Words Fail Me Yet Again

My condolences to the victims of the mass shooting in Pennsylvania this past Saturday and their next of kin.

Despite all the funerals I have attended in my life, I cannot begin to imagine what the latter must be going through but my prayers are with them nonetheless.

Movie Quote of the Week

Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things. This was not among them. But, at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well. ... For all we ought to have thought and have not thought, all we ought to have said and have not said, all we ought to have done and have not done, I pray thee, God, for forgiveness
--Antonio Banderas, The Thirteenth Warrior (1999)

Huracán Irma

My prayers go out to everyone affected by hurricane Irma. Apparently I was wrong when I thought Hurricane Harvey was the end of it.

Huracán Harvey

Well, we here in Dallas appear to have survived Hurricane Harvey okay but the good people of Houston were not that lucky. My prayers go out to all the people down there who having to struggle with floods and power outages and worse. Hurricane Harvey may not have been as big a storm as Hurricane Katrina but it was big enough.

Movie Quote of the Week

I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from seven different medical boards in New England, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn't miscarry or that their daughter doesn't bleed to death or that their mother doesn't suffer acute neural trama from postoperative shock, who do you think they're praying to? Now, go ahead and read your Bible, Dennis, and you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle, but if you're looking for God, he was in operating room number two on November 17, and he doesn't like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.
--Alec Baldwin, Malice (1993)

Quote of the Week

Prayer is more enjoyable than drinking, and more pleasing to God.
--St. Thomas More

Movie Quote of the Week

Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take place among them in the Halls of Valhalla. Where the brave may live forever...
--Vladimir Kulich, Antonio Banderas, etc., The 13th Warrior (1999)

Happy Halloween

Actually I had hoped to post more items this October but the constant quest for employment and money has left me a bit too busy for that. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I pray things will improve next month because heaven knows I have enough unwanted problems right now as it is.

Anyway, enjoy the holiday.

Movie Song of the Week: “Sabbath Prayer”

I'm feeling the need to post something traditional this week and this number from 1971's Fiddler on the Roof seems the most obvious choice.

Buscando Trabajo de Nuevo: Parte XXIV

Sigh! I lost my job today, oh, boy. The English Army had just won the war...

Actually I lost my job yesterday just when I was due to pick up my first paycheck.

So it is back to square one again and praying TEC agrees to let me run out my original claim rather than make me start over with a new one while they investigate the departure from my last job with the speed of molasses.

I am getting really tired of this. I kept my last steady job prior to the three most recent for over eleven years and I stayed at my second job for over five. Now suddenly it seems like I cannot keep a single job for over a week.

It also seems like the only people who are hiring pay beer-level salaries, expect champagne-level service and generally train one in an atmosphere that makes it almost impossbile for anyone above a certain age -- even people who want to learn -- to concentrate on their training. I do not like to gripe about my employers but I get so tired of seeing grown people treated like children just because they want a paycheck. It did not help that while my trainers seemed like decent enough people, one of the ladies I had to work right next to kept her i-pod turned up so loud I would have to have been stone deaf not to hear it and if that was not bad enough, she seemed to have an unerring instinct for choosing the loudest and trashiest music to listen to.

Oh, well. Perhaps my next job will be better. Perhaps...

Movie Quote of the Week

Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you!
--Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Joan of Arcadia: “Pilot”

I found Joan of Arcadia to be a surprisingly good series, at least for the first twelve episodes after which it started being a bit uneven. When it was good, it was very good, but all too often, it settled for being just okay.

Ironically, the one factor that made me reluctant to start watching the show was not the premise (teenage girl talks to God) but the casting of Joe Mantegna as the family patriarch. Mantegna has played so many bad guys in movies like House of Games and The Godfather: Part III that I initially found it hard to believe he could play such a benign character. But he won me over eventually and so did Mary Steenburgen (who plays his wife) and Amber Tamblyn (who plays his daughter -- the title character). In fact, the whole cast was better than I expected and I am sorry that the show did not last longer than two seasons.

The plot of the first episode revolves around the title character's discovery that she could talk to God and how she eventually adjusts to it. God does not just appear to her as a disembodied voice or as some old guy with a beard but in a variety of guises, no doubt intended to symbolize the various roles God plays in our lives. Each episode he gives her some vague advice that she reluctantly acts upon. Sometimes she sees the final results. Sometimes she does not.

It eventually turns out that the reason she could talk to God -- or at least, the reason she is given for being able to talk to God -- involves a prayer she made on behalf on an older brother who was injured in a car crash. Apparently the boy was near death at the time Joan prayed and now Joan feels obliged to make up for his recovery by following God's advice.

What happens to Joan as a result of said advice? That remains to be seen in future episodes.

Random Thoughts

I sincerely pray that some good deeds do go unpunished.

Every so often, I feel like I’m drowning and that all too many people around me are tossing me anchors instead of life preservers.

If I’m not good enough to talk to on a regular basis, then I’m not good enough to be solicited for your cause, no matter how worthy it may otherwise be.

All too often, the only benefit of being an autodidact is knowing what an autodidact is.

