Author Archives: bluedepth

Unethical Profiteering

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At a sunny midwestern school that shall remain nameless, there is a place that the poor people must go to in order to buy certain things. This place, lets call it BuyMoar. In BuyMoar, they have a small piece of technology, from a company we’ll call GrannySmith. Online, where the regular folken shop, there is a place, lets call that “Wires and Knicknacks”, W&K for short.

Recently someone in this unnamed midwestern school went to BuyMoar, found the piece of technology that you can use with a computer from GrannySmith, in a bag from W&K. The price to get it from W&K? $10.11, shipping and everything. The price from BuyMoar? $24.99. Not any different part, not a different bag, but just a sticker put on the bag from W&K!

That’s a 247% markup! This is abominable, it’s unethical and pure profiteering. Whats more, the people in this midwestern school are bound by policy to always go to BuyMoar.

These people are fools. Pray for them.

Bedrock of Angels

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Helping the Havens family say goodbye and bury a pillar of their family has been a daunting, difficult, yet absolutely the only thing I could do for the past two weeks. In my small way, to help where I can, to be a comfort, to get things done. There was no question that I would be gladly driving all over creation (2400 miles), doing whatever was necessary, and being there for Scott and his family when droop turned to drop.

To me, it was to be something they could rely on, an emergency block of bedrock to absorb tears, to relieve pressure, to help where I can without getting in the way. “Bedrock” is vital for these past two weeks, as a metaphor, for all of us. Scott was there for his mother, I was there for Scott, and Angels were there – in the flesh – in so many ways. I feel it vital to name my Angels and to thank them publicly for their as-yet-unsung service.

I would like to thank these Angels:

  • To the lady at ISJ Hospital who played the Harp. You said you weren’t an Angel, but someone who plays the harp, unbidden, when it’s the perfect thing at the perfect moment, you had wings.
  • To the last Hospice nurse at ISJ, you did more for Dan than anyone in the hospital. I noticed your wings. Thank you.
  • To Chaplain Jacek Soroka at ISJ, your presence, your words, the comfort you brought and the raw serendipity of your service when we celebrated the life of Scott’s father, with the story of Lazarus was ineffable. We all noticed your wings. Bless you Chaplain, you helped restore even a ember of my faith, watching you help Scott’s family cope.
  • To Miah and Justin, you were my private Angels. You helped care for our family when we needed to help care for Scott’s family. You both have wings, whether you know it or not. What you did helped us do what we had to, to help Sandy and both the Havens and Lazarus families cope. There are not enough thanks, kisses, or hugs to match what you have done for us. I am proud to consider you family.
  • To Janet Ryan, you too are an Angel. I saw your wings when we learned of Danny’s last best practical joke. Your entire family, and you are an absolute godsend to Sandy, and both Scott and I know it, and we feel so deeply honored to have you in our family.
  • To Wendy at Regan Funeral Home in Queensbury, how you herded us cats and helped Sandy cope with Dan’s last final practical joke is way beyond the call of duty for anyone. For all that you did, and for Saturday morning in the parking lot, I see those wings.

There were many others as well, I’m sure, behind the scenes who did things unwitnessed. Whether or not people truly were Angels or had Angels hugging their backs, please know that our happy feelings extend to you as well, despite nobody seeing your good works.

Male Coping

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When something really horrible occurs everybody reacts and begins to cope with the situation. Everyone copes in their own ways. I have noticed that there are clear differences between the genders when it comes to coping. I’ve seen how women cope but I can only speak from my own experiences and how men cope.

It came to me tonight while talking with Scott over some drinks. Men cope by doing, Women cope by feeling. Not to say that either gender can’t cope like the others, Men can feel and Women can do, but in every situation I’ve been in it seems to follow the pattern above.

