Hero/Villain

Hmmm.
My grandfather distinguished himself,
On the field of honour
As a Canadian soldier
During Holland’s liberation.
On the fields of Holland,
My grandfather was a hero.
But the hero came home.
And then he was a hero,
In no more than name,
In fact he was a villain,
Bringing medals to shame,
For heroes and villains
Can be one and the same.
Yes the hero came home,
And revealed something other,
For six years of her childhood,
He raped my poor mother,
Until he was caught,
And finally imprisoned,
Leaving lives torn,
Family full of divisions.
An act can be heroic,
Yes I know that it can,
But to see a real hero,
First show me the whole man.

(I don’t usually write after prompts, but I couldn’t resist “Military, Soldiers, and Veterans” from Jingle poetry.)

A bibliophile’s dream house!

If I ever become a millionaire I want to build and live in a house like this! The Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio’s shelf-pod concept is brilliant, and I can only imagine that Miss Kitten’s cats would enjoy such an abode as well. For more images check out the original post.

For anyone thinking of becoming a high school teacher…

Remember that to be a teacher is to be despised,
You’ll be hated by your students
And by parents, criticized.

You are never thanked when grades high, though,
You are always blamed
When grades are low.

You’ll learn to face a room full of indifferent teens,
Trying to engage them
By almost any means.

Ignore their rolling eyes that look at you and mock.
And pay no attention when
They keep watching the clock.

Just remember that your job is for the greater.
They may hate you now
But they’ll appreciate you later.

Suicide…but is it painless?

Perhaps I should be called Macbeth as tragedy seems to want to surround me, ok that is a little dramatic but twice now I have physically been close to someone who has attempted suicide…one a failed attempt jumping from a third storey building and sadly yesterday’s not so happy ending of a woman who jumped in front of a train.

This isn’t a subject people like to talk about because then they would have to decide which side of the fence they are going to sit on, should they feel sympathy or anger towards a person who has committed suicide? Suicide is not easy to understand unless you have been in that downward spiral where you believe there is only one way to take you away from all your emotional pain. That of course can include the pain of loneliness and lack of care and attention they receive.

Cutting wrists is visually dramatic, often to impress friends and family with haunting images, that are sometimes meant to punish them for not helping the person in cause when they needed you most.

Public suicides however, have a larger target audience, so what are they trying to tell us? Do they want to become remarked, to stand out, due to a need for acknowledgment, with this; they blame the whole society for their problems, and their death. Furthermore, they delude themselves, that a suicide in public will be long remembered after their death. Just like any normal person wants to live longer, an abnormal person with suicidal tendencies is satisfied with a longer existence through the tragic memory of others. You and I might consider this absurd, but for their flawed thought process, during an intense emotional state, this seems reasonable.

Yesterday’s incident is still very raw in my mind but I haven’t forgotten the other chaps attempt, I think of it often…so the fact I still remember, after all that time, proves the chap still exists in my memory. That is the exact reason he attempted to kill himself in front of me and many others. I am sure and this may sound odd, but I believe that is what feeds public suicides.

Suicides are not pleasant, nor for the victim, their family or the audience. But who should I feel sorry for, the woman who committed suicide or the driver and the rest of us travelers who had to be party to this one persons melt down? My heart does go out to her family but my head tells me I should feel more sympathy for the living…the ones who will have that image burned into their brain for the rest of their days.

And I hope Ken doesn’t mind me posting the following poem he wrote a while back, which can be found on his website http://www.readysteadyrhyme.com/

This is how death should be treated.

Death
by Ken Donner on September 28, 2009

When Death comes banging at my door,
Let it fight to get inside,
I’ll not bow to what’s in store,
I’ll not turn or run or hide,
When Death comes round then let it be,
Because it’s angry, seething mad,
Filled with rage and jealousy,
Envious of the life I’ve had!

Be a man, and take it like a man, dammit!

So lately I’ve been feeling a bit down in the dumps. Lots of stress coming from everywhere and that led me to be a real unpleasant person to be around. Nobody wants to be around somebody who complains all the time, and my wife, bless her heart, is an angel for putting up with my ceaseless complaining. Luckily, something clicked in my head and I now realize that I have got to grow up and be a Man, and act like one too. Nobody likes a whiner, and losers don’t get anywhere. I don’t want to be a loser, or a whiner, so I have to pull myself up by my boot straps and quit worrying and complaining about things that I have no control over. Misfortune, misery, disaster, the Man has to punch through it and carry on. Carry on without complaining. Deadwood’s Al has great advice on this subject:

WOTD: the “birds and the bees” and other animal-related phrases

The jury is still out on whether or not a bee is an animal. (It’s an insect.) Anyway, we all know what the phrase “birds and the bees” means, right? Well, it’s sex apparently. It’s a way for adults to talk to children about sex without having to speak openly and technically about the subject. The “bees” fly around the “pollinate” the “flowers”, you see. Therefore, to be told about the “birds and bees” is to be told in so many words (at least if you’re a girl) that you shouldn’t let any “bees” into your “flower” otherwise you might get “pollinated.” (wink wink nudge nudge) I never got that speech, though. Instead my mother got out the anatomy book and showed my brother and me diagrams and descriptions of the male and female reproductive systems.

(By the way, where do the “birds” fit into all of this?)

You’ve probably heard the old saying, “when the cat’s away, the mice will play.” It means that when no one in authority is present, the subordinates will do as they please. Parents and teachers of small children are undoubtedly familiar with this phenomenon. You turn your back for about a minute and return to what must have been a frantic mad rush to see how much damage they could cause in your absence.

