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I seldom want to comment on the woes of the world.  Like everybody, I’m tired of reading about kids killin’ each other.  Or about abductions, rapes, and acts of evil that are beyond the scope and range of most nightmares but unfortunately exist in our daily lives. 

Headlines of senseless tragedy keep hittin’ closer to home. 

In my younger years, I was no stranger to unpleasant things. By all rights I should be a statistic by now.  For anybody too curious about that long-past life, I invoke the 5th.  Here’s my point, though…. I saw more than most, up close, but I never imagined the headlines we have today.

I’ve tried to figure out what makes each generation seemingly more violent than the one prior. Why the news broadcast of violent crime sponsors copycat crimes that seek to up the ante.   Is everybody on crack?  What gives?

I had a discussion with another good friend and cousin tonight - she who made this site for me - and she speculated that it was poor parenting, an absence of moral upbringing in families, and so on.  I agree with that, but then in my private musings I further pondered why I never freaked out on the level we see in the news today.

After all, I had access to weapons as a kid.  I grew up fatherless, my mother was absent during my teen years, and I grew up in poverty.  I was chock-full of angst, anger, fear, and I had a strong disrespect for authority.  I carried some hate.  I’d suffered violence.  I didn’t feel particularily loved and I never felt safe. 

Why didn’t I freak out?

The only answer I could come to, is that I had somehow established a sense of honor early enough in life, that the thought of taking my anger out on the world, never occurred to me.   

Honor, and a personal code that had more grey in it, than black and white.  But there were lines I would not cross.   There were limits.    Those limits were seriously challenged more than once, but they held. 

How did I establish any sort of honor, under adverse conditions?   I don’t know for certain, but here’s a few things that worked to my favor.

I had a love for animals.  They were my closest companions and taught me about unconditional love.   

I appreciated that which could not be owned.  Nice weather, the blue of the lake and sky, the green of an open field.   I felt connected to nature. 

I read books.  Comic books on up to full-size novels, as a kid.  Westerns.  Civil War stories.  And one of my favorite books as a kid, was The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White.   The humor in it amused me, and I must have checked it out of the school library a dozen times.  The signifigant ideas within it -  that anyone, perhaps, could be of noble birth and despite humble beginnings, aspire to greatness - didn’t conciously hit me at the time. Only now as an adult, do I look back and go, “Holy bleep.  Something sunk in.”    Moral ideas were programmed into me by what I read.  It was a start.

I had friends. Most of them were the wrong side of the track.  I did have one white sheep in the bunch, who was from a very God-fearing family, and I thought they were around the bend somewhat.  I was not well-received by my friend’s parents, as I swore a lot and dressed aggressively.  The only way I could see my friend after school without her getting in trouble, was to attend some of youth church funtions.   I became part of a positive group and learned about faith. 

I still resented authority, however, and I hated school with a passion.  But I had a couple of talents that some teachers attempted to nurture.  I become involved with art, with band, and the high school newspaper.  The taste of recognition and the encouragement kept me in school, even when I was out partying until 3 a.m.  

As an adult, I hit moral crossroads time and time again.  Sometimes I turned in the wrong direction.  I never crossed those certain lines, but I did make some serious errors to my own grief.   At the breaking points, I had a couple of guardian angels step in, disguised as friends.  (You know who you are.)  

I’m not suggesting that there’s any quick-fix to turn some kid around.  I do believe, however, that every child needs to develop a sense of honor.  I can think of nothing else that explains why kids from good families can still go bad, or why troubled kids can to go lengths beyond our worst imaginings. 

The absence of personal honor leaves the doors of conduct wide open to anything.  Even our politics, our corporations, seem to lack a sense of honor.  Hollywood certainly can’t claim a sense of honor.   I sincerely doubt that video games teach a sense of honor, and if you’ve got one, you probably lose points for using it.

What teaches honor?  Everything.  The books a kid reads.  The TV shows watched.  The Bible.  The value sets of people around him.   I think any kid needs decent attention and a sense of belonging and acceptance to a positive group.   He also needs to have recognition for self-esteem.   The need for love is obvious, but above and beyond finding love from parents, or relatives and friends….a kid needs to have some self-love, too.   

Man, I’ve just had a few days where things have come unglued.   I’ve even screwed up the blog here.  Found out that ya can’t paste in something without wonkin’ the entire page.  I haven’t had entries that are worth a damn anyhow, so I erased recent efforts and decided to start over. 