Men cope by doing. We fix things, we tend to things, we prepare. In many ways, men are like rescue dogs. We are very good in the thick of things with the practical angles but relatively retarded as a gender when it comes to simply feeling the situation out. Men would rather struggle, fight, act, or do, to cope. Men as rescue dogs goes further, if we go too long and we don’t rescue someone we seize with hopelessness and eventually just plod along seemingly desensitized to our surroundings. I have experienced that myself during the entire situation here in New York. I can’t DO anything, so I launch upon any situation that allows me to DO. I covet the little places where I can help, where I can do things to assuage pain, perform some needful action, do some task. Standing around crying has its place, but in almost any situation you’ll see a man retrieving tissues to give to his loved one – that’s an act of doing, how we cope when those we care about are suffering.

Today I was coping. Helping my family cope with the manifold complications that arose today. I met new family, extended family, and a member of that new family (pack?) had a problem with a bit of technology. I found myself acting without thinking, mindlessly responding. I popped out of my seat and offered to help fix the technological problem. I was playing out this theme of do’er, I was helping and that was my coping. It was an unusual feeling, I was bolt upright and swinging into action before I even really gave it any thought, it wasn’t something I had to weigh or even consider, it felt like a reflex. Someone had a problem that I could help with and up I went, reacting, doing, helping, fixing.

This has its uses, but it’s also a source of consternation and eventually conflict between the genders and even among ourselves. Men don’t feel. I like to pin the blame on the fact that in general, most men have very weak corpus callosums, while women tend to have bigger and more well-defined corpus callosums. This bit in the brain helps the two hemispheres communicate. The theory goes that the more nerve fibers between the hemispheres, the more overall cooperation between the hemispheres. Women can access and manipulate more of their emotional power because they have the hardware to do so, while men are running around, coping with the situation and coping with brains ill-suited to handling the highly integrative needs of a crisis. We can’t feel as well as women can, we have the emotions, but we can’t really ever do the same mental tricks that women can because the hardware wasn’t ever meant to actually do that. It gives me a cold comfort to know that my difficulty with expressing, harnessing, and controlling my emotions might be a purely mechanical matter. Instead of a comprehensive approach like women can achieve, men tend towards whichever their dominant hemisphere is. I am right-handed, therefore my dominant hemisphere is on the left. The left hemisphere specializes in mechanical things, matters of language and taking things apart and repair. I would bet money that when a male is stuffed in a fMRI scanner and forced into a highly stressful situation where coping is absolutely required the left side of their brains lights up like a christmas tree and the right side sparkles like blinking individual strands of christmas lights.

All this biology and psychology boils down to how we cope. Women want us to stop, to not do, to sit and cry and grieve and to feel with them. Rescue dogs want to find people, they don’t want to sit and take a moment, take in the totality of what happened and feel. Rescue dogs want to dig, tug, find people, do things.

I find myself giving advice and thinking about how we all react to stressful situations that demand coping. Males have to give women time to cope in their own way, and women need to understand that we, the rescue dogs, cope best by being able to act. I’ve found that once I understand my own gender-based deficiencies that understanding even stress between people who are attempting to cope is more clearly understood from my vantage point. Someday I may have enough mental fortitude to sit back and feel, but not really yet, I’m a boy, and quite firmly a rescue dog.

The case against technology

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There is something that has been a burr under my hide for years and years now. Many people laugh when I bring this up. It is important because it is so widespread and creates a miasma of hatred and anger for everyone who suffers this particular bugbear. I speak out against bathroom technology. I have been beset by bathrooms, usually in restaurants where everything it wired by sensors except for the doors themselves. I cannot express how angry all this needless automation makes me. Faucets, Soap, and Paper Towels and/or Hot-Air Dryers with airspace disturbance sensors are the most annoying and hateful objects because they are *everywhere*! I don’t need touchless sensor-laden bits! I just need a sink, some detergent, and pull-thru-funnel type paper towel dispenser! I can manage the classic way. I don’t need pre-measured, machine-delivered bouts of supply. I know how much water, soap, and paper I need. When I see these obnoxious devices I am filled with the urge to tear them off the wall and OfficeSpace them to little bits.

Its time to punish businesses with these machines and support those who understand that their customers know how and how much material they need to wash their hands properly. No ‘assistance’ required! Yaaaaar! 🙂

Little Lights

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When the worst things imaginable happen, the most unlikely people sprout wings and feathers. When Scott’s father began his downward spiral the hidden angels who were always quietly standing there stood up, came forward, gently shrugged and unfurled their wings and surrounded us with understanding, solace, and light.

