Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 6

The price of gasoline here in South Carolina shot up twenty cents between 8 this morning and 4:30 this afternoon.  It is now $3.99.

Let's go Brandon!

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 5

I'm getting concerned.  I thought doing a post a day would kickstart my "old" writing skills back into play.  Five days into it and I'm nowhere close.

The last time I was able to channel the really inner parts of my intellect, was before I left my old home in 2016 and headed west.  I don't think that experience has anything to do with losing my writing ability in earnest.  If anything it made me a deeper, more broad person as a whole.  But as soon as I got back I had an issue with my medication and...

That's what I blame most for what happened to me.  The meds.  They keep me suppressed.  They help me hang on to some semblance of normality.  But they also rob from me a measure of spirit.

I've been trying to overcome the effect of the meds.  Have been working toward readjusting my mind around them.  But they are so pervasive, so very permeating into my neurobiology.  But little progress has been made.

So maybe with a little self discipline, and applying myself to the task, maybe that will help me where simply trying to evade the meds has failed.

What do I miss most?  Being able to write about God.  Being able to write about my relationship with Him.  I've lost that most of all.  Maybe that I lament that, is some evidence that I haven't lost it.  Maybe the fact that I'm writing about that right now, proves that I still care.  And maybe if I care about God, maybe He still cares for me, too.

See you all tomorrow.

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 4

Got back a little while ago from seeing The Batman.  It may take a while to process this thoroughly.  It's definitely a change-up from what we've come to expect from Batman on film.  Director Matt Reeves has crafted what is easily the most jagged, grim and dirty Batman story we've seen on the big screen ever.  And though some of his choices to slaughter some of the mythos' most sacred cows are disconcerting, even so I found myself completely enthralled by this movie.

It's not perfect.  There will never be such a thing as the perfect Batman movie.  But I would rank it right up there with Batman Begins (2005) and Michael Keaton's Batman from 1989.

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 3

 This week I feel like I’m in a Peter Sellers movie… with me as Peter Sellers.

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 2

The Russian people did not wake up pokey one morning last week and decide to invade Ukraine.  Neither did the Russian people occupy Poland and impose the Iron Curtain.  The average subject of the emperor didn’t care where Pearl Harbor was if he even knew it existed at all.  The Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland spent decades blowing each other up… why, exactly?  The typical Palestinian when pressed on the matter can not say why he wants to shove every Jewish man woman and child into the sea.

 

I’m reading stories now about Russian soldiers in the field crying and wanting their mothers.  They didn’t want to be there.  Many of them claim that they didn’t know they were going into Ukraine to begin with.

 

I’m also reading about the Ukrainians holding Russian soldiers hostage and parading them in front of cameras for social media.  And showing photos of dead Russians.  Some are claiming that doing so violates the Geneva Convention.  To quote Patrick Swayze from Red Dawn: “I’ve never heard of it!”  Swayze then answers his friend’s concern about what makes “us” different from “them”: “BECAUSE WE LIVE HERE!”

 

It’s hard not to sympathize with the Ukrainians.  They didn’t ask for war.  And war is hell.  Why shouldn’t they reciprocate in kind?  If someone breaks into your house, you have the right to stop them by any means necessary including acts of violence.

 

But I digress.

 

All of this and more, did not come about because entire populations simply decided to go to war and wipe out another people.  They instead came about by the machinations of a relatively small minority.  Sometimes not even that much.  Too often it comes down to one man.  One man whose sanity is questionable at best.

 

(Sometimes I find myself thinking that there would have been peace in the Mid-East a long time ago already, were it not for that idiot Yassir Arafat rallying his people toward hate and violence.)

 

There have been many such men.  Men who by accident or design have come to control the lives and deaths of millions.  I can tick off a bunch right now: Stalin, Pol Pot, Amin, Kim, and of course Adolf Hitler.

 

Right now, that man is Vladimir Putin.  Dictator of Russia.  And he is following right along with his predecessors.  The big difference is that Putin has it in his power to destroy the world as we know it.

 

So the question that’s been running through my mind, the question that has been asked by many before me and will no doubt be asked by many more to come still, is this…

 

Why do we allow ourselves to follow madmen?  Why do we even tolerate them?

