freakshow). This performance was among the last few before things turned really bad.

His Dangerous album was released in November 1991, but faced some competition with a surging Garth Brooks and the much anticipated new U2 sound. A year later, his album wasn't selling the numbers his record company had expected, so at the start of 1993, he began a big promotional push, which included singing at Clinton's inauguration activities and the halftime show at the Superbowl, and a much publicized appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. After all that occured, news hit with the allegations of sexual molestation of a boy he had befriended, and the rest is "HIStory." His career never truly recovered after that. Follow-up albums (1995's HIStory, which featured classic hits on disc one and new material on disc two, and 2001's Invincible) basically featured a lot of angry songs to get back at his "enemies." Gone was the fun-loving, happy Michael Jackson who knew how to laugh and loved to laugh. Though he did have a few good songs from both those CDs, the sound was essentially the same, like they had all been written in this Thriller days.

He was supposedly working on a new album (titled This Is It) along with a final series of concerts in London. Perhaps it was this pressure to be who he was at 25 that truly overworked his body and ended his life so early. He was 50 years old, for Christ's sake! Fans shouldn't expect him to be who he was at 25 or 35. I personally would have loved to have seen a complete makeover with a fresh new sound. But, it's not meant to be.

Now that he has passed, I am lifting my buying ban on Michael Jackson CDs and DVDs. After 1995, I refused to buy any of his stuff because I didn't want to support his lifestyle and possible inappropriate behaviour with children. This meant no DVDs of his awesome music videos or even his complilation CDs that featured some songs with his brothers that I liked. I was especially tempted to buy the 25th Anniversary edition of Thriller (featuring remakes of songs from that album with current recording stars of today), but I held off. Now, he's gone and his music lives on. Hopefully, "his" children will benefit from records sales. According to news reports, Michael Jackson has supposedly left over 200 songs for his children. I don't know if these are recorded or just written. If Michael recorded the songs, then we are in for quite a few CDs of new music over the next decade.

According to the news, itunes and amazon.com saw sales spike on Michael Jackson music after his death was announced. Yesterday, I went to a couple places that sells CDs to get a copy of Dangerous on CD and was shocked that in both places, all Michael Jackson CDs were cleared out. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought the same thing this past weekend. All I have on CD are the Bad and Thriller albums. I haven't heard Dangerous in years and was looking forward to an evening of listening to the awesome songs on that underrated album.

About his children, I had forgotten that he had named both boys Prince Michael Jackson (the older one is 12 and the younger one, best known as "Blanket" who was held over a Berlin balcony, is 7). I did not know that he had named his daughter Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Weird. Personally, I'd like someone to do a blood test on the three of them to determine who the real father is. I can't help but wonder if any of them ever thought their father was weird...or does growing up that way and living that life for their entire lives to this point made it "normal" to them? Boy are they all in for a rude awakening when they learn what "normal" really means!

Lying is a Virtue for Republicans

As soon as South Carolina Governor was discovered arriving at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta last Wednesday, thus having his "hiking the Appalachian Trail" cover blown, the news media ran with the story. He had to call a press conference in which he confessed to having spent the last five days (which included Father's Day) "crying" in the arms of his Argentine lover. Automatically, this conjured up that famous song from the musical Evita: "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." His wife was probably relieved that she no longer had to keep lying for him for the sake of his political career. She had apparently known about the affair for months and asked for a separation, though they kept up appearances for the sake of his job.

It wasn't long before vigilent critics of the Fox News Propaganda Network noticed that the station once again put the "(D)" after his name (see photo above) to indicate his party affiliation. This happens practically every time a Republican politician gets caught in an embarrassing sex scandal. They did the same for Louisiana Senator David Vitter who paid a prostitute to put him in a diaper, for Idaho Senator Larry Craig who was caught trying to solicit sex from an undercover police officer in an airport men's room in Minneapolis, and for Florida Congressman Mark Foley who sent sexually explicit IM messages to underage Pages. Its laughable that they always do this because it only adds to the increasing amount of evidence that Fox News is not an unbiased news source. In fact, it is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

People should be disturbed about this blatant deception. The loyal viewers of Fox News should be outraged because the lie is so obvious. When someone lies to you, that means that they don't respect you. Or they think you are too dumb to figure it out. Or they want something from you (unquestioning loyalty to the Republican Party, in this case). If a news channel I watched pulled a stunt like this, I would stop watching them because they would lack credibility. To me, credibility is everything and once its lost, its too late. There are far too many competitive news sources to get information from, so I would have no problem dropping any network or newspaper that blatantly did what Fox News constantly does. By contrast, when Governors Spitzer, McGreevey, and Blagojevich along with former Senator John Edwards (all Democrats) had their recent scandals, Fox did not change their "(D)" to be "(R)." It appears that Fox wants its viewers to associate sex scandals with the Democratic Party, even though it is far worse when a Republican politician is caught.

I've read opinions by conservative people about the unfairness of how Democratic politicians are treated versus Republicans when caught in a sex scandal. This is especially true in Portland because our liberal, Democratic and gay Mayor was recently relieved to learn that criminal charges will not be pursued against him regarding his inappropriate relationship with a borderline legal teenager in 2005. Critics say that if the Mayor was a conservative Republican, he would've been forced from office or if he was straight and the teen in question was a 17 year old girl, there would have been enough outraged parents that his career would be over as soon as news broke in January. Because he's the first openly gay politician to become Mayor of a Top 40 U.S. city, he "gets a pass."

I understand the criticism, but conservatives don't seem to understand several things. Though Clinton did not get removed from office for his affair with an intern, he was impeached (which was politically motivated. No president deserved impeachment more than George W. Bush). He was also disbarred from the National Bar Association. Its in the historical record that President Clinton is the second U.S. President to be impeached (President Andrew Johnson was the first, and that impeachment is also regarded by historians as politically motivated rather than substantial). New Jersey Governor James McGreevey resigned after his sex and lies scandal. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after his. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was impeached by the Illinois Assembly and removed from office. John Edwards was effectively marginalized in the Democratic Party and most likely will never serve in political office again.

Contrast that to Republicans. Senator David Vitter is still in office. Senator Larry Craig remained in office. Florida voters threw Congressman Mark Foley out of office by voting for the Democratic opponent in 2006. Now, we will see if Governor Mark Sanford has the decency to resign. He was widely expected to be one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. Now that's unlikely to happen (Mitt Romney still looks like the odds-on favourite at this point).

So, conservatives who claim that Democrats get a pass while Republicans are judged more harshly are incorrect in one way, correct in another. They are incorrect because when Democratic politicians find themselves in a sex scandal, it usually ends their career. This was true of Gary Hart, the odds-on favourite to win the Democratic nomination for president in 1988 until he was caught with his mistress on his lap on a boat appropriately named "Monkey Business." Clinton is the only one who found success despite his adulterous ways, but I think its more reflective of his amazing political gifts (he is super smart regarding politics and interpersonal relations). Other Democrats weren't able to maintain their political office (as noted above).

In contrast, Republicans keep their office even after the scandal breaks. I see this reflection as an indication on how little the people have a say in the hierarchal Republican Party (its truly a top-down organizational structure). The powers that be don't care about sexual impropriety, so they keep their damaged politicians (better for blackmail and control). The loyal shock troops can be easily distracted by focusing on abortion or some other sideshow issue. That the low party members and volunteers don't demand accountability shows just how insignificant they are in that party.

Conservatives are correct about Republican politicians being more harshly judged than a Democratic politician regarding a sex scandal. However, it doesn't suggest a "liberal media bias" as they like to claim. The reason for this "double standard" is the involvement of hypocrisy. That's the main difference between the two parties. Democrats don't run on family values issues. Republicans do. They put themselves on a higher moral pedestal and smear Democrats for being "immoral" when all the Democrat wants to do is focus on the issues that matters to voters, rather than the personal life of the politician. When you put yourself on a moral pedestal, of course the media is going to have a field day if its revealed that you do not live the values you preached. That's common knowledge. Hypocrisy is distasteful and deserves to be punished more harshly than a crime of passion.

I once told a fundamentalist woman I worked with: "I'd rather be a sinner like Clinton than a hypocrite like Gingrich." She used to get angry when I said that because she liked Gingrich and hated Clinton. Gingrich was a conservative "family values" Congressman from Georgia, despite his having divorced two ladies, including one when she was in the hospital, and was having an affair on his second wife during the time he was traveling the country trying to make the mid-term 1998 election a national referendum on Clinton's sex scandal.

A friend of mine once told someone that "the problem with electing Democrats is that you don't get morals." He's not a partisan (he was equally strong in his dislike of President George W. Bush), but I was shocked to hear him say that, so we discussed the issue. I asked him, "would you rather vote for the politician who does not talk about family values but lives a moral life or the politician who runs on a family values platform yet is revealed to have committed adultery?" To my shock, my friend said that he would support the family values politician, even if he does not live the values over a candidate who does not talk about family values but lives it. To me, that told me everything I needed to know about the conservative mindset.

Interestingly enough, last year, he decided to vote in the Democratic primary instead of the Republican one and voted for John Edwards over Barack Obama. I don't know how he felt about Edwards after the affair was revealed last summer, but I find it funny that my morals obsessed friend voted for the wrong candidate. Out of all the candidates on the Democratic side, Edwards tried to paint himself as a strong morals person. Another hypocrite who fell on his sword!

That's why I don't identify with conservatives (even though my personality is generally pretty conservative). I believe that it is important to live your values. Because we've seen time and again politicians who preach values on one hand while failing to live them on the other, it does make one cynical any time a politician talks about morality. After the experience of the 1990s in seeing the way so many of the Gingrich Republican Revolutionaries of 1994 fell by the moral wayside, no Republican will ever convince me that he or she has any greater sense of morals than a Democrat who doesn't speak about morality issues or attacks an opponent in personal terms.

Its interesting to me that Republicans who love to talk about the Bible seem to fail at learning the main point of Jesus' teachings. In passage after passage, Jesus was most critical of hypocrites than sinners. He even saved a woman from being stoned to death because hypocritical men were making the judgment about her sexual immorality. Jesus advised followers that praying to God in secret was preferable to the public prayers offered by the Pharisees, who "love to be seen by men." Reading the New Testament, its just baffling how conservative evangelicals simply cannot seem to understand why hypocrisy is such a bad thing and even worse than the sin itself.

In 2000, when I got back in touch with an old high school friend of mine who was conservative and went to Oral Roberts University, we discussed the whole Clinton versus Gingrich sex scandals. He and his wife didn't understand why Clinton got a pass while Gingrich ended up resigning. Both were guilty of adultery. When I brought up the issue of hypocrisy and how Clinton never personally attacked an opponent (he always ran on the issues), I also explained the best definition I could come up with about "hypocrisy." The word is highly charged and most people (even those who most certainly are) don't see themselves as hypocrites. However, to diffuse the charge of that word, I told my friend Ben that "all hypocrisy means is that you don't really believe what you claim to believe." In explaining further, I said that if you make a moral stand about something and condemn your opponent for not sharing that same stand, but it turns out that you don't even live what you claim, why should anyone listen to what you have to say? If you can't even convince yourself that the moral stand you take is the right one, how can you convince someone else?

I used as an example another friend of mine, who had always claimed to be against co-habitation. Yet, when he met the lady of his dreams, he ended up co-habitating. When I brought this up with him, he got angry and accused me of holding him to a higher standard. To which I replied, "I'm only holding you to the standard you set for yourself." I had several other friends who co-habited before marriage and did not raise the issue with them because they (like me) don't believe that co-habitation is immoral. My conservative friend who did believe co-habitation was immoral ended up doing it. After he got married, I asked if he still thought co-habitation was "immoral." To my surprise, he said "yes." Its frustrating to me that conservatives I've talked to do not seem to understand hypocrisy. They make moral pronouncements even though they obviously don't agree with their own moral arguments, yet they judge others who don't believe those "moral values." It all boils down to honesty and self-awareness.