Losing someone like this is a box of broken glass. Each movement, each discovery, the memories and reminders are fresh and sharp and each one is a shooting agony. There are blessings that surround us. I am most thankful that I was able to deliver Scott in time for him to take advantage of what remaining lucidity remained at his fathers command and that we were all able to say goodbye.

The emotional hurricane peaked at 11:45 when Scott’s Father passed on. The storm built, it came, and it passed leaving the survivors stunned and numb. Saying goodbye, especially in this situation is one of life’s most unpleasant knots. Nobody wanted to let go and nobody wanted to let the suffering rage on. It’s an unloving chain, sickness, debilitation, and suffering. All rushing headlong into something everyone knows is coming, nobody wants to face, and once it arrives, nobody truly can cope with adequately. Losing someone this central, this important can only be assuaged by the flow of time.

I am here to support Scott in his time of need. His and his families loss has left a Daniel-shaped hole behind and I’ve witnessed their coping. Through their loss and the emotional turmoil I find myself preoccupied with helping them cope and through that, naturally extending this fragile emotion through time and looking what is to come.

It isn’t until you lose a father-figure that you realize you had one all along. I have two more. Love, as I described it while consoling earlier today, is both the most compelling blessing and the worlds most horrendous curse. Expressing this emotion is something we all really should do as often as we can, to bask in the blessing before the curse of loss sets in. There are more fathers to lose, and I found myself dreading what is to come.

For Norm, I didn’t grow up with him as a father but he truly is a father to me. I will share his loss with his natural children and I’ll be on treaded ground. The real emotional pain comes when you have deferred telling your loved ones that you love them because they aren’t going anywhere, what’s the rush? Until they are gone and the words ring out in hollow space and the only comfort is the wellspring of your faith. Telling them that you love them, especially between sons and fathers is something that everyone wishes they could do much more of, but end up with the knowledge of the love and watching a mussy emotion transfigured into respect.

For Joseph, that’s a wholly different matter. I am my fathers only son. I was a spectator for Daniel, I am a player for Norm, but for Joseph I am more. In many respects I’m going to be very alone with my father when he passes on. The thing that hurts the most is that the love I have for him is the most understood and the most rendered-respect. There won’t be any regret for any of my fathers, but I do know that this was the easiest for me, and if this was hell, the others I can only imagine.

It boils down to Love. Do you love them enough to honor and cherish them when they are alive? If so, then that Love carries on through death and enables you to let them go. Loving someone enough to want to keep them countered with loving them enough to beg mercy on their behalf and celebrating their lives and the blazing glory of their passing. Love is both a blessing and a curse, and I wouldn’t be shocked in the least to discover that the entire Universes purpose is to explore Love. Love makes the world go round.

On Death and Dying

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My experience with Death is limited to the loss of both my paternal and maternal grandmothers. I have stood witness to their passing as well as the ramifications that sprang from those events.

Both of their passing, and my curious individualistic faith has formed the basis for my perceptions and thoughts about death and dying. I lost my Christian faith many years ago. I was raised as a Christian protestant, in the Presbyterian tradition, but I have developed my own unique viewpoints as I have lived my life and experienced it.

There is no real death in this world. The death that we know is one integral step we must take on our path. Each life is filled with steps, and they all lead somewhere, we are born, we grow up, we lead our lives, and eventually we die. I approach death both with metaphors and metaphysics. My metaphorical approach to death is the bowling analogy. Life is like a game of bowling: the shoes to rent, the ball to fondle, the lane to look down and goals to reach. Our lives are lead as the bowl hurdles down the alley, precariously streaking along a certain path, never one we think we selected but the path that was meant for us, one that could reach the pins or reach the gutter. When the ball strikes the pins, we die. While the pins knock over, they do not stop existing, they are gathered up, reassembled, and the ball is returned for another game. We are the pins, we are the ball, our death is when the ball strikes the pins and the gathering up and reassembly is the job of God.