When something is described as a “dog and pony show” then it’s probably an elaborately staged event or performance designed to sell you something. The phrase originated with the small traveling circuses that toured the small towns of rural America, which often featured performing dogs and ponies as their main attractions. TV commercials are a modern-day version of them. A lot of production value goes into getting you to buy the newest variety of deodorant.

It’s hard to choose a horse-related idiom that really speaks to me. Mainly because most people just don’t ride or keep horses like they used to. I do like the phrase, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!” just because it’s so weird and offensive. So you’re a bit pissed off at the chap riding the horse, but what in the world did the horse do to you? All he did was carry the bastard. According to the Urban Dictionary it’s an insult that can be lobbed at a person of authority, since presumably this person is on their “high horse” (another horse-related idiom) and needs to be put in their place.

There are literally thousands more animal-related phrases, but I think I’ve made my point. Brevity is the soul of wit.

Thoughts from a café at T-Centralen in Stockholm (A reality check exercise)

Take yourself out some place. A café perhaps, on a busy downtown street, or ideally to the train station or the bus station.
Now, get yourself a magazine. Screw the articles. Get one with lots of pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. This is not an intellectual exercise.

It’s a reality check that crosses all lines; culture, colour, class, IQ, language, gender, orientation, age. We’re all in this particular boat together baby.

Now, get settled in with those pics in your GQ, Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, or one of thousands of others in the same genre. Soak them in. Admire the pretty people.

Fantasize about their fabulous lives. Wish and dream about being like them, or even just knowing them, and being close to their world. Feel just a little bit smaller.

Now put the magazine down. Leave it open to a picture if you like, it doesn’t matter. It might even help. Shift your attention away from it though, and instead watch the dizzying array of people parading before you. Yeah. You know where I’m going with this don’t you?

Of all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people walking past you, how many look like the models in the magazine? I’ll tell you. None. Not one. Not a single goddamned one of them. Not even the ones who are desperately trying to look like them. Hell, if one of the actual models from the magazine happened to walk by, even they wouldn’t look like their media image portrays them.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t look away just yet! You’re only half way through the exercise. Keep watching the parade. Watch until you find yourself revelling in the variety, until you realise where true beauty lies, until you realise it’s all subjective and the whole playing field constantly shifts and is only made up of our individual judgements based on our own needs and insecurities. Until you realise that what you see passing before you is an intricate and dazzling display of human beauty in all its forms and that in actual fact it is the media image in its inaccurate simplicity that generally fails to capture that depth.

Repeat the exercise as often as possible, until you really actually get the truth of it. Afterwards, continue to buy those magazines if you want, but for goodness sakes, keep them in perspective.

Word of the Day: spatula

Today’s word is not particularly special or meaningful. It’s doesn’t really have any qualities at all. I choose it simply because I think it sounds funny. What an amusing collection of sounds for such an ordinary object that does such an ordinary task.

It’s a noun. It’s Latin. The original word hasn’t changed all that much. Spatula, in Latin means, “broad flat tool or weapon.” Something that is spatula-like can be modified with the adjective spatular. As in, “The car smashed into the spatular part of a snowplow.”

Incidentally, it’s really hard to think of something that rhymes with spatula…

Any other funny-sounding words you can think of?

The Vestibules have a lot of ideas:

Stay tuned…

Word of the Day: this is not the SAT

Miss Kitten and Shark are otherwise preoccupied this evening. Therefore, the High Priestess will fill in. Please do not expect much.

Sesquipedalian
\ˌses-kwə-pə-ˈdāl-yən\
adjective

having many syllables : long
given to or characterized by the use of long words <a sesquipedalian television commentator>

Origin of sesquipedalian: Latin sesquipedalis, literally, a foot and a half long, fromsesqui- + ped-, pes foot — more at foot

Example: Concatenate is a sesquipedalian way of saying the word link.

The British Prime Minister pledged to invest £650million in Pakistani schools

Today’s rant is about the British Government, which is most unusual for me because I generally keep those comments to myself but I am currently outraged so much so that I had to put fingers to keyboard.

A recent study by the UN’s education arm UNESCO revealed corruption is so rife that many classrooms, teachers and school children for which cash is being claimed have never existed. And, even if money pledged by David Cameron does end up in bona fide schools, they are at risk from the Taliban – who have already destroyed hundreds. The vile terrorists target girls as they do not believe women should be educated. And they even use children to carry bombs into class. Experts estimate some 5,000 children – some as young as seven – are trained as suicide bombers.

And how is it that Britain can afford such a generous offering of aide I hear you ask yourself, well that comes from the cash savings made from cuts to Britain’s Armed Forces – while Pakistan is spending £1.7billion on its own defences….not to mention our own education budgets has been slashed.

The Pakistani PM believes extremism is born out of illiteracy yet does nothing about it until the offer of free millions from the UK taxpayer via Cameron arrives. Why should WE pay for their inability to deal with extremism when their PM knows the reason why it is spreading? They can only afford six new Chinese submarines and 36 fighter aircraft because idiots like Cameron take our money and provides the things they should be providing.

Now don’t get me wrong I am aware Pakistan’s government has failed to provide its people with primary education, but for the country’s long-term stability surely it’s more important than spending on defence and security.

The UK will have no control of the curriculum in schools receiving funding, meaning taxpayers could see their money pumped into madrassas peddling extremism.

How do I explain to my bright 14 year old daughter, who is now questioning her further education because of ever increasing university costs that there will be no funding by our own government because we tax payers are sending £650m out to Pakistan for their children’s education!!!

What is this country coming to??