Patellar Despair

I've got no business being upset.  But there it is.  I'm not perfect anymore.

I should provide the caveat that I never really was actually.  Just as far as general health and functionality goes, this body has been a real workhorse for me. 

I've historically been extremely healthy.  I seldom have, or ever have, had a decent reason to call in sick.  Maybe one day a year, I could be called 'sick'.  The rest of the time, it's just a headache maybe, or I'm wicked tired from doing something.  Or I just plain didn't want to go into work that day. 

FYI, Not counting the day I was high on some kind of opiate pain killer after my kidney stone, I haven't called in sick for almost two years now. 

After I was laid off for that extended period starting in 2009, my work philosophy does not include sick days, where I am not actually sick.  Which is a good thing.  Way better than in the mid 90's, when I'd call in sick pretty regular, just to take road trips with my wife.  Or even just go home sick and watch midday television.

Once, I called in sick, but didn't tell my best friend ahead of time.  So while he was at work, my wife and I took his wife with us on some road trip adventure.  Boy was he mad!  He wanted to have gone too! 

Once again, I digress though. 

My point is, that I've always been healthy, and durable. 

Despite being pretty hard on this body.  Through physical activity via six years of football, and occasional track use, plus all the other dumb stuff a young person does:  I never broke one bone.  For Forty years. 

Never had to have an operation, of any kind.  For forty years.

Then, in my fortieth year, the kidney stone; stupid lump removal on my head; and a broken kneecap. 

What the fuck is going on here?

And now, my perfect body, isn't going to be perfect ever again.  It's the long slide to decrepitude.

The kneecap, seen on X-ray today, isn't healing well in my opinion.  Compared to the one taken the day after I broke it, now almost 10 weeks ago; the one from today looks not substantially different to me. 

Basically, it still looks as broken as the first day. At least to me. It depresses the fuck out of me. Will it ever heal together?  I'm walking around more or less normally now. Is that preventing the bones knitting?

A physicians assistant tells me no.

I get vague reassurances, that it seems to be healing well.  Or that, it's hard to tell, but there may be bone filling in the gap here, it just appears so much lighter compared to the surrounding original bone......

I hate it.  The broken off part of the kneecap (patella), is not lined up properly with the larger piece, and when it heals in it's current position, will be misaligned slightly, to the aft direction, as seen by looking down at it. 

Does that make a difference?  Probably not, as far as immediate functionality goes.  In the future?  Who can say? 

In my mind, the misaligned edges, that will be sticking out, in the direction of the joint (!!!) will be pointy little potential problems.  A weak spot to be exploited by every misstep or kneeling position I take in the future. 

And, immediately speaking.  Devastating to my psyche.  I feel crooked.  Every ache I feel in my newly released from restrictions knee, I imagine to be the bone piece, moving wildly against it's mate.  Grinding itself into smaller pieces, to be trapped in the joint, and leave me immobile on some future pedestrian train track crossing.  Unable to move from in front of the Polar Express, or an Amtrak Commuter train.

If it does not heal, then we are back to surgically removing the small loose piece. Which I am ambivalent about.  Without that piece of bone in there, the same crazy train death scenarios apply.

I know, it's all in my head.  I've had a good run of luck with health, and I need to get over it. 

But I just can't do it today.

Cheers?  I don't think so.

SOPA, PIPA, and me?

SOPA, PIPA, and me.

As I was looking at Scott Johnson's latest Extralife web comic panel, I realized something. Those internet pirate bills, could very well effect me directly.

I don't usually think of myself as a content provider, or anything. But I actually am.

And, I do use small parts of other people's work within my own occasionally. In my poems mostly.

Think of it like a musician recording and producing a single, and he chooses to insert a little five second snippet of another song or something. It can give things an extra zip, or add context, or a familiar touchstone for people to reference within your own original related, or even unrelated work.

99.9% of my work on the poetry blog is original, I'll swear to it. But if you read enough of them, you'll see the odd quote, or something thrown in there.

Gosh, I just had a tangent thought, do I need to add a reference section in the back of my poetry book, in order to give credit to any line or quote that I've borrowed? Holy crap, I hadn't even thought of that. I wonder what the heck is allowed?

As a rule of thumb, I've heard, mostly from Mr. Tom Merritt, that if what you do is transformative, then it's ok to use little bits and pieces of things. But that sometimes, it takes a court case to prove you right, unfortunately

NOw that I've dropped his name, I probably butchered his intentions or something on that. If so I apologize ahead of time, and will edit immediately if required. I don't do much research ahead of time before writing a Warthog entry.