When our lives end, when the ball strikes the pins, we do not simply cease to exist. There is a part of us, the part of us that is aware of awareness. It’s more than simply our consciousness, as consciousness fits within the crib of our sentience, it is the part of us that is just as permanent as the rest of the surrounding Universe. This part is our soul. When we die, the soul is released from the body but it does not just evaporate into nothingness. The soul is purpose. The soul is both the selector of the path and the path itself.  In each of our lives our souls are driven to experience a certain path, and we take that path whether we are conscious of it or not. For most people, they remain asleep to their souls and consider the events of their lives to be chaotic and random. Other people who are on the path of awakening to enlightenment understand how their live is structured and respect and have faith in the path.

This touches upon Good and Evil. The path selected is a means unto itself. People attribute valuations of “Good” and “Evil” to explain events that defy logical or rational description. It is because the consciousness cannot apprehend true reality that we are lead to make this fundamental attribution error. We don’t know, and without any further proof to the contrary we affix a label to events, calling them “Good” or “Evil”. Then we rail at a God who allows “Evil” into our world. In each situation the “Evil” serves a purpose that we cannot apprehend with consciousness. There is no real “Good” or “Evil”. There are only souls being and making paths for our bodies to follow from lifetime to lifetime. Death is not “Evil”. Death is merely a part of the path, one step that leads to another. It is pointless to upset oneself over “Good” versus “Evil” as any upset to a souls path never is permanent, the soul will select a path to follow that it must, irrespective of free will to the contrary.

The matter of enlightenment still remains. When consciousness awakens and expands it can break free from Maya, the illusion of reality, and catch glimpses of the reality the soul exists in. The rewards of awakening are immediate: you can catch a sense to your path, you are filled with the serenity of knowing you are where you are supposed to be and that you are doing what you are meant to be doing. That you are on the path, your path. I can only imagine that when a person achieves true enlightenment, true awakening, their consciousness has a full view of their souls, an incredible thing to contemplate.

I also approach death analytically. I see the body as a very fragile yet exceptionally complicated tuner. When we are born, we don’t have the biological complexity required to fully ‘tune in on’ our souls, so from birth to about 3 years old we are wholly indistinguishable from our nearest evolutionary progenitors, the chimpanzees. After our 3rd year, our bodies show enough raw complexity that tuning the souls attached to our bodies can begin. This tuning goes on throughout life, constantly getting more and more refined. The soul uses the body at that point, it’s a type of symbiosis. As we age the soul begins to dominate the relationship. Our bodies aren’t immortal, they were never meant to be. They have accidents, become damaged, and erode. When the body is damaged or begins to die, the soul begins to depart the body. Death is not a pinnacle moment, it is a process – we call it dying and when people are dying, their souls gently slide out of tune with their bodies. Considering everything, this is quite possibly the most merciful part of life, especially when the body is trapped in extreme suffering. When I saw my loved ones progressing along the route of the dying I have seen this ‘tuning out’ for myself. The soul moves on, it cannot die because it is not physical – it is energetic. I have seen my loved ones alive and animate, and I have seen their bodies dead and inanimate. The dead bodies closely resemble my loved ones, but they appear different, without the spark of the soul, the body is just a shell. The connection of the soul to the body actually looks like something, when the soul is gone, you know it, when the soul is departing, you can see it go.

Death is not the end. Death is a step, a transformation, the soul released so it can discover a new body. It has been my experience that souls do not flit about like fireflies, but rather tend to ‘flock’ together with other souls. From lifetime to lifetime through reincarnation each of our souls touch each other over and over. The roles, the genders, the relationships, they are always in flux, but the souls always find ways to be reborn together, to ‘flock’ together, if not by selecting bodies that are near each other, they arrange the path to bring the bodies together over and over. Our human drama plays out over and over, we dance with the same people we’ve always danced with, from lifetime to lifetime.

So then what is the purpose of it all? Christians believe that death is the route to the afterlife. A place of perfection and perfect happiness. My experiences, even my past-life memories which I do have possession of, indicate to me that the afterlife is not the destination. It may be ‘a’ destination for some, but at least not for me and the souls that I recognize in this lifetime. I think instead that the purpose of life is experience. That souls enjoy Maya, they enjoy the challenge, the struggle and in some ways they enjoy the suffering. I believe it to be more a matter of a fascination with experience, the new situations and the learning that drives life.