On the plus side, my longtime buddy and occassional opposite number will soon have a blog of her own.   Lookin’ forward to that.   I currently have several other mediums for pestering her, but the more the merrier!    Once she’s got somethin’ live I’ll put up a link to it.  

I’ve just returned from a wild party, and I have to say, anything bad you’ve ever heard about a motorcycle crowd is probably…only mildly exaggerated.   Heh heh.

I’ve never before witnessed a pissing contest with actual judges and scientifically calibrated repository devices.  I don’t know who won.  I didn’t enter, because there’s a trick to having enough in the bladder for a sufficient entry, vs. having to go so bad that you can’t afford to wait in the contestant line.  Tips for newbies:  If you miss the container, ya’ll, it doesn’t count.  Aim is everything.

There was also a “tittie contest”  and despite it being about 56 degrees and pouring rain, plenty of girls took the top off for their chance at a $500 prize.  ( Hell, that’s $250 each one…not bad pay!)  Those who lacked the rack, entered the g-string contest instead.  

There was also a burn-out contest for those who wanted to see how long they could smoke a tire before it blew.  Yeehaaw!

I’m currently going through some professional upheavals.  I’m one of these people that always seem to have a roller-coaster life.  Up, down, loop-de-loops and all of it at 80 mph with the wind in yer face.

Sometimes, I wonder why things always seem to change so frequently, and/or drastically, in my life.  I figured it out though.  I live a life of constant motion.  Always have.  I think I attract change, in ways I don’t realize.  I can’t sit still much of the time, and I like to make things happen.  Conversely, sometimes things happen to me.  This is what I get for being a spit-into-the-wind type.

Recently I took a bad situation and bought a reprieve, by harnessing a change I couldn’t control, and changing elements of it to suit my own needs.  It set off a chain of new, related events that so far, are positive.  It may have been the most signifigant career risk I’ve ever taken, but I’m getting points for guts, if not brains.  Meantime, I’ve found that there’s such a thing as making your own luck. 

I always preach that there’s two kinds of change; the change ya make, and the change that happens to ya.  Far better to initiate your own changes, then to sit back and let others decide your life’s turns.  Of course that sounds great on paper, but I’ve been known to steer for the cliff a time or two.  Making SMART changes…that’s the thing.

The tradeoff of things changing alot, is never feeling too secure.  I feel like I can’t afford to get used to someone or something being around.   People wander in and out of my life;  jobs change, companies themselves change.  And hell, the weather changes, the seaons change…so why do I think anything is supposed to be the same?

I realized somethin’ kinda freaky, then.  There is one absolute, changeless state, being death.  That’s the point where nothing else changes on us; where the capricious whims of the universe no longer sweep us along. 

Being in no hurry for that - as I’ve really started to enjoy the planet here in the past several years - I’m re-thinking how I tackle change.  Without sounding too much like Scott Adams or some whacked-out theorist, I do believe there’s a combination of Fate and Choice at work in people’s lives.  I don’t think every event is an absolute given; but I think some elements are what they are, and our reactions, the path we choose, bring us the aid - or the opposition - that is appropriate.  

Currently I’m working on a writing project ( chess match, script, free-for-all adventure)  with a good friend and cousin of mine. There’s nothing to get the ol’ creative juices going like some good music, and depending on the point of the story, I’ll listen to songs that speak for one mood or another.   

The story, while yet untitled, has an edgy, up-for-grabs plot that has matched up well with older tunes by INXS.  Not for the lyrics, but for the smooth-angst sound of alternative classics like  “Don’t Change”  and the looping, hypnotic chorus found within “The One Thing.”  

One INXS tune hits a little closer to the mark, appropriately entitled “Biting Bullets” :

I lose myself like anybody else
But I’m not so strong to make it in the end
I need some answers when the day comes crashing down
‘Cause it’s all over when there’s no one to be found

Other tunage is a collection of running favorites , that always seem to fit the bill.  “Heroes” by David Bowie.   “Kings and Queens” By Aerosmith.  “Dangerous Type” by the Cars.   And anything by AC/DC, Styx….it’s literally too much to list.  Though my partner in crime - pardon the expression - has done a great job capturing the tune-moods in two CD compilations that she’s made for me.  I love those CD’s and I play them over and over and over.    

Howdy!  First off, thanks to MeadowMufn for creating this blog site for me.  I love it.  I need to figure a few things out yet, but in the meantime, check back daily for smartass remarks, pearls of wisdom, bad poetry, awful jokes, and free-floating rants.  Somethin’ for everybody!