But back on the SOPA, PIPA track.

If an artist, or author read one or my poems on the Google Blogger, and took issue with how I used their words, or even their name maybe, I'll have to look into that one. I did make Jessica Alba into an underbed monster in one poem.

Anyways, if someone had a problem with what I wrote that was copyright related, under those two proposed law packages, they could complain, and I assume my blog site would be blocked. I don't get a chance to say a word about it before hand either.

The BS part of it, is that it doesn't matter if what I did was perfectly acceptable, and legal. If someone complains, it gets censored. The whole thing.

How messed up is that?

I'd heard numerous bad things about these bills, but never associated them with my own published content. I just was sad that many sites I like to visit may be effected.

This though, this changes everything.

Down with SOPA, down with PIPA.

The internets need to have some freedom to express themselves.

I've mentioned it before, relating to issues like this. There ARE existing laws on the books, that could be either enforced better, or tweaked slightly to cover the problems that copyright holders supposedly have.

But that is never anyone's solution, it's always just to add something else to our already bloated legal code system.

Give it a rest. Stop coddling corporations over people.

Cheers, before I get too carried away and write all damned day.

Being a Better Person

In my youth, I would rail against religion given almost any excuse. Especially when I initially broke "officially" with the Catholic church. I think I was about nineteen when I did that.

It was a tweeny, immature soapbox session I held while standing in the doorway to the family den/television room. My parents were both sitting on the couch. I don't recall what brought it on. But there I was, proclaiming my definite belief in the ridiculousness of the Roman Catholic church, and my probable disbelief in god as well.

Thus began years of alternating anger and guilt associated with religion, and all it's trappings. I maintained a sort of 'face' with the family, by attending important holiday masses with them. This went on whenever I was in town for Christmas usually. I don't know why I bothered. All pretense was gone.

I do admit to a certain amount of the comfort food factor, especially around the holidays like that. After all, I had been an altar boy for almost ten years. I knew the mass scripts mostly by heart, as well as most of the hymns, prayers, etc.

I feel badly about all my preaching against religion. Mostly stemming from a comment one of my best friends made once. I may have mentioned it before.

He told me something to the effect of: I don't believe in god anymore, mostly thanks to you.

That stabbed at my heart. I had climbed down off the soapbox for the most part by that point, and to have him say that. Well, that told me I shouldn't have been up there to begin with. I feel like I raped someone spiritually.

It's just not up to me to tell people what to believe, or not to believe. If I do, then I'm as bad as the church.

Belief, or unbelief, should be very personal choices.

To murder a George Carlin quote: Whatever gets you through the day, rub blue mud on your belly, whatever.

And that's the point, isn't it? To make it through each day, with some semblence of sanity and happiness. Despite the fact that our time on earth here is very limited, and this mortal life is all that we know. Everything else, we have to take on faith.

Unbelieving is no less a faith than believing, believe me! You have to work at it. Annd I'm still not perfect at it.

The important breakthrough for me, when I was struggling with religion, morals, ethics, happiness. Was a quaint little argument I made up to 'defend' my so called atheism.

In a nutshell, it is thus: Take two people.

One is a devout religious person, who follows all the rules of his faith, and is fully expecting an afterlife in a good place, be it heaven, valhalla, what have you.

The other person is an unbeliever. This person lives a good life, following his own moral compass, with no expectation of an afterlife, or any reward in that place.

Which one is the better person? The one who is good because of God's rules, and the hope for an eternal reward after this life? Or the person who is good and decent because he/she chooses to be. Because that is how that person believes it should be done. With only this mortal life span to look forward to, no consequences after that.

It's a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer it out loud. The way that I couch it, a logical person would choose the latter individual. But logic seldom plays in faith based scenarios. So I gave up trying with that argument.

That philosophy did help me turn my life around. I feel I'm a better person these days, because I choose to be so. Not because I have to be, or there are some arcane rules to follow.

I always had a problem with authority anyways. This way, it's my choice. :)

But ultimately, I decided, it's not important.

It's not important why you live a good life, or make life better for others. It is only important that you do.

So when I see someone, who was in a dark place at one time, and they are now a changed person, dedicating their lives to helping others; all because they found the lord, or Jesus, or Allah.

I call it a good thing.

I praise them for it. Because they are a better person, and make the world better for everyone else by being that way.

When I was 19 I would have ridiculed them.

Now that I'm 40, I know better.

Cheers, to doing good things for a reason, or no reason at all!

Space Madness! Or: Writing a cheap serial.

I've broken form a little bit. I wonder should I be worried?