That's the difference, I guess, between a liberal mind and a conservative one. To a liberal, morality is a personal choice we allow others to make without our judgement (so long as no one is harmed). To a conservative, morality is something that should be forced on everyone and it doesn't matter if the person making the moral standards lives up to it or not. Morals are morals and apply to everyone.

The funny thing about co-habitation is that while I don't believe it is morally wrong for a man and woman to live together before (or outside of) marriage, I don't see myself doing that. I rather like the idea of moving in together after the wedding, thus enjoying my own place up to the moment of matrimony. When I was at BYU, I moved out of the dorms into a house where the landlord was a woman (also a BYU student. Her parents owned the house and she rented the basement rooms to three guys). At BYU, I was assigned to an LDS ward (for the point of hoping that I'd convert) and when I moved, I supposedly changed wards, but I continued to attend the same ward I was assigned to while I lived in the dorms. Anyhow, the Bishop's wife found out about my move (I don't know how, as I did not tell them) and knew which house I lived in and who owned it.

She said to me, "I heard that you are living in a house with women in it."

I replied, "That is correct, Sister Trowbridge."

Then to my surprise, she said, "Nicholas, sometimes I worry about you."

I was shocked. I kind of played it off as nothing for her to worry about, but in my mind it only confirmed how controlling the LDS Church is about personal business. What I wanted to tell her but didn't was that I can live in a house with women in it because I'm not attracted to every women I happen to meet and get to know. I do have my standards! Besides, if the Bishop's wife could have seen what the landlord and her sister looked like, she would not worry at all. I believe at BYU, the appropriate term for those women is "sweet spirit." Even more amusing, one Mormon guy had the room next to mine and sometimes, I could hear him and his girlfriend having sex. I certainly didn't get any while at BYU...so, who's the sex crazed morals obsessed person and who's the celibate, liberal monk?

For the record, though, I don't believe sex before marriage is wrong or "immoral." I've had so many arguments with conservatives who claim that it is, yet they engage in it without realizing that they are undermining their own claims of morality. Get real! Your actions reveal what you really believe, not what your mouth claims to believe. They think we're too dumb to figure it out. If I'm not mistaken, I think Dante placed hypocrites near the core of hell in his literary masterpiece The Divine Comedy. Why Republicans can't seem to understand the distasteful nature of hypocrisy is infuriating. They would solve their credibility problems if they just admit what their actions reveal: what two consenting adults do with each other is not immoral, so long as no one is harmed in the process.

The above photo is from Fox News that correctly showed the appropriate party distinction for Governor Sanford. He was a darling of the right during his "principled" stance of not accepting any of President Obama's bailout money (along with his participation in the whole Tea Bagging nonsense). I guess that's the power of Fox. If you fail to live the conservative values, they will brand you a Democrat. I guess that's to be admired. Fox doesn't tolerate hypocrisy and they have the power to change a politician's party affiliation without the politician's consent. And if it's on Fox, I guess you can believe it because they are "fair and balanced", right?

Jon Stewart summed up the affair best. He said something to the affect of Republicans having "a conservative mind but a liberal penis." Maybe they should work on some kind of consistency. It'll be far healthier in the long run and more credible.

Remembering the Fabulous Farrah

I wasn't planning to write a tribute post on Farrah Fawcett because I really didn't know much about her. However, Friday after work, I decided to hook up my digital converter box so I could watch any possible memorial programs about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. That turned out to be a frustrating exercise. The strange thing is that I was able to get my analog TV to play the new digital signal. But it only picks up CBS, NBC, OPB, and about five evangelical Christian channels. I wanted my favourite station (ABC) but my TV won't pick it up. I'm not happy about that.

Anyhow, so I was able to catch the documentary film about Farrah Fawcett's struggles with cancer and the papanazis. I was actually interested enough to watch the whole thing and really felt sad for this beautiful woman who endured five years of fighting cancer and finding hope in remissions only to see its reemergence. There were many fascinating tidbits in this documentary that are worthy of mention.

The first one is that she went to Germany frequently to receive treatment in fighting the disease. The other night, President Obama had a Town Hall meeting on Health Care reform (his big push this summer). Opponents of a national health care system always knock the Canadian and European health care system as "socialism" and say that its a bad thing. They cite incidents of people coming to the U.S. just to be treated in our "excellent" hospitals. However, the best quote I ever heard on our health care system is "we have the best health care in the world...if you're rich." Yet, here's this pretty well off celebrity going to Europe to get treatment. What's up with that? She did this, even though her doctor did not recommend that she fly back to the U.S. so soon after her release from the hospital's care. I'm hoping that Americans will be more sensible about the debate on health care this summer and fall. This is not 1993, with an unelected First Lady leading the charge and serving as a lightning rod of controversy. Too many Americans have found financial ruin because of a health crisis (either themselves or a family member). To me, a lack of health care insurance is a scary thing. I've read too many stories of people filing for bankruptcy after raking up huge medical bills.

The second interesting thing in this documentary was that Farrah's doctor compared cancer cells to terrorism and Farrah seemed to take to this idea and wasn't offended by the analogy. I like the idea of thinking of cancer as "terrorism." It makes sense as an analogy that might be useful in helping patients deal with their "war against cancer."

The most infuriating thing were the scenes with the papanazis in her face and the garbage printed in the National Enquirer, as well as an employee at the UCLA Medical Center releasing private patient records to the gossip rags. Hopefully that person was fired and blacklisted from working in another hospital. Some might argue that celebrities waived their rights to privacy when they became famous...but that's just jealousy talking. Sure, many people love the fame and understand that the intrusive gossip press comes with the territory. However, I believe that if a celebrity is not seeking attention, they should be afforded some privacy. There's a difference between a Lindsay Lohan getting drunk and dancing on table tops at a popular club and kissing another girl versus a Farrah Fawcett hiding behind sunglasses and a scarf, riding a wheelchair through LAX.

Unfortunately, so long as people buy these trashy tabloids, there will always be a market for the papanazis and the photos they snap of unsuspecting celebrities doing mundane things we all do. At work, one lady keeps bringing old issues of various gossip magazines to the break room for others to "enjoy." I have glaced at a few to see what the appeal is and I can't say that I see any. Its a waste of paper, newsprint, thought and energy. Its sad to me that too many women (yes, women!) buy this shit.

After the documentary, I gained a greater appreciation for Farrah Fawcett. The height of her fame was actually before my time (I was only born in the 70s. The decade doesn't interest me much). I always thought she was just another brainless beauty queen. From the documentary, she looks fun, smart, and compassionate. Once the documentary finished, NBC's Dateline featured an hour long program on Michael Jackson. This was the point when my TV lost the digital signal and now I can only watch CBS and the evangelical Christian channels (which I won't). I really wanted to watch the program on Michael Jackson. In fact, that was the entire reason why I decided to break the digital converter out of the sealed box it came in. So much for that. I won't be watching a lot of TV this summer. I'll stick with TV on DVD (I'm currently watching The West Wing Season 3 and Tell Me You Love Me; up next is Mad Men Seasons 1 and 2).

When I lived in Bellevue, Nebraska as a tween, during the summer, one of the TV channels showed Charlie's Angels in syndication. I was too young to appreciate it when the show originally aired. Besides, in the 70s, my favourite shows were Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Batman, The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. I remember that the TV station would make watching Charlie's Angels fun because they offered contests where the clues were in each day's episode. Not that I called in or anything. Out of the three ladies, Jaclyn Smith was by far my favourite. She seemed classy and I found her to be the most attractive. Kate Jackson came in second for me. And like I said...I thought Farrah was more beauty than brains. At the time, I was aware of her famous photo that was the most popular pin-up at the time. Maybe that sealed my impression of her. I haven't seen the show since I left Nebraska, so I might check out Season 1 on DVD just to see if the show holds up or if its so dated that I'd be bored watching it.

As for the movie versions, I didn't agree with the actress selection (not Drew Barrymore!). Then again, it would be difficult to find a younger equivalent of Jaclyn Smith. Growing up, Jaclyn Smith, Jacqueline Bisset, and Candice Bergin were the epitome of classy, attractive ladies. All three have an air of high culture and sophistication about them. I like Drew Barrymore, but thought she was wrong for the role. Cameron Diaz was hilarious, but Lucy Liu was the only one I could see as an "acceptable" Charlie's Angel (in terms of honouring the show). The sequel was the one of the worst films I had ever seen. They totally hoodwinked the audience and I was not pleased. I remember leaving theaters thinking that the makers of the film were laughing all the way to the bank about the moviegoing saps who paid money to see that tripe.

The other famous role Farrah Fawcett will be remembered for is the made-for-TV film The Burning Bed. For some strange reason I still don't understand, in high school health class, we had to watch The Burning Bed. I remember only watching it in school and it happened at least twice. The movie was good and I don't remember complaining about watching it in class, but as I reflect on my high school education from the standpoint of an adult...I'm of the opinion that schools should not waste class time showing movies at all. If teachers want to require a student see a certain film, it should be done outside of class and have a quiz or paper assignment so that the teacher knows if the student watched it. That's the state of education in America though. The Burning Bed in health class! Come on, people!

I might watch this film again since I haven't seen it in a couple decades. At the time, I remember thinking how infuriating it was that this beautiful woman remained in an abusive marriage until pushed to the breaking point where she felt she had no choice but to burn her husband alive while he's sleeping before running away with the children. It might have been my first awareness that spousal abuse does happen, but I simply could not understand why a woman would remain in such abusive relationship. Why do bad boys seem to "get" the beautiful girl and destroy her self esteem (Rihanna and Whitney Houston, for example)? Why doesn't a beautiful lady fall for the nice guy? Sheesh.

With that, I will have to say that while I certainly appreciate Farrah Fawcett's courageous fight against cancer and her wise decision to make a documentary of her struggles so people can see what its really like to fight such a devasting disease (maybe even spur on research and funding for a cure), her acting career was pretty minimal. She was more famous for her name, looks, and especially hair (even Madonna seemed to copy her style with 2005's Confessions On a Dance Floor series of music videos). She was married to the other 1970s television star Lee "Six Million Dollar Man" Majors, but her one true love is probably Ryan O'Neal.

My heart and prayers go out to the soul of Farrah Fawcett and to her family and loved ones. No more pain from those terroristic cancer cells. I hope that she rests in peace. In the documentary, she had mentioned loving the rain and wondering if she would experience rain in heaven. She hoped that God would at least let her dip her angel wings into the rain on earth. It was a lovely thought. Now, she probably knows the truth about how the spiritual world works in relation to ours. She has gone from being one of Charlie's Angels to now being one of God's. Best wishes, beautiful lady!

The King of Pop: Gone Too Soon

Today's post was going to be about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, because that whole episode is so worthy of a blog post...but he got pre-empted by one of the world's biggest icons of popular culture: the shocking death of Michael Jackson. One thing I love about the age of the Internet is that we get these news stories right away, rather than learning about it at the 6 o'clock news at home. I wasn't surfing the Net when I found out, though. My know-it-all co-worker loves to be the one who breaks all kinds of news to people at the office (I suppose it makes her life feel important in some way, because she learned of it first and gets to tell everyone else about it).

At first, she was ranting on and on about Farrah Fawcett and how that lady's son doesn't plan to attend the funeral, and Miss Prissy School Marm was going on and on about how she'd slap that boy silly and lecture him (of course she would...she's a damn School Marm personality that truly grates on my last nerve)...then she switched to rant about Michael Jackson's debts and cancelled concerts and blah blah blah.

Anyhow, that's how I found out about the death of the pop culture phenomenon. Michael Jackson's fame around the world probably rivals Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse as America's most enduring symbols of popular culture. Though his popularity waned in the U.S. since the late 1990s due to his legal problems and the allegations of inappropriate conduct with children, he was still a major star in Europe and especially Japan. Its amazing to see footage of girls around the world having crying and fainting spells at his concerts and public appearances.