Sigh

I found out yesterday that Mi Mejor Amiga -- the woman who once saved my life -- has been diagnosed with diabetes. Ironically, I found out the same day she and I celebrated my most recent birthday.

I'm still trying to process the news and I'm praying that she'll be all right. She has already made plans to change her diet and her exercise routine but... We'll see.

Lethal Legacy

When I was diagnosed with diabetes a few years ago, I knew full well that I wasn't the only one in the family who had had it. After all, one of my late uncles had suffered from it too.

But I didn't know until a few years after my diagnosis that my late maternal grandfather had had it too. And so did some of my paternal cousins in Detroit. Had I known all this, I'd like to think that I would have arranged my life differently and avoided getting the disease. But then again maybe I would have gotten it anyway.

Anyway, I had long feared that my siblings were at risk for the disease as well. And last week, my worst fears came through. Not only was my middle brother diagnosed with a similar condition to my own, he was also revealed to be suffering from kidney problems and high blood pressure.

His doctors are attempting to control his condition through diet and medication but my brother is not quite as optimistic as he should be. He keeps asking me for advice and the only advice I can give him is this: listen to your doctors.

My late father died before he waited too long to consult a doctor about his health problems. I don't want my middle brother to suffer the same fate. Yet I know from experience how easy it is to react to bad news on the medical front by going into denial. When I was diagnosed with a thyroid problem, I went into denial. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I went into denial.

I like to think I'm smarter now but when I think of the time I wasted not acting like I should because I was too proud to see myself as a victim of such-and-such medical condition...

Anyway, I have since discovered that my younger sister also has a thyroid problem. Moreover, heart trouble seems to run in the family as well. My paternal grandfather died of heart trouble and if not for an operation I had around the age of 12, I'd probably be dead of a congenital heart condition as well.

Thus far my mother and my youngest brother appear to be healthy and I pray they stay healthy for a long time. But I always thought my middle brother would stay healthy as well. And I can't help but find it curious that though my family has long prided itself on being more open with each other than most families, certain medical facts don't seem to get shared that often among us. Perhaps because it's hard to relay information that one would rather not admit knowing in the first place.

Political Quote of the Week

You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true." And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, "Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you." IF... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.
--Paul Newman, The Verdict (1982)

No Song of the Week This Week

I was going to post a song of the week today but between yesterday's 9/11 anniversary and the latest news about Hurricane Ike, I'm just not in the mood. Maybe next week.

In the meanwhile, I'll be praying that Hurricane Ike proves as uneventful as Hurricane Rita did a few years ago. And that all the good people in its path manage to find safety. It seems like it's going to be a long weekend for many folks.

I doubt the hurricane will affect Dallas much but it definitely seems likely to wreak some havoc on the Gulf Coast. So if you're not one for praying, at least be sure to keep your fingers crossed.

Pop Song of the Week: “Johnny Can't Read”

Just in time for the beginning of the new school year, it's a video for Don Henley's 1982 song “Johnny Can't Read,” a video I didn't even realize existed until I found it on the Internet. This video is even darker than most of Don Henley's attempts at social commentary -- “The Last Resort,” for example. Among other things, it includes an image towards the end that looks like a foreshadowing of the Columbine High School massacre. Or maybe that's just an unfortunate coincidence.

Anyway, it's not like they had school shootings back then. Especially below the college level. Nor songs inspired by them.

Right?

Anyway, I'm praying my niece and nephew don't have a “Johnny” in any of their classes...

Las Amigas de Tonio Kruger: The Saga Continues

Yes, this has been a rather soap-opera-ish month for yours truly and every time I think the worst has happened, something else happens. If it doesn't happen to me, it happens to a friend of mine.

I suppose it could be argued that I could have encountered far worse. All my family members are healthy, knock wood, and once I got my engagement ring back from my former girlfriend's family, most of my troubles concerning that situation went away. I still wish things could have turned out differently in regard to my engagement, and if the problems had been just between her and me, I think we could have managed to muddle through them. But, unfortunately, my would-be in-laws got involved, and then suddenly everything got complicated.

Oh, well. As one friend has pointed out, a broken engagement is still better than a broken marriage. And at least the whole crisis taught me something I would have otherwise not learned until after I had gotten married.

Anyway the latest happening to involve one of my friends occurred this weekend when Mi Mejor Amiga got bitten by a dog. The dog has been quarantined by Animal Control, but Mi Mejor Amiga still had to get shots just in case.

If that wasn't bad enough, she had to go into the hospital yesterday and have surgery performed upon one of her hands. Since Mi Mejor Amiga is a RMT (Registered Massage Therapist) and her job obviously involves working with her hands, this wasn't something she was eager to do, but it had to be done.

Anyway, I'm praying that everything went well and that the bad times are over for now. I know bad times never really go away, but sometimes it seems like they do, and I can't wait till that happens.

And, yes, I will return to far cheeriest subjects in the near-future... if I can.

Christmas Wishes

To C... that she finds a good job -- if she hasn't already....

To mi mejor amiga... that she recovers from her recent surgery and proves healthier than ever...

To N... that her daughter recovers from her most recent illness...

Pray for them if you can.