Should I tie myself to a so-called "poetry" format for my Fritz365 poetry blog?

Nah!

It started on January 8th, after I wrote a rather free form piece about some maniac testing out a highly, and questionably modified Lear jet.


After, or maybe during, writing it; I decided I should tell some kind of narrative about this guy. Why would he do such a mad thing?

I had to reason: Could a guy that was smart and talented enough to pull off such a feat, still be so delusional that he actually thinks that he has a chance at reaching actual Earth orbit, let alone the Moon?

Does it matter? Was it all just a fancy way to commit suicide for this guy from the very start?

So I gave him some motivation. A life long dream of being an astronaut, and specifically, reaching the moon himself.

I also gave him a disease. This was the motivation for him to sell all his worldly possessions and cash in any savings and retirement he had.

I gave him a timetable. He has a year, at most, left to live. And this unnamed disease has the bad form to get a little worse as it goes. So the last few months of it, are virtually useless for anything else other than sitting or laying around waiting to die.

I gave him no family. Or at least none that I mention. Did he up and leave a wife and kids behind? Taking all their money to fund this mad dream of his? I leave that up to speculation. But I suspect not. The character is too kind hearted for that. He'd never hurt anyone but himself on purpose.

I gave him a companion. Someone to talk to, and hang out with. A dog. Named Dog, of course.

So that's where the storyline has it's beginning. Not on that test flight, which actually happens chronologically towards the end of the tale. But in the desert. Somewhere within four hours of Las Vegas. Kind of a Groom Lake, Area 51-ish type place. Not specified. Good for doing things as you wish to do them.

I haven't yet posted the last three installments as I write this.

I got carried away and wrote the last one yesterday. An Epilogue that sort of wraps things up as far as the question of what was his ultimate disposition.

I'm satisfied with where it went. Although I have the urge to write more substance into the story.

As a matter of fact; looking at the fourteen installments, I have the bones of an actual story. Perhaps not a novel, certainly not THE novel. But I rather like it.

All over a crazy notion I had in my head five years ago, discussed breifly in a place we loved to call "The Room of Speculation".

The idea of going into Earth orbit with a Learjet having rocket motors tacked onto it, got me a sad strange look at that time. I can't blame them. It is a pretty daft idea.

Space actually begins (officially anyways, whatever that means) at an altitude of 50 miles. Get there, and you can persuade NASA, or the Air Force, or someone, to give you a set of Astronaut wings. Or whatever it is that they get. A little golden Mercury capsule perhaps?

I want one!

Know that even insanely bold airplanes such as the SR-71 in level flight, and various prototype aircraft performing what is known as a "Zoom climb", have not gotten over 100,000 feet (which is just under 19 miles). And all those aircraft, are specially built with high temp resistant skins, specialized motors and fuel. Plus the special life support systems for the pilot.

Plus the actual Earth escape velocity, pegged at somewhere around 25,000 miles per hour.

My best guess using Tennessee windage, would put a Learjet on either meltdown or break apart status at somewhere around Mach 2 or 3, given enough thrust. Assuming it could make it through the initial turbulence at the speed of sound, the air friction generating heat on the aluminum skin would eventually cause it to melt, fatigue, crack, etc.

You can see where the story would fall apart on technicalities if it went too far in one direction.

So is it delusion? Or fancy, high tech suicide for the character here?

I like to think it's just like all good mysteries in life.

Somewhere in the middle, where it's all hazy and grey.

Cheers, to crazy ideas, and what puts us up to them.

Tahoma Guilt

As you may know, I'm an aircraft inspector. I've been working in aviation since graduating A&P school back in the summer of 1993. I've had good times, and bad, working for first a cargo carrier, then a research and development facility.

At this R&D facility, I was the lead inspector for six years. I was able to gain a lot of interesting experience there. As that job came to an end during 2008, I was hunting for a job that summer. One of the things I did was post my resume up on some aviation job sites.

One day that summer, while at work, I got a cold call from an air cargo company called Air Tahoma. They were based in Columbus Ohio, and the man on the phone was their Director of Maintenance.

He said he'd seen my resume online, and asked me if I might be interested in becoming the Chief Inspector there at Air Tahoma, Columbus.

That was quite a shock. Chief Inspector is pretty much the top dog position that an aviation inspector can shoot for. The next step up would be something corporate I think.

I told him I was interested. So we talked about it for about twenty minutes, while I sat outside behind our hangar.

What he told me of the position was interesting. What he didn't tell me, spoke volumes.

He told me a little bit about the company and it's history, the types of planes they flew, and the different places in the world they visited with the aircraft.