I already wrote a comprehensive retrospective on Michael Jackson for his 50th birthday in an August 2008 post (check my archives if you want to read it), so I won't go into detail my entire thoughts about his career and the tragic waste his life became in the end. I want this post to be an honourable In Memoriam, paying tribute to the talented genius of this global superstar and how his music affected my life personally.

One thing that amazes me about Michael Jackson's universal appeal is that everyone seemed to like his music and music videos. I was in my tweens in Bellevue, Nebraska when Thriller arrived on the music scene. The album was released in 1982 but it didn't really get popular until late 1983 and particularly 1984. At the time, most of the boys I knew were into heavy metal music and considered pop music to be "girly." I loved pop music and hated heavy metal, and one guy at church used to make a big deal about it. In fact, he "brainwashed" his 3 year old sister to like his type of music and I admit that it was funny to hear this little girl say things like, "bark at the moon!" (an Ozzy Osbourne reference) and "shout at the devil!" Despite differences in musical tastes, he liked Michael Jackson. I'd watch MTV at his house sometimes (my parents didn't get cable until last year) and we always wanted to see a Michael Jackson video.

Its hard to imagine, but before Michael Jackson, MTV didn't really feature African American singers. Videos were pretty lame, though, until the genius of Jackson saw the potential to make mini movies with storylines that may or may not reflect the lyrics. All of it was eye catchingly mesmerizing...from gang knife fights in "Beat It" (lifted from the classic 1950s film Rebel Without A Cause) to sidewalks that light up when he walked on it in "Billie Jean" (I remember a Steve Martin parody on Saturday Night Live) to the cinematic short film "Thriller" that riveted just about everyone. Today, the zombie dance sequence is still popular (look it up on YouTube...you'll see everything from wedding parties to prisoners in the Philippines dancing the unique steps).

No star was more untouchable in 1984 than Michael Jackson. His guest vocals made a hit single out of "Somebody's Watching Me" by a one-hit wonder whose name escapes me. He became the highest paid celebrity endorser when Pepsi paid him $10 million to appear in ads (and famously caught his hair on fire during the filming of a commercial). He reteamed with his brothers for the stadium "Victory Tour" concerts (I had unsuccessfully lobbied my dad to take the family to Kansas City for the concert). He wrote and gathered the largest group of singers after the Grammys in 1985 to record "We Are the World" for charity relief of famine victims in Ethiopia (sadly, Ethiopia jokes were popular at that time). And Thriller became the biggest selling album of all time (by some accounts, over 100 million albums sold to date).

If anyone did much to break down the racial barriers between black and white Americans, Michael Jackson was instrumental in doing so. His fan base was truly universal and crossed all racial categories. Like I said above, even heavy metal headbanger tween/teen boys liked Michael Jackson. All of my friends liked his music, even if we disagreed on every other group out there. He was a unifying figure in the music world. I simply cannot imagine what my life would have been like without his music, videos, and transformational popular cultural impact. You can see his influence today in Usher's dance moves, Britney Spears and Chris Brown's music videos, Justin Timberlake's music, and countless others. Even President Barack Obama owes some of his popularity to the trail Michael Jackson blazed in the 1980s. Would he even be president today if Michael Jackson hadn't broken through America's race obsession and showed an appeal that went beyond "Black or White" (a hit song from 1991)?

Though I believe the unprecedented success of the Thriller album at the age of 25 set into motion the self-destructive path Michael Jackson would follow in his second half of life, he did record two really good follow-ups (I think 1991's Dangerous is actually better than 1987's Bad, partly because the album had catchier songs and better videos--particularly "Remember the Time" and "Black or White"). None of them could reach the sales numbers of Thriller, though and in our numbers-obsessed culture, we seem to judge a person harshly if they can't beat their previous sales records (this is certainly true at my work). But no one has been able to match Thriller's numbers. Many of today's stars would be lucky to sell as many albums as Dangerous or 1995's HIStory compilation two-disc set.

On Dangerous, he had a beautiful song that he wrote for his friend Ryan White (the teenager who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion in the mid-1980s and faced the brunt of people's ignorance and fear regarding the new disease). Now, that song could very well be used at Michael Jackson's funeral services: "Gone Too Soon."

We don't know yet the full details of his death. All we know is that he was only 50 years old and had a cardiac arrest that put him into a coma before he finally passed into the spiritual realm. With all the botched surgeries on his face, you never know if it ultimately proved too taxing on his body. There's also the idea that people generally "kill off" their heroes and icons, because the demands and expectations fans place upon an entertainer often seem to be too much for any human to withstand (its no longer surprising that celebrities have periods of freaking out: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Danny Bonaduce, Corey Haim, and David Cassidy to name a few).

So, Rest in Peace, Michael. You've earned it. While he touched millions of lives around the world with his musical genius, it would be interesting to know what his life review might be like. There's debate on whether or not he's a child molester. My sister said that in a college psychology class she took, they debated this issue and the class came to the conclusion that he was not one. They believe that he felt more comfortable around children and animals because they didn't judge him the way adults did. What's undebatable, though, is his undeniable talent and personal pains he carried his entire life. His most revealing song is "Childhood", where he asks the question "Have you seen my childhood?" and makes a plea not to judge him without understanding his childhood, which is well documented. His father was basically a bully who deprived the Jackson boys a childhood with his dreams of fame and fortune at Motown for his family. That's the trade-off, it seems. The financial and career success came at the expense of the kind of simple pleasures the rest of us mortals get to enjoy in anonymity. Since the Jackson 5 days, the youngest brother became the most successful and spent the rest of his life creating a dream childhood for himself. Now the judgment on all aspects of his life rests in the spiritual realm.

For the rest of us, his music will live on forever. There will never be another performer like Michael Jackson. He truly belongs to the Ages. Best wishes to you, Michael, on the next phase of your spiritual progression. Thank you for the great music and videos over the years. I will never stop listening to his songs, especially my personal favourite: "Man in the Mirror."

The First Twitter Revolution

Based on some articles I've read, the protests in Iran in the aftermath of an obviously rigged election are fueled by people Tweeting, texting, and blogging information from Tehran to the rest of the country and the world. Because the government also uses the Internet, it doesn't want to shut it down, as was done in Burma/Myanmar in 2007. This allows people on the streets to bypass the censors in the Iranian press and get their story out to a waiting world.

Amazing, how these networking sites are transforming our world. In 2006, Time Magazine named Americans as the "Person of the Year" in connection to YouTube, which helped to kill Senator George Allen's reelection chances (he was caught on camera calling an Indian-American "macaca"). With mainstream media reporting only the news corporations want people to know, the collective wisdom of individual people are able to bypass the traditional media through the use of new technologies.

It's too early to tell what may be the end result of this "Twitter Revolution", but hopefully, the days of the mullahs ruling Iran are numbered. The Islamists came into power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini (who was the face of Satan in my childhood). That revolution was a rebellion against the pro-Western Shah, who came to power in a 1953 coup led by the CIA to oust the popularly elected Mossadeg. To this day, the Iranian government says that no reconciliation with the U.S. can begin without the American government acknowledging wrongdoing for that event. Why our government can't own up to it is baffling. The CIA term "blowback" refers exactly to that idea...that U.S. covert operations to undermine or overthrow popularly elected governments could come back and explode in our faces with an even worse scenario. History has shown time and again that blowback is reality. Just think of it as the secular term for "karma."

One thing that amuses me in the aftermath of the Iranian elections is hearing Bush-supporting Republicans talk with glee about this election result. Its so obvious its a fraud, they say. Um, yeah...they can so easily see that its a fraud when another country is involved, but when their own illegitimate candidate gets the presidency through his own electoral fraud, they won't even entertain that thought. Its funny that people so ignorant about major issues facing our country and facts regarding 9/11 and WMDs in Iraq are such "experts" about Iranian elections.

Another source of amusement is that many Bush supporters hate Iranian President Ahmadinejad. I always got the impression that Ahmadinejad was the Iranian Bush. Both are religious fanatics and have a tendency to speak from ignorance, which causes laughter among audiences who know better.

In the 1990s, a conservative I knew didn't understand global politics. He didn't understand when I told him that liberal people, regardless of what nationality, have a tendency to get along, but conservatives in different nationalities tend to hate one another. For example, conservative Americans hate the French and conservative French people tend not to like America. If you had two rooms and put a liberal Jew, a liberal Muslim, and a liberal Christian in one room and an Orthodox Jew, a fundamentalist Muslim, and a conservative Christian in the other room...which group would get along and which would kill each other? I think the answer is pretty obvious (well...to everyone EXCEPT conservatives). Why is this the case? Because conservatives in every nation tend to be nationalistic and often are religious. That means they believe their country first, right or wrong. Liberals are more likely to see the other's point of view and share common values.

So, when I hear conservatives gleefully talk about the possibility of a revolution in Iran, it only reminds me of how little they know about their own philosophy. They have more in common with the mullahs and Ahmadinejad than they have the self-awareness to realize. I wish they'd just shut up and keep their ignorance about foreign affairs to themselves. They need to spend more time reflecting on why their beloved Bush was such a failure.

This possibility of revolution isn't surprising. According to numerology, the ninth year is a year of closures. Things long fermented come into fruition. We've seen revolutions happen in the ninth year before. The French Revolution of 1789. Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, sparking World War II. The Communist Revolution in China of 1949. Student uprisings in the U.S. in 1969. The Islamic Revolution of 1979. Student uprisings in Tiananman Square in 1989, the fall of communist regimes in East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania in the fall of 1989. The Battle in Seattle against the WTO in 1999. What else is new? Somewhere on our planet, people are moving towards greater freedom. Why not Iran? They've been oppressed for too long, and the majority of the population is too young to remember the events of 1979. All they know about their entire life is the oppressive rule of the religiously conservative mullahs who run the government of Iran.

Give America twenty years of Christian Coalition rule and people would act the same way. Rebellion against oppressive control is the natural inclination of human kind.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Iran. The people who are yearning for freedom. May they at long last finally get the government they deserve and shake off the oppressive rule of the mullahs. Secular government that allows individual freedoms is a good thing.

Music Video Monday: Young Cons

A few weeks ago, I saw this video on the Huffington Post with a notice that this was not a satire, even though liberals might think of it as such. However, its hard not to view it as satire, because its downright hilarious. It proves to me how disconnected conservatives are from their ideology and history. The reason it's not satire is because the white rappers are earnest in their viewpoints. Meaning...they actually believe the shit they are rapping about! This is like basic Conservative-ology 101...with references to Ronald Reagan (who has pretty much become the god of the Republican Party) and Ayn Rand (why do conservatives love to quote her novel The Fountainhead?).

Why I find this rap funny is because conservatives were the ones who fought racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s. They fight change at every step of the way. Yet, today's conservatives don't seem to understand the history of their movement. That's because today's young conservatives, who were born in the Reagan years or afterwards, grew up in a racially integrated society. They probably listened to rap music like the Beastie Boys, Eminem, LL Cool J, Run DMC, and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. The previous generation of conservatives saw black/urban culture as a blight on society. Not so the younger generation. These young conservative rappers are clearly comfortable in their rhythms. Watching them "act black", I couldn't help but wonder what the older generation of conservatives (those who reacted against the LBJ Great Society program and the liberal and hippie excesses of the 1960s) think of this newer generation of conservatives "acting black"? Do they see it as the ultimate victory of liberalism's crusade towards racial integration?

I've said before that conservative ideology is always on the losing side of history. They fight changes all the way, but they never seem to be able to stop change from occuring. That's because history moves. Life is about progress. People who want to stay the same as their ancestors fall into the margins of society (such as the Amish, who still live like its 1799).

Watching these young conservatives rap their ideology, I can't help but wonder what tomorrow's conservatives will fight against. Abortion is probably the only issue that will never die for this group, but you can bet that they'll probably accept gay marriages as a fact of life (society is moving towards tolerance, not exclusion).

Enjoy the video!