 

Solzhenitsyn was right.  If the people had only resisted.  If only they had chosen to fight back.  Had decided that they would kill Stalin’s agents when they came instead of cowering in fear.  But instead they played along as the victim.

 

Why is it so hard to say “no” to lunatics?

 

When are people like the Russians going to say “enough” and topple the madman controlling their country?

 

 

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Ash Wednesday

I woke up this morning wanting to die.

I was having the most beautiful dream.  About all the people who I've ever known and loved.  Especially the ones who I've hurt along the way: so many relationships that were broken because of me.  Because of this mind that God let me have.  But in this dream, everything was okay.  The people I'd hurt, were telling me that they loved me.  That it didn't matter anymore.  We were all going to be together forever.  And I thought that was what was going to happen.  And then I woke up and until the alarm went off from its final round of snoozing I was just laying in bed... wanting to die.  Wanting to be there, where there is no hurt.  No past to be reminded of.  No brain that has turned against me.

Instead I got up, and shaved and showered, and went into the office.  There was a three hour training session done over Zoom this afternoon, about disclosure as peer support specialists.  It was a continuation from the day before yesterday, and I gained a lot from it.  But one of the exercises today triggered me.  Triggered me hard.  Reminded me that for all of my attempts to have some measure of happiness in this life, I might forever come up short.  It will always be someone else who has the things that matter most.

I never wanted much.  Just a little family.  That's all.  But would someone want to be associated with one with such a mind?  That mind destroyed a chance for family.  Hurt people I cared for and still do care for.  Poisoned me from having another shot, when it had been so close.  How close?  I was going to buy the ring the next day.

I'm tired of hurting others, and I'm tired of being hurt all of the time.  I want it to stop.

I'm tired of doubting God, more often than I really care to admit.

A few weeks ago something happened and, I told my friends that it was definitely a God thing.  My car had a breakdown coming off the loop onto Pleasantburg Drive in Greenville.  But the car had enough to coast into a friend's driveway.  They drove me to work while my car was being worked on, and in the end it was fixed.  It's the car I've had since 2007, the one that drove my dog Tammy and I across the country and back.  I want to believe it will make it to 300,000 miles.  Maybe it can now.  But how the car had just enough to make it into their driveway, and how it resolved in the end... yeah, that was "a God thing" I told people.

I can see God in the small things.  Is it wrong to hope that He will be good in bringing some big things along the way, too?

Am I going to die alone?  If I am, what difference does it make if I die tonight and get it over with?

Why am I writing this?

I asked a friend today, since it seems a lot of others are doing it, what can I do for Lent this year.  I don't really have any luxuries to give up for this period leading up to Easter.  She suggested maybe write something every day.  A gratitude journal, she said.  Something along that line of thought.

It reminded me of one time, some years back, when I gave up blogging for Lent.  It was hard, but I did it.

It would be too easy to do that again.  My blogging has become pretty lax.  I want it to make it at least until its twentieth anniversary in 2004.  But there are times when it seems I'm just ready to give it up entirely.  But I don't really want to do that either.

So the idea hit, that maybe for Lent, I could write a blog post a day, every day, until Easter.

Just writing something.  Anything.  Whether it's stream of consciousness or a book review or whatever.  Just WRITING, whatever comes to me.  I can do that.  And maybe it will help me along with some other things that have grown stale in my life.  I've lost something as a writer, I blame the meds more than anything.  Maybe writing despite them will help me find it again.

Maybe it can help me draw closer to God again.  I used to write about God... more than anything.  I used to write about Him in college, for our newspaper.  I've written essays about Him for newspapers.  Maybe writing again here will let me find my way back to Him like that.  If so, this will have been an exercise well worth undertaking.

So that's what this post is.  The first of Lent, 2022.

I'll do my best to resist the doubts.  I have to resist.  There are forty-some posts left to write and I've got to get to it...

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New recipe: barbecued wild boar ribs!

Remember the hit television series Lost?  John Locke (magnificently played by Terry O'Quinn) would sometimes go off into the jungle hunting.  More often than not he came back with a wild boar, upon which the castaways would enjoy feasting.