He told me that the reason he was looking for the Chief Inspector position, was that the current person in the position was an interim measure, and the local FAA was wanting a permanent person in as soon as possible.

Basically, when the feds tell you to get your butt in gear and hire someone, you should listen.

The person there now, I was told, was old and cranky. He didn't want to be a team player, and was always giving the maintenance side a hard time about everything.

The man on the phone told me he was looking for someone who would work with his decisions better, so things could go smoother.

He offered me a salary, right there over the phone. $50 K per year.

I told him I'd have to talk to my wife and think about it before I came for a visit.

He asked me to get back with him that same afternoon with a yes or a no, as he was in a time crunch.

I had to reflect on that phone call for a while.

This was an opportunity for me. To get experience in the top job in my current profession, inspection.

The negatives started adding up though.

Moving to Columbus would be another move to a place where my family had no support system. No relatives, no friends.

$50 K per year, really isn't that much money, especially for that job position.

The things he didn't say started to bother me. Why was he offering me a position, sight unseen, over the phone? The real reason.

What was the current Chief Inspector giving him such a hard time over, and why wasn't that guy going to take the permanent position?

Nobody else on staff had the experience or willingness to take the position?

What sort of things was I going to be expected to be going along with, in order to have things run smoothly?

All these things bothered me.

I talked to my current boss, and friend. We were all looking for jobs at that point, so it wasn't a breach of etiquette or anything.

He kind of came to the same conclusion I did.

Stay away from this one!

It turns out, we were both right. That September, a few months after I spoke with him, one of their airplanes crashed in a field short of the runway there in Columbus. All three crew were killed. The FAA and NTSB stepped in and investigated, found numerous problems, and pulled Air Tahoma's certificate. They were out of business.

I've had time now to think on that whole thing now and then. And I have to admit, I have some indirect guilt. I know it's ridiculous, you don't have to tell me.

Sometimes I play that what if game with myself though. What if I'd taken the job, I'd have been there at that time. What if I could have prevented that from happening?

Now, I'm no hero or anything, don't get me wrong. The problem that brought the plane down, was that the elevator trim cables were hooked up backwards. Easy enough to do actually, if you aren't paying attention. Hooking A to B, instead of A to A, and vice versa.

No inspector signed off on that installation before the plane took off and crashed. If an inspector had looked at it, maybe he would have caught it.

Maybe I would have caught it. Or maybe by being there, I could have worked with the Maintenance guy like he wanted, but still fostered a work environment that promoted quality, and conscientiousness. Maybe that could have helped prevent the mistake.

I'll never know. And since I took a different path, I wasn't involved.

But in another parallel universe, I made the choice to go there.

I have to wonder what happened when I did.

First Dance Drag-a-Thon

I can't explain my recent fascination with school dances.

In the last week, I've written twice about them. Once based on my real life experience at St. Thomas school as a sixth grader. The second time, an entirely fictional account of a date to the prom, with my silver anniversary watch in my pocket. Which is weird, because I didn't get that watch until I'd been married for years. And from my wife.

My kids are starting to go to their own dances now. Tentatively at first.

The first big dance for them as Sixth graders, was the Halloween dance. My daughter was all fired up to go, my son wasn't so sure of himself. We dropped both of them off, and had to go back about a half an hour later to pick up my son. He said it was too loud. At least he tried it out.

My own first dance recollections are fairly hazy. Filled with white pants, Izod sweaters, and penny loafers that put huge blisters on my feet. And I could never get pennies into mine! Which was super frustrating. I suspect that everyone else conned their dad into getting it in there for them. But I could be wrong.

Those early dances were filled with lots of standing around, in same sex groups. Only after a little while did any large number of people start dancing. I was always terrible at it too. They actually taught us the "box step waltz" in gym class. I learned that this was special just to get us ready for the dances. No body contact was permitted. By which I mean the boy and the girl held each other at arms length. Forget the six inch rule, or a hands-breadth, we're talking at least a foot here.

I always disliked anything other than slow dancing. It just felt like a maniacal workout to me. But then, while I did have good rhythm ( I was in band dammit!!), I definitely had no moves. Didn't want any either. See the reference to working out, above.

I think I went to most of the dances at St. Thomas, I only lived a block away from school, and my parents strongly encouraged it. I might have gotten out of a few of them, I don't remember.

I didn't go to any dances in High School. I didn't date either. I just didn't want to put forth the effort I guess. Anything that put a cramp in my preferred activities, of reading, sleeping, eating, playing video games, watching television, and movies; I didn't much want to do them. I wasn't that awesome in High School.