"The World" Came to Portland

This past week, the talk of the town was the massive cruise ship called "The World" docking in downtown Portland. Its amazing that this ship could make it up the Willamette River and fit through the various drawbridges that connect both sides of Portland. Its rare that we see a ship this size in downtown Portland. During the Rose Festival and "Fleet Week", the US and Canadian Navies usually send a Frigate or Guided Missile Cruiser, which are the smallest ships in the fleet.

The World is a unique kind of cruise ship. I had never heard of it until last week. Basically, people buy a condominium onboard (for $3.5 million or so) and the ship sails around the world in two years, stopping at the major ports of the world. Wow. That's my kind of living! In fact, if I won the lottery, I'd definitely buy a condo onboard and experience a two year adventure. That is the kind of life I dream of living. Too bad one has to be rich to afford such an experience.

Had I the money, I wouldn't mind living onboard for two years and seeing all the ports of call. I'd spend my time at sea reading books, writing, and meeting the other residents. Just think of all the books I'd be able to finish in two years!

When I was in the Navy, I picked for my last command the USS George Washington, which was the Navy's newest aircraft carrier at that time. The rumour was that it was going on a round the world voyage in 1994 and I wanted to be a part of that. Unfortunately, the rumour turned out to be false, but I don't regret requesting it or serving on board. The biggest irony of my Navy enlistment is that I joined in part to experience a six month deployment, and I was on three ships in four years...but NEVER got to go on a Med Cruise or West Pac (as they call it in the Navy). I could have, though. In 1996, the Admin Officer gave me two options: a two month early out or extending for the Med Cruise. Because of the Olympics in Atlanta and my fear of missing out on this major event (how often does an international sporting event come to your city?), I opted for the early out. I would have extended just to experience a six month deployment if not for my desire to see the Olympics in Atlanta. I hated making that choice, but I don't regret it. The ship didn't make a port visit to Haifa, Israel, which was the one place I wished I could've seen when I was in the Navy. My second ship, the USS Simon Lake went to Haifa, but I was assigned to the Palau Community Center. Because of that, I got to vacation in South Africa, so that's a trade-off that I accept.

After I got out of the Navy, I doubted that I'd ever want to go on a Cruise for a vacation. I felt like I had already done the shipboard thing and it wouldn't be much different from the Navy. However, since I've been out for a long time now, a cruise might be a fun thing to do at some point. Caribbean cruises don't interest me much. I'd rather do one that goes through the Panama Canal, or Alaska, or the South Pacific. A Mediterranean cruise wouldn't interest me much either because I had seen some of the most popular stops (Ibiza, Gibraltar, Nice, Naples, Corfu) and they're pretty much the same.

In college, MTV Road Rules featured a season onboard the Semester At Sea program. I had never heard of it before then and watched the show with a great deal of interest. Had I the money in college, a semester at sea would have been an awesome experience. A part of me would love to be a visiting professor on board for a semester if I ever become a successful published novelist.

Above is a photo I found online of The World cruise liner. Not sure what city that is, though. I took a few photos of the ship but because I have a backlog of 14 rolls of film to develop, it will be many months before I see it.

After I took a walk downtown to check out the ship, I searched online for information about the ship...and even if they were hiring staff. Well...why not? Since I can't afford to buy a condo on board, the next best thing is to work as an employee. But, they're only hiring a pastry chef at the moment. Its a nice fantasy, I suppose. Something to dream about, when the reality might not be as exciting. Wealthy people get great options in life. Its a shame that something like this is out of the price range of most of the residents of planet earth. I'd love to spend two years on a ship going around the world, with enough free time to read all the books on my list.

Its nice to dream...but the search goes on for my real career.

What is it with Mormons?

The above satire is taken from a volume of my Journal-Letters with Nathan from 1999. From 1995 through 2001, Nathan and I kept in touch by writing in a blank book and sending it back and forth. It was his idea and I have no clue why he wanted to correspond that way, but I was game. We ended up filling five volumes, with him keeping three of them and I kept two (I photocopied the volumes he ended up with).

Because of his extroverted nature, he wasn't private about the Journal-Letters as I was, so girls thought it was a cool idea and wanted to keep in touch with him that way. Never worked. He wasn't much of a letter writer, thus why I was surprised he wanted to do this and kept up with it for a span of five years. Not bad. There were a few times when I actually wrote in it to deliver to him in person. To my shock, as soon as I handed it to him, he wanted to read it right then and there, even though I was visiting in person.

Anyhow, the above satire of Star Wars would be considered somewhat blasphemous to LDS members (because I portray their previous prophet as the evil Emperor Palpatine), so if it offends any of my Mormon readers, I apologize. You have to understand, though, that I wrote this satire to make light of the intolerance and religious differences I was dealing with at BYU. It wasn't easy to be a member of a splinter church, with a different interpretation of our shared history. The biggest difference was the degree of control that the LDS Church authorities have over the lives of members. There were many other differences and I know my Mormon friends would disagree with me, but the differences between our two churches could be likened to the Empire and the Rebellion in Star Wars. The church I'm a member of is small, poor, Democratic, and progressive in its theology and evolution. The LDS church is massive, wealthy, authoritarian, highly organized, in many more countries with active missionary efforts, and ultra conservative and conformist. Dissent was often quashed if people asked uncomfortable questions at BYU.

It's understandable in a way. The entire legitimacy of the LDS Church depends upon the claims that Joseph Smith did indeed find an ancient text made of brass and gold, translated it, and was conferred upon by God, Jesus, and the Angel Moroni to restore "the True Church" on earth. If any or all those elements were proven to be false, there will be 13 million disillusioned followers. In the Community of Christ, there are members who are open-minded enough to consider that Joseph Smith might have very well have been a fraud. Would that change our feelings about the church? I don't think it would be as disillusioning for Community of Christ members because we aren't as beholden to Joseph Smith as the LDS are. Its our community fellowship and common experiences of summer camps, reunions, World Conferences, and heritage that bonds us, even if we disagree on the historical claims.

Anyhow, the reason why I wanted to write a post about the Mormons is because I can't help but reflect on the fact that I have only filed a grievance against three people in my life and all three of them happen to be members of this religion. You would think that with our shared heritage and my attending BYU would bond me with any Mormon I happen to come across. But, like the general population, Mormons are just as flawed as anyone else (don't let the Missionaries lead you to believe differently!). And just as diverse. Our personalities are generally unchangeable and some personalities are just incompatable. For me, I don't like the "tattle tale / school marm / know-it-all" that my co-worker embodies in her daily life. I have never liked this type of girl since elementary school. Another thing I noticed about her is that she does not have a sense of humour and that's another big strike against her. What my closest friends all have in common is their ability to make me laugh. I'm actually loyal to people who have the ability to make me laugh.

When I was home on vacation, my brother asked me why I never laugh at his jokes. He tries so hard. I actually feel bad about it. As I explained to him, his jokes are the kind kids read in joke books and tell to adults, thinking that they never heard them before. That's not my kind of humour. At my grandfather's funeral, I was glad to see cousin Brandy because she always makes me laugh. Her sense of humour and mine match perfectly. She's very sarcastic and dark in her humour and she says it with such style. In terms of movies, I don't find Will Farrell funny but I thought the film Down With Love was hilarious.

As I reflect on my life long relations with Mormons, I'm amazed by the contrast. Since elementary school through high school, I found it easy to be friends with Mormons. At the time, I understood the connection between our two churches but it didn't faze me why they belonged to the larger church and we belonged to the smaller one. It was just the way it was. In the Navy, when I was shocked by the wild and empty lifestyle of sailors, I found an even deeper bond with Mormon sailors who shared the same values I did. It got so bad with the peer pressure to become an alcoholic that it was pretty lonely and I almost joined the LDS Church in 1994 when Mormon missionaries set up shop in the isolated Navy town of La Maddalena, Sardinia.

When I went to BYU, I didn't think my good relations with Mormons would change. Nathan warned me, though, and he was right. He knew their self-righteousness would not sit well with me. My bond with Nathan is pretty strong, as we have the same Community of Christ heritage in common and coincidences between our two families over the years. Simply put, when I met him in 1994, I knew he was "the brother" I had wanted all my life. He knew me well enough to know that I was in no danger of converting to the LDS Church as some in my home congregation thought I might.

After my Washington Seminar experience, I processed my entire experience of living and studying among Mormons and realized a few things. I got along great with Mormons who were Democrats, liberal, or open-minded towards other religions. That basically describes the five Mormon friends I keep in touch with to this day. The ones I did not get along with are the authoritarian types, holier-than-thous, conformists, "Molly Mormon", the materialistic, and the die-hard conservative Republicans (those who think Democratic Mormons should not get a Temple Recommend). So, it's not the religion, really, that defines who they are and if I'd get along with them. It's the composite of their values and personality type.

In my last job in Atlanta, there was one Mormon employee and he almost got me fired. I thought we bonded over our common heritage, but he was a snake. He lied to me to get access to our database system, entered information he wasn't supposed to enter and cost the company some major cash (several hundreds of dollars). He also took the money and ran. I was shocked that a Mormon would violate my trust in him, but then I had to think back to my BYU experience with the difficulties I had with two roommates. At my current job, there is a Mormon guy who wanted me to do a huge favour. I did, thinking he would follow through on his promise. He didn't. Basically, I could've been a stickler about entering some information for him (waiting until he turned in the completed forms), but I let it slide, thinking he would turn in the forms later. When he brushed it off and continues to do so, I sent an email to his supervisor and since then, he refuses to acknowledge my existence. Hey, dude...I did you a favour so you could make your end of month numbers and you couldn't honour that by turning in the completed paperwork? He burned a bridge with me FOREVER.

In my current job, I find myself loathing the LDS Church more and more. They have too much control over this organization and it is not right. My gripe is that they whine about Evangelical Christians not considering them to be Christians, but on the flip side, they want special distinction and to follow their own set of rules, revealing the mindset I found most disturbing at BYU...that they think they are better than the rest of us and above us. I can totally understand why Evangelicals are hesitant to support a Mormon candidate for President. There's the fear that he would be beholden to his Church Authority or that there would be preferences towards members of the faith at the expense of diversity. Yeah, I share the same concerns.

I hate saying or thinking this...but when I leave this current job at some point, I hope to work in a place free of Mormon influence. I feel like I've learned more than I care to know about their theology, have been screwed over by too many dishonest and irrational Mormons already, and I just want to limit my contact with Mormons to the few who are my friends. I'm ready to meet people of other religions, like Quakers and Unitarian Universalists.

My Short History of Grievances

On Monday, my emotionally unstable coworker became the third person I have ever filed a grievance against. Not only that, she also shares a common trait with the previous two. All three of the people I have filed grievances against are Mormons. Go figure!

Before I get to that interesting pattern, I wanted to write about my personal history of grievances. Not that I've had many. I consider it a measure of absolutely last resort, as I prefer to work things out on a personal basis with the person I have a major disagreement or irreconciliable differences with. If I feel that I'm not getting the basic respect we are all entitled to (a workplace free of negative energy or harassment), I will internally debate for months whether or not to file an official letter of grievance with management. With my coworker, I have given her over a year to shape up (I first started thinking about writing a grievance letter against her after her February 2008 blow-up). She hasn't. I doubt she'll ever change. She's incapable of it. We are talking about a woman who turns 40 in October and has never left home! Ever. And she's worked in the same place since she graduated from high school in 1988.

Anyhow, when I was in the Navy, I cross-decked from my first ship, the all-male crew of the USS Orion, which was set for decommissioning in 1993 and I wasn't ready to leave Sardinia yet, to the USS Simon Lake, which had a 30% female crew. I was really excited about this because Italian women were too hard to date. On the new ship, one lady seem to take to me right away. She was a Postal Clerk and reminded me of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (believe me, that was a good thing in my mind at the time). She would grab me to eat lunch with her on the mess decks and I was flattered by her interest in me because I was very attracted to her. However, as soon as she and I were seen together on the ship, guys would approach me warning about her. "She's bad news," they'd say. I thought it was odd and ignored it. Plain old jealousy.