If death isn’t the end of existence and souls are born together over and over again, then there is absolutely nothing to fear and death should be regarded as just another adventure in living. It is a natural and unavoidable destination for the body and a chance for your soul to continue on to find new ways and new experiences. It shouldn’t be full of sorrow, it should be a celebration of a life lived well. Paths selected, existence experienced, love enjoyed.

The Devil, you know.

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I regularly receive questions regarding cellular providers and end up recommending the same things, that when you get right down to it, it doesn’t matter which carrier you select, they are all equally awful, in my experience. The big three in our area at least are AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. What I do let people in on is what practical measures each carrier does differ on and which one you should take advantage of.

Verizon is the choice for you if you like to roam really off the beaten path. The network is very big, alas, the tradeoff is that it’s slower than many of the others. It’s really useful if you spend a lot of your time in your cabin deep in the woods, plotting the overthrow of the Government, for example.

Sprint is the choice for you if you only roam on the Eisenhower Interstate System in the United States. If you could plausibly walk to an I-## road, and that’s as far as you ever get, then Sprint has a network for you. If you end up in that cabin, you may be lucky, but chances are, you’ll be shit out of luck.

AT&T is the choice for all city mice. Big cities, don’t roam, don’t move. If you are like this, then AT&T is the best for you. They have a self-professed “Fastest 3G Experience”, but their coverage is horribly anemic.

Think of the carriers like a pyramid. The biggest is on the bottom, and the higher you go, the faster the service. That’s generally it.

One thing that is worth mentioning is AT&T recently purchased Centennial Wireless, there has been some chatter that AT&T will turn their 3G network loose on Centennial’s network, what this does to their anemic 3G coverage map has yet to be seen and the date is likewise a mystery – although conventional wisdom plunks it firmly sometime this year, although I would not be surprised if it slips as far as Q3 2011.

The Liminality of the Moulin Rouge

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I have been for the past year observing surreptitiously a particularly seamy segment of the homosexual population. This segment are classified under many names, the most common are ‘barebackers’, who just don’t care about risk and consequence to ‘bug catchers’ who actively seek out risk and consequence.

I’ve watched these people, and I continue to do so. It’s prurience is unwavering, these people are tired of the 1990’s and early 2000’s efforts to get the entire gay male population to stop having sex, or at least engage in safe sex with proper protection and have made bids to behave in a wholly retrograde fashion against best common sense. Driven into a madness by their libidos.

I began to ponder why this phenomena has grown up recently. I suspect people are growing weary of constantly having to be vigilant when it comes to sex, they no longer fear the most common consequences and for many people, this has become a manner of managed risk with a blasé attitude regarding the consequences for themselves. What alarms me the most is that this population exists and it’s members wander about carrying their bio-hazardous passengers  into the lives of people who are hormonally addled to the point where they either don’t care or are not aware enough to take proper precautions. I’ve read many stories where firmly closeted homosexuals, pressurized with a buildup of hormonal chemicals raging in their bloodstream have willfully suppressed their authentic cognition and allowed these people to enter their lives and infect them. The mode for this infection is not as simple as plain exposure, there is a group within the barebacking community that engage in a practice they gloat about, called ‘Stealth’. When faced with the pressure of their sex drives they seek out partners to satisfy their urges, and if those partners are determined to ‘play it safe’ then these individuals will sabotage the protection rendering it merely an affectation and not a true form of consequence protection and then engage in the act of infection to someone who is not fully aware of their situation and the risk they face.

While stealthing is practiced and is an outrage unto itself, these people willfully seek out other infected partners to engage in unprotected sexual relations and many engage in acts of profound exposure, with multiple partners, random partners, and stranger-partners. What concerns me most of all isn’t so much cross-infection, but because these people are engaged in orgiastic sexual pursuits, hyperinfection. HIV is only a single player on the stage, a terminal player but not the most damaging or hazardous – what really concerns me is the hyperinfection of Hepatitis C, which is incurable, leaves you with 10 to 20 year life expectancy and full liver failure at the end. HIV is as hazardous, but it doesn’t cause organ damage like Hepatitis C can.