I wish I had done more though. I'll tell all my kids that too, if it can make any difference.

I regret not dating anyone. I regret not going to any dances (Prom!). I should have taken a more diverse group of classes.

I mean, I finally shucked off Band class for Senior year, as i was done with my fine arts graduation requirement, and I threw a hissy fit. I wanted a study hall period. Basically so I could fuck off. But my folks would have none of that. So just like with bad haircuts, sweaters, and birth control glasses, they got their way. I took "college study skills" just to shut them up.

The class was a joke. My desk mate and I, were totally disruptive. We both got kicked out of class several times. We'd take turns throwing things at the blackboard when the teacher's back was turned. Then have fun pretending we were just as baffled as anyone else.

One time, I got sent to the principal's office for screwing around. So I went down to the office, and sat in reception until the end of class. I even saw the principal several times while I was sitting there. I said hello to him, and we shot the shit for a minute, then he left. Hey, nobody told me I had to tell the office why I was there, amirite?

The tomfoolery kind of climaxed with my desk-mate showing up for class drunk as a skink one day. We both kind of blew off that class after that.

I didn't get accepted to Michigan State University that summer. I guess I showed them!

When you apply to colleges, they kind of remove your grades for gym class, and Band. And my resulting 1.8 GPA, just didn't impress them enough. Who knew??!!

Oh yeah, school dances. I should have gone. I wasn't into being very social though, as I might have mentioned. And when I did do stuff socially, I tended to overcompensate for my antisocialness, by showing zero social skills in some way. Mostly by being an over the top "look at me" mother fucker. I'm sure people could attest to that, if they gave a damn to do so.

I've lost interest in this topic. Next!

Cheers

Bubble Boy: Oppose Thyself

Twenty years ago, I was a different person.

I worked at a law firm in downtown Lansing; I associated with the people there, and it helped reinforce my largely Republican conservative views. Heck, one of the lawyers there was the chief Michigan Republican party counsel.

I still rebelled a little bit, how could I not? I wore a Ross Perot pin leading up to the 1992 presidential election. Mostly based on his super fun financial presentations. But, I was still a Republican at heart.

After I moved out of my parent's house in East Lansing, I moved to Northern Michigan, living by myself for a few years. My main influences were all the people I worked with. Mostly ex-military conservatives. My political views shifted even further that way as a result. Moving almost too far in a way. I became isolationist, and a touch homophobic and racist.

Then I got married, had kids, moved to upstate NY, right next to Vermont. My political views shifted once again in response to all these changes.

I find myself now sitting very liberally. I eschew all formal political parties. Though I still am a registered Republican. My wife is a registered Democrat. We do this, in order to exert at least a little influence on politics. As the only two parties that hold general primary elections, and the only two parties who seem to ever win office for the most part: This is simply another way to participate in choosing the winner. For, while I almost never vote Elephant, or Donkey in the main election, I can at least put down a vote for which Republican bastard will win. And my wife, vice versa.

I can honestly say that I voted McCain in the 2000 Republican Primaries. I still think he was the right Republican for that job, especially as viewed in the hindsight of 9/11. But that's just speculation of course.

Nowadays, I find myself in even more of a bubble. I've "cut the cord". I don't subscribe to cable or satellite television. I do have an internet service, and that is how our family gets all of our entertainment and news. In the car, I listen to either music or podcasts of my choosing.

If you look at that, you can see that as a consequence of choosing mostly what I see and hear; my world view is much the way that I want it to be.

I took a step outside myself this morning. This was in response to a friend putting some comments on a link I posted to the Facebook. It was about the Occupy movement, and what I viewed as the exclusively heavy handed response that the authorities have had to it.

All that I see, are reports and videos that are negative to the law enforcement response. I have no balanced viewpoint. I still recoil from major media viewpoints, as I am suspect of their agenda. Which might be paranoid, but at least I can admit it.

So I've made a project for myself. As I'm laid up with a bum knee, I have a lot of sitting down time on my hands. I'm going to spend a few days doing things I don't normally do.

I'm going to check out lots of opposing viewpoints. I'm going to seek out all the examples of "Protesters Behaving Badly" that I can find. Even before looking, I can safely bet there is going to be a lot. People being what they are, there will always be some acting badly on both sides. I suppose it's an example of my naïveté that I'm not just as suspect of my primarily liberal news sources as I am of, say, Fox News.

So for the next two days, don't expect me to be sympathetic to much of anything. I'm playing devil's advocate. Against myself.

Cheers, to opposing views.