It wasn't long until I found out her true motives. She started asking me to buy her meals off the ship as well as buying her things. I've never been a good person to take orders from someone. When I buy a person a gift, it comes from the heart. Someone asking me to buy something for them all the time is a warning sign (like that other co-worker who was fired in April). This lady was charming and seductive, but I held off on buying her anything and she moved on to the next guy. As I later learned, she went through guys monthly. She always had a new guy on her arm every month.

I wish I could say that after she dropped me, she ignored me...but she didn't. Her behaviour became very nasty and she always spoke with sexual innuendo, which made me uncomfortable. Once, at a party, she approached my table and said my name in a very suggestive way. I replied with, "don't have an orgasm." An officer I worked with and his wife were sitting at my table. He laughed but his wife gasped in shock from my statement. Ah, the differences between male and female humour. I achieved the effect I wanted. This Postal Clerk was embarrassed and quickly left the scene. There were times when I had to pick up the Squadron's mail and when she was the Postal Clerk to deliver them, she would always try to embarrass me in the line of other shipmates. Once, when a date stood me up to a Squadron banquet, she loved to rub it in. After I returned from my vacation in South Africa, she said, "I heard you got your ass robbed in Johannesburg. Where the hell is that?" The other Postal Clerks laughed at her stupidity, but she found amusement in my unfortunate experience.

Because of her behaviour, I was very tempted to bring harassment charges against her. However, the Postal Clerks who worked with her warned me not to. They said that I would be the laughing stock of the entire ship. They claimed that she had several officers in her back pocket. She essentially had power because of her flagrant sexuality. This was in the Navy's paranoid post-Tailhook era where women had the power to make a sexual harassment allegation against a male sailor and ruin his career, whether it was true or false. Because of that advice, I held off on filing harassment charges against her. The following year, I remember that Michael Crichton received flack for making his novel Disclosure about a female sexually harassing a male, as most cases it is the male harassing the female. However, when I read that book, it brought up so much emotions within me regarding my own situation with this sexually aggressive female. It's all about power and control.

The first grievance I wrote was against one of my roommates at BYU. The roommate, Ryan, was obnoxious. There were several odd things about him. First, he was from a small town in Alberta, Canada, yet he was attending Utah Valley State College. Why would someone come to our country to study at an unheard of college? In Provo, BYU is THE university while Utah Valley State College is where the BYU-rejects go. Second, he was ADHD and had serious issues with his father. Third, he was in a majorly dysfunctional relationship with his girlfriend. He treated her poorly but she always clung to him. He loved making people mad. For instance, he once recounted how he saw a black guy at the Taco Bell drive through and proceeded to call him "nigger" and sped out of there when the guy supposedly left his job site to chase after him. Ryan used that word a lot, and I kept asking him to stop because that word is so ugly. I was shocked that a Canadian would be that crude. He was more an American frat boy than a typical Canadian.

He loved answering the phone and once told me that someone had called for me but he told them that I couldn't come to the phone because I was busy having sex with goats. Another roommate reported that Ryan and his girlfriend had sex in the apartment, which was forbidden according to BYU Honor Code regulations, even though neither Ryan nor his girlfriend attended BYU. The antics continued all semester, with him eating our food, playing pranks, and just causing trouble to the point where none of us could relax. I decided that enough was enough, so I wrote a letter to the landlord asking them to evict him. The other two roommates agreed to sign it. The result? Ryan was evicted from the apartment.

The second person I filed a grievance against was my roommate Daniel, who was one of the signers of the letter to evict Ryan. Daniel and I could have great conversations or intense arguments. In retrospect, he displayed all the signs of being bi-polar, which is the hardest personality trait to live with. He would go from extreme high to severe depression. He could be likeable at times, but other times he was impossible to reason with. He was a fanatic about Mormonism and made some scary statements, such as how he couldn't wait to be a god of his own world someday so he could make the people of his world practice polygamy or else kill them if they refused. I understood his fanaticism about Mormonism because he was disfellowshipped for what he calls "same-sex attraction." He claimed to be over it (though his reactions to one of the roommates revealed otherwise) and working to get re-fellowshipped within Mormonism because his dream was to become a god of his own world (as Mormonism promises its Temple-worthy, priesthood-holding members).

Though he would fluctuate between being a likeable roommate and an intolerable one, he crossed the line one day when he told me that he was deeply offended that his tithing was subsidizing my BYU education and if I didn't convert to the LDS religion, he would go to the Honour Code office and make up a story to get me thrown out of there. To indicate his seriousness, he said that the Honour Code office doesn't believe the accused and they certainly would not believe a non-member over a member. I told him that I had sacrificed too much to be there and I couldn't afford to get thrown out. This was in the Spring of 1999, when I had only two semesters left of school, one of them being the Washington Seminar I was looking forward to. By making such a threat to my educational plans and livelihood, I spoke to a few professors about it as well as the Honour Code office. I filed a complaint against him and wrote a 12 page letter to his bishop, listing every single statement Daniel made that was illogical to undermine his credibility. What I learned was that he was bluffing. He didn't go to the Honour Code office like he had claimed that he did and he got angry with me for reporting him to the Honour Code office. He should've known better than to make a hollow threat.

What was the result of that letter to his bishop? He was ordered to move out of the apartment...something he said that he would not do because he had lived there before I moved in, so I should be the one to move out. That's the power of the bishop over a member's life, I guess.

Basically, I learned from these experiences that people often underestimate me or they push me to a point where I take a stand. I prefer to be forgiving and accomodating, as well as understanding. I understood that Ryan had internal issues that he was running from that made him difficult to live with. I understood that Daniel felt vulnerable because he was struggling with his sexuality in an ultra conservative religion, where his desire to become a god someday meant subverting his natural attractions in this lifetime. And at my current job, I do feel sorry for this co-worker because she did get a bad deal in life (physically unattractive, nasal and whiny voice, parents probably babied and sheltered her all her life, no ambition, no coping mechanism beyond temper tantrums like a four year old). But, at some point you have to stop accepting their excuses and put your foot down and demand respect.

I know the power of my words. It does get results. When people try to move against me, they lose. I think I'm blessed by karma in this regard. As I said above, I hate having to go this route, but after more than a year of tolerating and forgiving her emotional abuse, the time had finally arrived for me to say, "enough!"

Interestingly enough, my sense of timing was bad. The atmosphere at work was very subdued on Monday and Tuesday. Work had its own bombshell for employees. The economic crisis has finally taken a huge hit on this organization to the point where they are having to enact various budget-saving efforts to stay afloat for the rest of the year. This could mean lay-offs, though they claim that they don't want to let any employee go. However, since I already want to bail, it would be very good news to me if they let me go so I can go out and find another job. I always have an easier time finding a job when I'm out of work than when I'm working. The other options include unpaid holidays (which we still have six this year) and 12 furlough days (mandatory unpaid days off). That will hit my pocketbook hard. Hopefully bill collectors will be understanding if it comes to that.

So...my job search goes on, as the dramas at work intensify. I don't expect management to do much with my letter of grievance. They've tolerated her behaviour for decades and probably realize that it would be hard to find someone who would endure the indignity of her lowest job classification (one of her duties is cleaning the dishes in the breakroom/kitchen) as well as her inability to land a job elsewhere. People would most likely take one look at her and decline right away. Like I said...she's not pleasant to look at, even more unpleasant to work with. Whenever I have difficulty forgiving someone, I ask myself whether I would trade places with that person. If not, then forgiveness is easy. So, the answer is...I'd hate to live her life, thus forgiveness is easy. But then there's forgiveness and then there's stupidity. If a person doesn't change their behaviour, you're not doing them any favours by forgiving and forgetting. There comes a time when the foot must be dug into the dirt and you stand your ground.

Music Video Monday: Jericho Road

For this week's music video selection, I wanted to include the video of Jericho Road's awesome song "Lift Me Up" but couldn't find it on YouTube. The only thing I found was a slideshow created by a fan. For those who have never heard of Jericho Road, the best way to describe them is to call them "the Mormon 98 Degrees." If you know that 90s guy band 98 Degrees (a quartet that featured brothers Nick and Drew Lachey), then you'll understand the music style of Jericho Road. They're practically interchangeable.

I heard this song earlier in the decade and recently "rediscovered" it when I decided to put the band's greatest hits compilation CD on heavy rotation. This song really struck me, lyrically. It describes the feelings I'm currently having about work related issues and the next step I want to take that will take me closer to what I want for myself in terms of career satisfaction, contribution to society, and even the search for the ever elusive relationship.

So, sit back, listen to the lyrics, and maybe it will touch your heart as well. Oh, and you can ignore the heavy religious imagery on screen if it bothers you.

Making a Full Reversal

This past weekend, I finished reading U-Turn by Bruce Grierson. What attracted me to this book was the subtitle: "What if you woke up one morning and realized you were living the wrong life?"

Man...how could I NOT want to read a book like that?!? It seemed to reflect what I'm going through the past three years, so of course I had to buy it and read it. This is one of the rare books that have gone straight to the top of my must read list (I have a bad habit of buying books to read eventually. Some that I have bought five years ago are still not in my pile to read in the near future).

In fact, I was curious about how many books I've read since 2006 that fell into the categories of self-help, psychology, and spiritual. I counted no less than 19 books, starting with Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life?, which was the first book I had read after quitting my last job in Atlanta and preparing for my move west. U-Turn is in a similar vein. However, the book wasn't what I thought it would be. It was more about people who have done a complete 180. You know...like Saul who persecuted Christians until he had a vision from God on the way to Damascus. Then he became an over-zealous advocate of Jesus and probably was instrumental in making Christianity as obnoxious as some people find it today (that whole overbearing mission to convert non-believers with threats of hell and damnation). This book is full of people like that...from the example of a guy who worked at a chicken processing plant in Arkansas and became a full on vegetarian advocate for PETA, to those who got wealthy in the finance industry only to find it shallow and soul depriving.

The stories are interesting and its a fascinating read, but it doesn't really help me much in my situation of desiring a major life change. I guess I'm not wanting a complete 180 from what I'm doing now. I've worked in enough organizations to know how similar they are in many respects. I just need to find one that's more compatable to my values. This book does inspire me with some insight, particularly its explanation about the whole "mid-life crisis" phenomenon. In particular, one passage really struck me deep in my current crisis:

Bruce Grierson writes (pp 195-196), "When you canvass people who have hit bottom, you find shame, despair--and very often a kind of slow-boil fury, born of a sense of being unfairly dealt out of the game, known as indignation. It was this last emotion the playwright Arthur Miller seized on to investigate why U-turns come at low points in life. Call it the 'restoration of dignity' theory. The tragic figure has been knocked out of what he considers his 'rightful place' in society--and he is trying to recover some scrap of dignity, at whatever cost. This partly explains the motivations of some whistleblowers."

When I read that passage, alarm bells went off like crazy in my head. That's exactly it. That explains my feelings about my current job. Here I am, a college-educated person who is well-traveled and enjoys the continual search for knowledge in his spare time, with a resume stock full of diverse experiences in well known organizations, who has worked for the Vice President of the United States, served on board an aircraft carrier, and mailed gruesome autopsy photographs to people who have requested them...I have done a lot, seen a lot...yet the best I could come up with for a job as I approach 40 is to be a hen-pecked assistant to an anal retentive OCD micromanager and endure daily verbal abuse by a seriously deranged and unhappy spinster lady who has never been laid in her entire life?!? What the FUCK is wrong with that picture?!? Damn straight, I'm furious. No shit that I've lost my dignity. I had more responsibilities and trust as an unpaid intern in the Executive Office of the President than I currently do in my low-wage slave job.

So...how to get my dignity back?