Through my personal experience and what I have seen in other gay men, there is a duality building in our culture that I call the Moulin Rouge problem. We are on the public surface a ‘polite society’ and this ‘polite society’ doesn’t accept the existence of sexual depravity and amoral conduct, but along side this ‘polite society’ is a darkness in many of our cohort group that sits just beyond and has no problem engaging in such activities and in many ways, revels in it. I see the strictness and moral uprightness deepening the darkness that balances it. You then have a new liminality, on the front of the Moulin Rouge, it’s all quite innocent fun, but behind the Moulin Rouge is failed risk, disease, and the ramifications of uncontrolled consequence. You have men who carry a public image of spotlessness and a private image of orgiastic incorrigibility.

Linked together with my previous post what concerns me the most are the men who exist so far and so deep into the closet that they end up in a perpetual state of sexual frenzy, they have a raw hunger to engage in explosive exercises of homosexual intercourse, they lay there and will agree to anything so that they can achieve satisfaction, and some of them spend not a single moment considering the consequences of their actions. They then take this failure with them, as a new dark passenger, to their wives or girlfriends, where they continue the cycle of ignored risk and unfortunate consequences. I find these men, trapped in the closet, driven mad with sexual frenzy to be almost as bad as the men who willfully spread their infections to others through indolence or malicious design.

The way to avoid this is sexual education and to relax our moral indignation over sex in general. I would argue that we’ve helped create this monster by leaving men too uneducated and too tightly trussed with morality, that if we as a culture relax in regards to morality perhaps we’ll be able to shoehorn some of these men out of the closet, get them educated about their bodies and their feelings and once we get to that point, they should be well armed enough to avoid making life-altering mistakes.

As always, I welcome all comments – I can only hope this gets to a healthy boy in the closet, gets him to come out, gets him to wake up, to think, to not make mistakes – to learn ahead of making these mistakes… to save themselves. Coming out is not only good for you, it’s good for us all.

Openly Gay

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If there is one singular phrase that can corral a huge batch of anger it’s reading about how someone is ‘Openly Gay’. It’s the context that gets me most of all. Context is a theme I will be exploring in the next few blog entries, so you might as well get comfortable now with my ranting and raving.

What angers me most is that there is some fundamental difference between “Gay” and “Openly Gay” – a kind of paper-based room-divider-esque closet for people to hide in while trying to appeal to the masses. The difference between “Gay” so and so and “Openly Gay” so and so makes every part of me tremble with rage. I see the phrase “Openly Gay” in headlines and it just turns in my gut like a knife – that being public and sharing your sexual orientation is in itself a newsworthy event. It is not a newsworthy event, if someone is gay, they are gay. What is the shock and awe associated with this?

Centrally this touches on a huge pet peeve of mine. People who hide in the closet, thinking they are protecting themselves when they are doing nothing more than dodging the truth and avoiding unpleasant feelings. The longer you dwell in the closet the harder it is to open the door, and if you spend too much time there, you run the risk of losing the seam where the door really is and thinking you are in a jail cell for the rest of your life.

The rest of this touches on the number of homosexuals in our world. Everyone is under the impression that there are just a really limited number of homosexuals and that we can be gleefully written off because we aren’t important enough to consider as being worth it to regard and respect. If everyone who was gay in the closet came out spontaneously, our world would change. The truth would not only set you free, it would set us all free. The truth is like light, it cleans what it touches and from my recent experiences (more on those later) that light is more needful than ever to come out and illuminate every little nook and cranny. If you don’t think it’s important for your social health, it’s vital for your biological and spiritual health as well!

I recently had the pleasure to watch this blog-entry from a fellow by the moniker of Davey Wavey. He’s quite wise for someone so young and instead of replicating his words I can just point to him and have everyone watch what he has to say on this subject. It is time for people to stop using the phrase “Openly Gay” because all Gays should be “Open” already. Hiding is bad for you, it’s bad for me, it’s bad for us all!