It turns out that if you want to eat like Locke, you DON'T have to go to a mysterious island.  In some places, you can buy boar already prepared to cook in your kitchen.

I've been having a hankering to try wild boar ribs ever since first spotting them on sale at Country Meat Center in Woodruff, South Carolina.  I was with a client (let's call him "Rufus") and we came across them while perusing the products at what I good heartedly refer to as "that crazy meat store".  I call it that because of the positively BONKERS variety of food items they have, everything from porterhouse and ground chuck, to kangaroo and octopus.  If it's meat, this place has it.  Anyhoo, I saw those and told Rufus that I had to give that a shot.  Had some time this afternoon so I decided to go to the crazy meat store on my own and see if they were still in stock.  Turned out they were.

I barbecued them, adapting from a recipe I found at Emerils.com.  They came out beautifully!  Although I think the specimen these were taken from was a rather small one.  Boar get MUCH bigger than this, I believe.  But for an introductory to the dish it was plenty.  There is a wood-ish aroma to cooked wild boar, and it tastes a tad bit like pork ribs you'd find in a good wood-pit cooked barbecue restaurant.  Quite a pleasant experience.

So if you come across wild boar baby back ribs in your own neighborhood meat market, here's how I prepared mine if you need some idea to work from...

Barbecued wild boar ribs

Fill a small baking pan with cold water.  Place this on the lowest rack of your oven.  This will keep the ribs moist and juicy during the fairly long cooking time.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Place the ribs on the foil and cook uncovered for 2 hours.

When the ribs have been cooked, remove the baking sheet from the oven.  Using a basting brush and tongs to turn the ribs over and coat both sides of the ribs with your choice of barbecue sauce (I use Williamson Brothers Bar-B-Q Sauce).

Bake for an additional 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, remove the sheet from the oven and turn the ribs over.

Bake for another 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and enjoy!

 

EDIT: I'm kicking myself for totally forgetting about Obelix: the giant best friend of Asterix!  Obelix has an affinity for wild boar, not unlike that of a meth addict.  Indeed, every story (I think) from the classic Goscinny and Udurzo comic ends with the whole tribe partying with ample amounts of boar.

 If you've never read an Asterix comic book, check your local bookstore or search out Amazon, and prepare for a treat.  Every issue, I'm pretty sure has been translated into English.  My first Asterix book was Asterix the Gladiator: as much a hilarious "fish out of water" story as there is ever apt to be.

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Canadian convoy: history in the making

It is now day #16 of the Freedom Convoy's presence in the Canadian capital of Ottawa.  What began as a group of truckers all the way west in Vancouver has become a movement inspiring many, MANY more around the world.  The truckers and their supporters want little: just the lifting of mandatory vaccinations.  But Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau - who has called the truckers "fringe extremists" - refuses to budge.  This despite his falling hard in the polls.  If this were England there would be calls already for his resignation.

Needless to say, this is extremely FASCINATING to me and I've been watching the Freedom Convoy's story unfold and evolve since it began.  The truckers and their supporters aren't going anywhere in Ottawa, and more are still coming.  Trudeau is in a tight spot: he either gives up and ends the mandate, or he chooses to end the occupation by any means necessary.

Personally, I think the man is in much the same position that Nicolae Ceaucescu was in during December of 1989.  That didn't end well for Nicolae and his wife: thrown up against the wall and shot as enemies of the people.  Averse to violence that I am, I hope that won't be Trudeau.  No matter how sleazy and out of touch with the common Canadian that he is.

Well like I said, I've been following this with extreme interest.  And if you want to also watch as history unfolds with our friends in the Great White North (and soon to be coming to Washington D.C. and no doubt state capitals across the fruited plain) there are several online live streams coming in from Ottawa, Windsor, Coutts and wherever else the convoy is making waves.  One of my favorites is Ottawalks: they've been doing hours-long live feeds from throughout the streets of Ottawa all the way to Parliament Hill.  Here's their most recent stream, and does it seem like a party has broken out or what?  Definitely NOT a gathering of "extremists" who have "unacceptable" beliefs as Trudeau charged.

I really hope this same momentum will be moving our own truckers and their backers when the American convoy kicks into high gear.

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