Well...it just so happens that a line has been crossed. On Friday, after a non-stop barrage over the past two weeks of constant nitpicking, my huffy, impatient, annoying co-worker overreacted on a trifling matter (she had asked me to turn down the volume of my headset, to which I calmly and monotonely replied, "only if you will turn down your radio") and created a huge scene (a co-worker who has only been there for two months happened to go into the basement and heard a commotion of things being thrown around and cabinet doors slamming). It was the final straw. I had given her months of patience and forgiveness, in the hope that she would change for the better. Now, it's over. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Come Monday, a grievance letter will be filed against this co-worker with the emphasis that if the situation is not resolved to my satisfaction, I will go higher until I find someone willing to take care of this person, once and for all.

This is the lady that had once destroyed a telephone at her desk because she got mad at a customer on the phone. When I was in the Navy, my supervisor threw a telephone at the bulkhead of our ship's office and he was gone from the Squadron by day's end. His overseas assignment was ended sooner than he had planned and he was sent away to his next command early. When I contrast the two situations, I can't help but admire the Navy. They don't put up with bullshit like my current employers do. Management in this office is so fucking scared of shit that I have decided that enough is enough. I will set an action in motion and see how they act. Perhaps I've been too much the nice guy. It's time for the asshole side to come out. But am I really being an asshole? Is it too much to ask that I have a safe office to come to work to each day without the fear of being verbally harassed by this mentally unstable co-worker? Is it too much to ask for professional co-workers?

I can't wait until tomorrow. After I drop the letter off with the Office Manager, if she cares to talk it over with me, I'm going to tell her flat out that I regret coming to work here and to tell her that had I known that this office was worse than the one in Atlanta, I would have declined her employment offer. I am going to be the most honest I've ever been and I don't care where that might lead. If they decide to let me go, it might be a blessing for all I know. Whatever happens, I'm confident I'm doing the right thing spiritually. There is simply no justification at all for me to be subjected to the ongoing abusive tirades of an emotionally unstable co-worker. This constitutes harassment and creates a hostile work environment. The best news I could get from this is if they decide to let the co-worker go. They don't seem to have the guts to and I don't know why. She is the most unpopular person in the office and there's a reason for it. No one likes her because she has gone off on every person there at some point. Lately, I seem to be the biggest trigger to her outbursts. I have my theories why and it boils down to jealousy, I think.

But, it's not my problem. Now is the time for bold honesty and facing management with an official grievance to see just how much they value me. I wish I had a job offer in hand so I can threaten to walk out by week's end. I'm still waiting a decision on one place and have found six other job opportunities to apply to this week. We will certainly see. Mark your calendars...the Ides of June is going to see some major fireworks, I think!

Who knows...this might be the spiritual test I am supposed to take before I'm allowed to "move on" to the next phase of my career. After all, I'd be doing this co-worker a favour. I don't think she has ever been called to account for the way she mistreats people so it's high time someone does. It'll force her to grow up, perhaps...or she can choose to remain the emotionally stunted 4 year old in a 40 year old body. Whatever her decision, the only thing I can and will control is how she treats me and I've simply tolerated her shit for far too long out of a sense of empathy for her misfortunes in life. That empathy is the old, analog me. I've told people before that I prefer to be the nice guy, but when pushed too far, I can become a major asshole and when most people see that side of me, they are shocked and prefer the nice guy. We'll see if this holds true this week.

All I can say is that work is going to be very interesting this week! The poor office manager has been stressing out for the past few months and work is going to get a hell of a lot more stressful for her this week. Too bad. The asshole is out of the bag and he's ready to kick some major ass at work. Might as well have some fun doing it.

The Television Switch As Metaphor

Last night, I watched the final KATU News broadcast at 11:00 PM before they pushed the button that ended their analog system forever. At 11:35 PM, my TV screen went static. The Oregon Public Broadcast network did the switch to digital earlier in the day so I couldn't watch the News Hour when I got home from work.

Yes, I've known for months that the switch was going to happen. It was supposed to occur in February, but Congress wisely postponed it to June because of the number of people who weren't ready. I'm sure they were pressured by the television industry, because February is sweeps month and the switch was to happen two days before the Academy Awards. Being ratings obsessed, I'm sure that the television industry wanted to delay the switch until summer when television viewership drops anyway. This gives Americans the summer to get their vouchers to buy a converter box.

My brother bought two converter boxes and gave one to me, but it still sits in the box unopened. I decided months ago to put a moratorium on unnecessary spending (no dvds, cds, major purchases, and only one used book per payday). The reason is because I am serious about wanting to be in a new work situation by August, when my apartment lease is up. Unfortunately, my apartment does not allow month to month leases, so it's a year or nothing. I don't want to be there another year unless I'm in a new job. August represents the month of changes for me, so that's why I planned on no television this summer. Its not a big loss...because I still have Netflix. However, with my free time not watching television, I will be using that time to enjoy Portland and to purge unnecessary things I have laying around my apartment.

That's just a little of what's going on in my life lately.

Recent events in my personal life seem to indicate that a major change is well underway and hopefully, I'll receive great news soon. I'm long overdue for a major change and I feel ready for the next step. I wish I could divulge more information, but I want to keep it for myself for now. To use the recent television transition from analog to digital as a metaphor, I guess you can say that I, too, am shutting down the old, analog me and switching to a higher spiritual frequency where information comes to me clearer. It's about following intuitive insights and inspiration and stepping up to the plate of greater responsibilities.

I realized this the other day when I looked over my resume and had the epiphany that I've been "underselling" myself out of some modesty, which hasn't been effective in getting my experiences noticed by the right people. One change I did was to examine my entire work experience and showcase my accomplishments and abilities. It was then when I saw that I have done some incredible things and am capable of being in a leadership or management position. I am far more capable of greater things than I allowed myself to be. So, this is the beginning of a newer me. As Senator Merkley put on his campaign posters and bumper stickers in his 2008 campaign: "Change. It's coming." He unexpectedly defeated a well-financed and personally well-liked incumbent. There's no reason at all why I cannot replicate his success this summer.

Music Video Monday: Johnny Clegg and Savuka

A year ago, I started the special feature "Music Video Monday" to showcase a video or song that I really love that you may have never even heard before. In that year, I'm impressed by the diverse selection I've chosen, but it isn't surprising, considering that represents my diverse musical style.

Yesterday was Johnny Clegg's 56th birthday. To mark this one year anniversary, I decided to go with another Johnny Clegg song: "The Crossing", which I consider to be his best music video. It has a spiritual theme to it. That shouldn't be surprising, as he wrote this song in honour of his friend and bandmate Dudu Zulu, who was murdered in a carjacking, if I'm not mistaken, in 1992. The first time I saw this video was on the night of my robbery experience in Johnannesburg. After returning to the safety of my hotel room, I had time to reflect on the events that had just taken place an hour or two earlier, and I had the television on for company. I turned it to a South African music video channel and heard Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" for the first time. To this day, that song is associated with my experience of that night. But when Johnny Clegg's video came on, I think I truly lost it at that point. Talk about a close call! Because of that event, I measure my life from that moment forward. It could have been one of my "exit points" that I refused to take at that time. What a life I've lived since then.

Anyhow...enjoy the video! I'll resume blogging when I have some good news to announce (or if an important event or milestone anniversary occurs). I don't see that happening until at least Bastille Day, but you never know.

Best Book About the Iraq War

While on vacation to Atlanta, my reading material was the excellent book about the first year of the American occupation of Iraq: Imperial Life in the Emerald City. I'm even going to go on a limb here and say that it is the best book I've come across about the Iraq War. No, I haven't read all the books out there about the subject. The ones I have on my shelf are mainly personal memoirs written by the soldiers who served in Iraq (and even blogged about it). I've seen some books that are quite academic, comprehensive, wordy and dry.

Since I have been pondering for three years now whether I should seek a private contractor position in Iraq for a year, I really wanted to read a book specific about life in the Green Zone, which this book certainly covers. It's less about the war than about life inside this piece of America at the center of Baghdad. For instance, while all of Baghdad suffers from blackouts for hours each day, life in the Green Zone has electrical power 24/7. There are two worlds that exist in Baghdad, and life is far better inside the Green Zone than outside (the opposite of a prison).

This book was an alluring read. First, the cover (of the British-published version, which was sold at Powells City of Books in Portland for a discounted price) is quite attractive. I was drawn to it from a distance. Then, as I opened it to skim passages, I was drawn in by the writing style. The author (Rajiv Chandrasekaran) has created an immensely readable book. Its not dense like some other books I've seen of the Iraq War. The book doesn't get bogged down in wonky details. The writer presents the information in an easy to understand style and he has the gift of knowing what kind of details to include to make an interesting story. In essence, I could hardly put this book down. Though I didn't have time to read it in one or a few sittings, each moment I could spare reading, I couldn't wait to pick up this book and start reading where I left off. I'm glad that I brought it with me on my trip home, as I had several hours at a time with which to get absorbed in this inside look at life in the Green Zone.

What have I learned about the Coalition Provisional Authority? Nothing I hadn't heard before. Basically, it was incompetently run because Bush had appointed party loyalists and incompetent hacks into jobs they didn't qualify for, much to the horror of the State Department. In fact, there seemed to be turf wars between what the White House wanted, what the State Department wanted, what the Department of Defense wanted, and what the Central Intelligence Agency wanted. Vital information was kept from State Department bureaucrats because they were deemed too liberal even though many had more experience dealing with the Middle East than a fresh-out-of-college guy assigned the complicated task of restarting the Baghdad Stock Exchange (he wanted computers and other high tech stuff when Iraqis who had experience in the previous market only requested the basic supplies to get things started, such as a chalk board). Reading the ludicrous and futile efforts of the young "idealist" made me think of an equally absurd idea: building a rocket ship to the moon before cars were invented. To think that you can come into a country that endured 30 years of brutal dictatorship, in a poor part of the world (in terms of infrastructure and technology), and create an advanced country like the United States or Western Europe is laughingly absurd.

The author seems to put much of the blame for the disasterous post-invasion period on the shoulders of L. Paul Bremer III, the Viceroy who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority. He supposedly ran the country like a dictator himself, with little input from the Iraqis themselves. His goal was to create a pure capitalist and secular democracy. Despite his best intentions, Bremer's actions show the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that all people had the right to determine their own form of government. Who are we to go into a country we know little about and impose our values and form of government on a people who have no experience with secular democracy? Its up to the Iraqi people to determine what kind of government they want, not Viceroy Bremer.

What I really love about this book is that each chapter is divided by an amusing scene of life in the Green Zone. The scenes include details about secret meetings of Democrats who worked for the State Department (very few were open about their political views), a staffer who said "I'm not here for the Iraqis, I'm here for George W. Bush", the ratio of men to women and how the competition for dates was fierce, how no one wanted to read books about Iraq in their free time, jokes the British military and contractors made about Americans ("Yee haw is not a foreign policy"), the military dislike of the CPA (they called it "Can't Produce Anything"), how staffers adopted stray cats for pets and had to hide them after an extermination order was released, and even a wedding between two young staffers. Each of these interludes presented a more human face to the occupation of Iraq, which only helped illustrate the absurdities of the entire operation.

As I read the book and learned about the various departments requesting part of the appropriations money authorized by the U.S. Congress, I kept thinking how dumb Americans were in 2003 and it only made me angry (because I had misgivings about this war from many angles: morally, ethically, historically, and financially). Would all those 70% of Americans who supported this war (and called anti-war people "unpatriotic") in 2003 truly have supported the war if they knew how much money our country has had to pour into the reconstruction costs? This was money, after all, that Republicans had claimed we didn't have to fix our education and health care system. Yet, our government was doling out money to rebuild hospitals and universities in Iraq (which we bombed). It does not make sense at all! Every American should be required to read Imperial Life in the Emerald City. People need to not be such sheep in giving the president the approval to launch an unprovoked war. We're in the economic mess we're in partly because of all the money we dumped into the money pit that is known as Iraq.

One thing I love about our country is how we try to recreate the comforts of home no matter where we are. I lived on American bases overseas (the Philippines, Germany, and Sardinia). While its great to explore and learn about the country I lived in, it was also nice to have a place that reminded me a little bit of America. For instance, when I lived in Paradiso Barracks in La Maddalena, we had central heating in winter and air condition in the summer. When a Navy family I was friends with were staying in a 4 star hotel their last week in Sardinia, I visited them and was shocked that the hotel did not even have air condition! In the heat of a Mediterranean summer, air condition is a nice luxury to have. Americans are so spoiled! I also enjoyed eating at a restaurant in the barracks complex that served steak. There was a library with books in English, a video store, and a theater that showed movies straight from the U.S. (usually 4 to 6 months after stateside release). We were spoiled. I often wondered what Italians thought of us, able to pass through the security gates into a little piece of America in their country. I know that I would not like it if there were foreign military bases in our country.

Life in the Green Zone sounds like any American base you'll find overseas. The cafeteria serves Southern style food (the author said that ethnic foods like Indian or Moroccan were hard to come by) and there was no shortage of morale-boosting interest group meetings (Bible study groups, Democrats, and even a Baghdad chapter of Hash House Harriers). The more I read this book, the more I wanted to go there to experience for myself. When I was home on vacation, I talked with one guy at church whose former employee spent two years as a private contractor at Camp Anaconda. Basically, that guy completely paid off all his debts and saved up enough money to buy a house when he got back! All the more reason for me to go. However, I wouldn't want to do two years. But, I'm waiting to see how one or two job opportunities will pan out before I pursue "my Iraq option."

Before I read this book, I had no intention of reading Viceroy Bremer's A Year in Iraq. But because of the author seeming to place most of the blame for what went wrong on Bremer's micromanaging leadership style (he thought knew what was best for the Iraqis), I am now interested in reading Bremer's memoirs just to see what he has to say for himself. My impression of him is that he is a likable guy who was in over his head, but I don't know if he was truly incompetent.

My feelings about Iraq are still mixed. I was against the invasion for many reasons, but now that we're there, I just think it would be a mistake to leave. The Iraqi government is too weak to withstand the influence of Iran. Whatever your take on the conflict, I would highly recommend reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City. In fact, if you only read one book about Iraq, this is the one you should read. Its a cautionary tale for the ages, offering many examples of absurdist thinking. No wonder why the grand neo-conservative experiment has proven to be a costly failure thus far.

Flashback Friday: Tiananman Square

Twenty years ago on this day, the above photograph was captured by a reporter covering the student protests in Tiananman Square, in Beijing, China. It is probably one of my favourite photos of all time. It captured what I felt at the time was "true nonconformity." Never had I seen a person so courageous to put his life on the line to stop the tanks from heading towards Tiananman Square to squash the demonstrations. I don't know whatever happened to that man (I heard that he was killed) but the image lives on. In the early 1990s, I bought a poster with that image and proudly displayed it in a frame in my second apartment (when I lived in Smyrna, Georgia from 2004-2006).

That photograph serves as a reminder to the "wake up call" I experienced at the end of my Junior year in high school. I hate admitting it now, but before the events of June 1989, I was not really politically aware or even remotely interested. Something about the student demonstrations in May and June 1989 sparked an interest in international politics in a way other events had not (thinking back, I was probably more aware of international events than most teenagers, but I wasn't quite yet the internationalist I am today). A few years earlier, I had heard that when pop duo Wham! went to China for a historic concert, the crowd went wild during their song "Freedom." I don't know if that set the seeds in motion for the events of 1989, but in May, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev came to China to discuss glasnost and perestroika with the Communist leaders of China. Though still unpopular in his own country, what Gorbachev did for the world was nothing short of remarkable. His desire to make communism "work" led to the kind of reforms he couldn't control. It ultimately brought down the Berlin Wall and led to the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

The Chinese leaders would have none of that. In the 1970s, President Nixon helped drive a wedge between the Soviets and Chinese, who have a long history of distrust to begin with. Isolating communists to force the Soviet hand was considered a brilliant move. In 1989, Gorbachev went to China to build better relations between the two countries. Apparently, students took advantage of the state visit to protest things they didn't like about their government. It put the Chinese government in a bad position, because the eyes of the world were watching. They couldn't do a crack-down while Gorbachev was in country. So, for nearly a month, the demonstrations grew in Tiananman Square until that fateful day in June when Premier Deng Xiaoping decided he had enough of these unruly college kids camping outside the gate to the Forbidden City.

It's hard to believe how much China has changed in the twenty years since that fateful event. Back then, China was still mostly a country of peasant farmers, with bicycles aplenty in Beijing and people wearing "Mao suits" (militaristic green uniforms and cap) and carrying around "The Little Red Book" (a book of Chairman Mao's quotes). By the time of last year's Olympic Games, Beijing had become one of the most toxically polluted cities on the planet, with construction projects all over and huge buildings of innovative architectural designs and high rise apartments, superhighways, and cars all over the place. The Chinese had become every bit as materialistic as the United States, but the government was still as authoritarian as ever.

In college, I had a professor whose speciality was China. He had been there many times and with each visit, he claimed that China was like a different country from his last visit. That's how rapidly the country changed in the 1990s from the previous decades. It was interesting to hear him talk about China in class, and he made China sound like THE PLACE TO BE in the 1990s (its still in my top ten countries I hope to visit someday). One of the things we discussed in a few of my college classes was the strange idea that China could become a capitalistic economic system while remaining communist. It seemed like a baffling thing at the time, because the theory in political science circles is that free markets lead to free governments. You can't have one without the other, supposedly. Political Scientists didn't believe it would be possible for the Chinese government to maintain their authoritarian devotion to communism and one party rule while the free market economy increased the wealth and choices of the Chinese people. The prediction was that at some point, the people would demand political freedoms once they became prosperous and educated.

However, while we may have laughed at what we thought was Chinese ignorance about how capitalism works, I now believe that it is the Chinese who are laughing at us. There is nothing inherent in the idea that a free market economy is only compatable with a democratic government. The free market isn't as democratic as we think it is, considering the power of monopolies and corporations in our own society. Corporations to their core are not democratic. They follow an authoritarian model (look at Enron as an example). Most of the employees have no say in how their corporation is run. All decisions are made by the board of directors and stockholders, which prefers short-term gains over the long-term health of a company. When the companies are then looted by their executives and stockholders dump the stock to save money or cash out before they lose, its the employees who end up losing the worst: their jobs, their pensions, their savings.

So, let's not be so arrogant to assume that the Chinese don't know how to maintain authoritarian countrol of the government while allowing a free market to improve the lives of its citizens. It appears to me that they learned from the Soviet example and want to avoid what happened there in the early 1990s (Russia went through a very painful period of inflation, increase in violence, extremist political parties exploiting old racial grievances, and a shadow government of the mafia filling the void left by the disgraced former communist hacks). Is China really that dumb? Our country borrowed billions, if not trillions, to pay for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have to pay them back, with interest. We also buy most of our junk from China. You can't walk into most stores (especially not Wal-Mart) without picking up a Made in China product. Our country is deeply indebted to China and if they wanted to, they could totally trash our economy by cutting out our borrowing and demanding payments on all debts.

Of course, the Chinese economy is also dependent upon American spending habits, so its a delicate balance. Already, because of our recession, the unemployment rate in China has increased from 4% to 9%. In a TV special about China last year, I remember hearing Ted Koppel say that the biggest worry the Chinese government has is of social unrest (another Tiananman Square). Increased unemployment is enough to set things off. Its a ticking timebomb. When a country has 1.3 billion citizens and a small elite of government bureaucrats dedicated to the vision of Chairman Mao, they could easily be overrun if the people rose up and had a real revolution. In every age, in every country or kingdom, the ruling elite is always afraid of the masses and the potential for an uprising. Thus why I believe religion and other diversions were created...to distract the masses and keep them obedient through fear. In our country, its unemployment and our debt burden that keeps us from rising up against our government to prevent war or demand full accountability. In China, its the fear of imprisonment, torture, death, and another Tiananman Square Massacre.

There's an ancient Chinese proverb that is meant to be a curse when spoken to someone. It's: "May you live in interesting times." I found it funny when I first heard about it. For me, living in interesting times is the only life worth living. That the Chinese prefer boring stability to exciting uncertainty tells us everything we need to know about them. Hopefully, the bubble of false materialistic values will burst for their country soon. My biggest fear is that the Chinese desire to live the American lifestyle will ultimately destroy our planet. Our materialism is not something to emulate. It is to be shunned. Perhaps the Chinese could lead the world in finding a better way to live, a life in harmony with our planetary resources.

Evangelism's Obsession With Show

As hinted at in yesterday's post, today I'm writing about something that bothered me concerning my evangelical aunt. She told me that someone from her church had asked grandpa in his final week (when he received the doctor's diagnosis that he had less than two weeks to live) if he was "saved." My aunt said that grandpa told the lady that he didn't know and thought about it for a couple days, then decided to "surrender his life" to Christ. When Aunt Helen told me this, I was appalled. I told her, "Grandpa has been a deacon in our church for 50 years!"

Aunt Helen responded by claiming that serving the church isn't the same as serving Jesus. She missed the whole point. I was kind of peeved about it and with her. She was once a member of our church. She converted from Catholicism when she married my uncle in the 1970s at the Atchison congregation. I don't know when they left the Community of Christ (RLDS)...but I'm thinking it was either the late 90s or in the early years of this decade. As one who has been a member of the church, she should have understood something about our church.

Here's why what she told me really annoyed me...

All my life, I never heard my grandfather talk about God, Jesus, or religion. He was a private man about his faith. He was a deacon in the church, which meant that he took care of the building's maintenance, he passed around the offertory, he counted the money that was collected and put it in the church account, he kept attendance each week, he raised his sons in the church and took them to reunions and church events. Grandma was more conversational about religious matters, but grandpa was a do-er. I saw that as an example. Though I'm much more comfortable discussing my spiritual beliefs with people, I think its pure arrogance to assume that just because someone doesn't share his or her spiritual beliefs doesn't mean that they are "clueless" about Christ.

I also believe it is wrong to scare someone who is facing death that he needs to make a public confession of his sins and "accept" Jesus as "atoning sacrifice" in order to be admitted into heaven. I've had a lifelong dislike of Evangelical Christians and this is just one more reason why. They prove time and again that they have no concept of God, whatsoever. Think logically, people!

If you believe that God is ALL KNOWING, wouldn't God KNOW the content of a person's heart? Does a public confession really matter to God? In the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying: "and when you pray, you mustn't pray like those hypocrites who love to be seen on street corners. Go into your closet and pray to God in secret." What does this mean? I think it's obvious. There are people who make a big production out of "showing" their piousness in order to impress other people. The truly spiritual don't need such public displays of piety. They just live their faith quietly, because they know that God is an All-Knowing God. Thus, we don't need to confess our sins or proclaim Jesus as our "saviour" because some person threatens us with eternal damnation in hell if we don't. God knows through our lifetime just the kind of person we are.

So, whoever tried to scare my grandfather in his last week of life that he ran the risk of going to hell if he didn't "accept" Jesus as "Lord and Saviour"...they are the ones who should go to hell. They have no clue what our church is about. We've never been about this public display of piety. We don't use words like "saved" or "born again." It's how you live your life, how you interact with your fellow beings which matter. The rest will take care of itself.

I hope my grandfather is laughing his head off at the ludicrous evangelical Christian posturing that goes on down here. Heaven is our home and birthright. The only way you go to hell is if you bring it to other people or live in spiritual darkness and shun the light of goodness (Dick Cheney is a likely candidate destined straight for hell when he dies). Grandpa wasn't a perfect man, for he had his flaws. But he was a good man, he raised his boys right, he lived a decent and respectful life. He was part of the generation that saved the world from Nazi tyranny. What more could anyone ask for? Evangelical Christians need to get a clue and leave my grandpa alone. Raising the specter of hell on someone's deathbed is truly bad form. Maybe God should send them to hell, just for kicks.

Photocopy of a photo of grandpa carrying me (I was not quite two years old yet).

Remembering Grandpa

The above photocopy of two photographs show my grandpa at different ages: the one on the left was taken within the past year; the one on the right when he was in his late teens or early 20s as a young soldier.

Here's a little bit of his biography, taken from the Obituary:

Jackson (Jack) Harold Carroll, 90, of Atchison, KS, died Friday, May 22, 2009 after a short illness.

Jack was born on May 2, 1919 in Hagen, VA to Andrew Jackson and Anna Louise (Carlson) Carroll. Mr. Carroll grew up in Fortescue and St. Joseph, MO. After leaving home, he traveled by hopping railcars and working on a potato farm in Idaho. Mr. Carroll was a U.S. Army veteran. He joined the Army in the late 1930s. Mr. Carroll was stationed at Fort Riley in the Calvary, at a time when they were still patrolling on horseback. When World War II started, his unit became the Fourth Armored Division where he was a tank mechanic. He served in Normandy, France, Rhineland, Ardennes, and most of Central Europe, where he engaged in combat, including the Battle of the Bulge.

After being discharged in 1945, he returned to St. Joseph. Mr. Carroll was married to Margaret Mae Webster in February 22, 1947 in Atchison, at the then home of Gilbert Hedrick. Together they moved to Atchison in 1950. He worked as a plumber and pipefitter for Local Union #45, St. Joseph, MO for many years, where one of his last jobs before retirement was the original Iatan Power Plant. He retired in 1982.

Mr. Carroll was a Deacon in the Community of Christ, Atchison, for over 50 years. He was a member of Local #45 Plumbers and Pipefitters Union, St. Joseph, MO, the American Legion Post #6, and the Lions Club until he lost his eye sight. In his later years he enjoyed going to Project Concern almost daily.

Okay...so I decided not to include the final paragraph about survivors...which include five sons, twelve grandchildren (only six, though, carry his genetics...the rest are "step"-grandchildren or adopted. Not that it matters...just saying, that's all), and five great grandchildren (again, only three are genetically related).

As for the memorial service itself, I was a bit disappointed. My grandma definitely had a better memorial service. The reason is because for hers, the microphone was passed around for people to share stories about her if they wanted to (I was the only one of her descendants to actually speak about her, and I did it from the podium). Also, the officiating minister for her memorial service really summed her up well, though his description would more accurately define grandpa. He had spoken about maps, with grandma being the center that held the family together or the focal point with her children scattered around the world at various points in life. For this memorial service, it was a different minister (Elder Don Harter of the Community of Christ).

My dad was disappointed that the minister didn't share the story the family had told him when he met with the family to discuss grandpa's life. It was the story of grandpa's 4th Armored Calvary Regiment coming to the rescue of the beseiged 101st Airborne at Bastogne, Belgium in World War II. Without that final victory, the Germans would have annihilated the 101st Airborne. What that means in personal terms is that grandpa saved his younger brother's life, and our family has been blessed because of it. Great Uncle Jim is the most popular member of the family (extroverted personality, funny in a way that reminds me of comedian Bill Cosby, and as a young man kind of resembled actor George Clooney). I can't imagine a world in which I would have never gotten to know such a great man like Great Uncle Jim.

The minister basically read the obituary, spoke a little about the life of my grandfather and gave a few reminisces. Then I went up to the podium to speak. Here's what I shared:

I just wanted to take a few minutes to share a few memories I have of my grandfather.

At work, one of the managers gives everyone a nickname and for some reason, he calls me "Nicky." All my life, I hated being called that name and didn't want anyone to call me by that name. Except for my grandfather. He used to call me "Nicky-poo" and for some reason, he was the only person I didn't mind calling me that. I guess you could say that it was our special thing that we shared. Only him, no one else. Not even grandma could call me that.

During some summers when I would spend a week with my grandparents, grandfather would sometimes take me fishing. I remember one time when we caught a catfish and I thought it was so cute with the whiskers that I gave it a kiss. Grandpa thought it was pretty funny and would tell everyone that I kissed a catfish. Since we couldn't walk two blocks in Atchison without him talking to someone, I thought the whole town would know that I kissed a catfish and I was kind of embarrassed about it.

Finally, the legacy that grandpa passes on to me is a love of maps and travel. I inherited this love of maps and traveling from grandpa through my father. Like grandpa, I can spend hours staring at a map and go on imaginary trips or planning road trips. This is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life and I'm grateful to share that love of maps and of travel with my grandfather.

After that, I returned to my seat. I regretted not sharing something else that I had thought of before but didn't write on my notecard to prompt my memory. The other thing I wish that I could share was: "My sister originally planned to have her wedding in October, but moved up the date to May. I'm glad that grandpa made it as one of his last goals to attend her wedding. We had a great family reunion for that happy occasion a few weeks ago, but a part of me missed the presence of grandma, who would have loved to have seen it, too. In fact, I can't help but think what a great way to leave this earth. He attended his last family reunion with those of us still living, and returns to reunite with his wife, sisters, sister-in-law, parents and grandson. I can imagine him sharing the joys of my sister's wedding with grandma. He lived to see that day and that is a great gift for all of us."

Unlike at my grandmother's memorial service, I did not break into tears while sharing my memories. Truth is, I was closer to grandma than I was to grandpa. What I didn't share and wouldn't share is that grandpa was kind of hard to get to know. He was a man of few words. He loved watching baseball games or listening to it on the radio. He loved to fish. He loved fixing things. He hated watching movies or television (opposite of my grandma. In fact, my grandma shocked me in 1996 when she wanted to watch Pulp Fiction but I refused to put it in the VCR for her even though my sister wanted to watch it). My dad only received one letter from his father and it was a letter telling him not to marry my mother. Grandpa didn't want any of his sons marrying an Asian lady because "the Japs" killed his cousin in World War II. He refused to buy Japanese cars or products because of that. However, my parents marriage proved him wrong and mom became his favourite daughter-in-law. Out of all of their children, grandma and grandpa probably visited us the most, including when we lived in Germany (they didn't visit their other son when he lived in Germany in the late 1970s).

I knew how to make grandpa laugh, though, and his laughter is always something I will miss the most. My dad and I have failed, unfortunately, to convince him to write down his life story for posterity's sake. Grandpa lived probably a typical male's life as a young man. He claimed to have had many girlfriends, including a French one (which I always wanted to hear about. I'm glad that I share his love of French women!). Great Uncle Jim told me that when grandpa met grandma, he became a changed man. I guess the proper term would be "domesticated." Not that its a bad thing. I owe my church membership in the Community of Christ (RLDS) to my grandmother (she was a 3rd generation member). I don't know what religion grandpa affiliated with before he married her (I'm thinking it was the Methodists) but I'm glad her religion won out over his.

During the memorial service, a lady from church (Lorraine Strine) sang "Amazing Grace", which was a song that a few family members wanted sung at grandma's memorial service in 2005. I objected to that because the song did not reflect my grandma's personality (she was definitely not a "wretch"). Grandpa, on the other hand, had a wilder streak and became a responsible family man, so I thought the song was perfect for his memorial service. I love the song, but it should not be sung at every funeral / memorial service. The other song played at grandpa's memorial service was "One Day at a Time" by Patsy Cline, which was also played at grandma's memorial service. I guess that was "their song."

The minister didn't pass around the microphone for other people to share their memories of grandpa. I was surprised about this. Instead, he read a few religious pieces, such as Footprints and the famous one from Psalms about walking through the valley of the shadow of death and fearing no evil (so cliched!). For tomorrow's post, I will write about an annoying thing my evangelical aunt told me about grandpa in his last week. It deals with the evangelical obsession with "being saved" and proclaiming Christ as "Lord and Saviour."

Anyhow, several people after the service complimented me on what I said about my grandfather. I did hear people laugh a couple of times, which I expected they would (I'm pretty good at getting laughs where I intend for them to be). I'm really glad that I made the memorial service, though. That I was the only one to speak about my grandfather kind of bothers me. A few people spoke at my grandmother's memorial service. I wanted to hear other people's memories of my grandfather. In fact, I even tried to get Great Uncle Jim to share some of good stuff that he knows about his brother, but he refused. He will take those stories to his grave. He's in his 80s and I told him, "I'll give you $100 if you live to see triple digits!" He said that he didn't want to live that long. He's the oldest remaining family member and the last of his siblings (he was the baby of his family). I hope he lives long enough to see my wedding some day (I'm aiming for October 2012).

What else can I say about my grandfather? He is certainly missed. I know I felt it when we stayed in his house. He built that house back in the 1950s. It's a three bedroom with another room in the basement, which also had his workshop and garage. His youngest son, John, is the executor of his estate and John doesn't want to live in that house. He's even thinking of selling it or letting his son rent it. Since cousin Matthew is a bit of an anti-social (he was also grandpa's favourite grandchild), if he gets the house, I doubt he'd let any family members stay there in the future. He's not big on family gatherings. I pretty much did my emotional closure on the house that I've known all my life (my dad was about four years old when they moved into that house). I'm not sure I'll visit Atchison again because its just too painful to visit. All my life, I would get excited whenever we went to Atchison, but the excitement was not because of the town. It was because we were going to visit grandpa and grandma. Without them there, there's little reason to return. All I would experience are reminders of the past...a lifetime of happy memories, spending time with people who no longer live there.

My Aunt Helen suggested that we have a family reunion every May in Atchison, but even my parents aren't too enthused about it. I guess family members are starting to worry about relatives drifting apart, now that the patriarch is gone. However, I'm not opposed to family reunions, but I would prefer them in other locations...such as with our Minnesota relatives or with my Uncle Ron in Omaha. Anywhere but Atchison.

I'm not expecting that grandpa left me anything in his will, but all I wanted were photographs. My Uncle John said that he would make copies of photos I wanted, but he also promised that four years ago when grandma passed away. Easier said than done. So, I went through all the photo albums and swiped the ones I wanted (mostly of me at various ages...from baby to young adult). I ended up with over 135 photos. Sorry to be a thief, but I don't trust that cousin Matthew will be a good steward of family history so I took the photos of me for my own safekeeping. I don't want anything else from them (but if grandpa did leave some money for all his grandchildren, I wouldn't refuse it). I'm a keeper of family and personal history, so I saw it as my sacred duty. They'll never know what they're missing (if they look, they'll see gaps in albums and notice not many photos of me, so it wouldn't be too hard to figure out what happened).

God bless you, grandpa. Rest in peace! And enjoy the spiritual realm for me. Man, I wish I could astrally project myself into heaven just for one night to have a special conversation with my grandparents, together again in a younger form (I've read in spiritual books that souls can assume whatever appearance they want and most generally pick the way they looked when they were between 25 and 35. For me, I'd pick the way I looked at 28). Grandpa is on his greatest journey of all...where the only map is spiritual and the destination is eternity.

Music Video Monday: Marky Mark

On my recent trip to the Midwest to attend my grandfather's funeral, I flew United Airlines, which I haven't done in a long time. Now I remember why its not my preferred airlines! All flights were packed and I always got the middle seat (which I hate). Usually, when I fly, I tend to get my preferred window seat (and it always seems to be on the wing). Delta is my favourite airlines, but they are generally the most expensive to fly, so Airtran (its main competitor) works just as well for me. Besides, Airtran has satellite radio and now wireless Internet. But they don't fly into PDX and I didn't have time to mess with flying out of SEATAC.

Anyhow, as I waited for my flights, one song kept playing in my head: 1994's "United" by Prince Ital Joe and Marky Mark. The song is supposedly from the film Renaissance Man, but I don't remember hearing it played in the film. It was a big Euro-smash in 1994. Weird how some songs you've forgotten about suddenly come roaring back to the surface when you least expect it.

So, because of that, I naturally had to make that this week's music video selection. Enjoy!