death of a bunny

I was talking to someone the other day about a funny thing that happened to me when I was a kid. The story came to me after passing a chocolate easter bunny in a store window so I had to share.

One easter, I was about eight and my parents had purchased a chocolate bunny each for both my sister and me. They gave it to us with a few other goodies just before getting in the car and making the long drive to visit family. Beth ate her chocolate bunny real quick but I put mine away as I thought it was really cool and I wanted to savor it for later in a better place to eat than the back seat of the car. At the end of the day we pulled into our driveway back home and i started to grab my things. When I reached for that chocolate bunny, it didn't feel solid anymore. It had melted and only a thin tin foil wrap was holding the innards of a dead chocolate bunny in, but just barely. I thought about drinking the bunny goo but I knew I would probably get it everywhere then I would just get in trouble.

That was the funny part of the story. It occurred to me however, that I never told my parents about this incident and that seemed odd. Nathan, my son, would say something in a second. It didn't go through my head at the time that I should tell one of them that the rabbit had liquefied and I was in fact, quite upset about it. I disposed of the dead chocolate bunny quietly and never said a word.
Then I started to wonder how old I was when this happened. I had to be at least eight or younger because my parents were still married. Let's go with six for the sake of the story.

In the late seventies, everyone was still acting like divorce had just been invented in the last couple of years.
Counselors were going all out to tell kids that, 'this isn't your fault.' Well duh, maybe it was all that fighting ya think? I remember being told about the divorce by my dad while my mom was in the next room. It was their anniversary, which was also Valentine's day. Dad handed us each a candy box and then told us the news. I was mortified. What kind of retard, hands his kids candy and then says "Hey, we're getting a divorce". You just can't paint enough hurt and empathy on your face to make that okay. My dad wasn't that good at reasoning skills and my mom, well, wasn't either most of the time. Now I have this messed up view of heart shaped valentine's day boxes and for that matter, the holiday itself has kind of sucked ever since even when in love. For that matter, why does chocolate seem to be a common theme for this failed marriage?
Looking back, I think dad was trying to guilt my mom into taking him back by getting us kids worked up. By making us so upset, she might have stayed out of guilt or something, I dunno. But you know, galacticly stupid plan dad, really. Furthermore, he did such a messed up job of explaining it to us, I thought he was saying goodbye and we would never see him again. The blow was lessened a little when I realized it really meant he would be staying here in this home with a shirt, a tie, a chair and a small television while the rest of us moved into house in the next town with all the stuff.

There was the grandmother too. Dad's mom who helped direct and finance this divorce. In her heart she meant well, she was protecting her son and her grandchildren from 'that woman'. She was strict. She could be pleasant at times but if she wasn't letting you know it was okay, then you didn't speak out of turn. Children should be seen and not heard and all that, you know.

I'm telling you all of this so you can follow along with my thought process on the genesis story, the story about the chocolate bunny that was triggered by seeing one in the window of a store while walking down the street. It suddenly occurred to me why I didn't say anything about my melted dead rabbit back then.

The worst thing you can do to a child in a divorce, isn't the yelling, or making them feel like this could be their fault. The worst thing you can do in a divorce, or even as a parent, is make a child feel so insignificant that they can't come to you and say "HEY MAH FUCKIN RABBIT MELTED YOU SELF ABSORBED ASSHOLES". I'M SIX YEARS OLD, WTF DO I KNOW ABOUT NOT LEAVING CHOCOLATE IN A HOT CAR, WEREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION?"

And so it begins...

Not really writing much again already. But i do find it easier to do a small and witty comment on twitter as opposed to here.

maybe the days of the personal blog is over unless you are going to gossip or talk about the tech industry.

Working a lot, we soft launched the new website. Hard launch in the immediate future. Then the fun really begins.

Other projects I was working on before this job have been neglected, going to try and fix that soon.

Nate's birthday is next month, looking forward to seeing him again already...

CHRISTmas

Mom snuck in a fake $5 note with a religious message on Nate's gift.
I'm just confused on if I should be offended by the subversive attempt on my 10 year old without any heads up to me or his mom, or the fact that she didn't make the same effort to save my eternal soul as well.

Hmn. grandparents. They are precious.

hide and seek

Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's all for the best? Ah of course it is.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's just what we need? And you decided this.
Mmm what you say?

What did she say?

- imogen heap

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

I have become used to my new morning routines that have come with the new job. I walk to Wall Street every morning, grab a coffee, jump on a crowded subway that zips me under Manhattan past Fulton, past Union Square, past Grand Central, exiting finally at 59th street. Three stories up the stairs and I finally get to see the daylight on a short five block walk that takes me to my building. After the fourty-five minutes of standing on the subway I have noticed a pattern in the passengers including myself in behaviour, Many people stare at the floor or look at the ads above the seats, most look like they are not happy with where they are going. iPods have saved all of us from acknowledging the crazies or one another for that matter. I like the crazies. They make the ride interesting and they make me feel oh so very normal. I keep making myself smile, to not become one of them. I probably look like one of the crazies.

After exiting at my stop and climbing up to the surface, I make a turn from 59th to Park Avenue and start walking south. It's a beautiful street. Mostly, I like how the Metlife Building looks with the beautiful Grand Central building in front of it. The double lane streets with the expensive stores everywhere. I walk down it listening to my ipod, coffee in hand and ipod playing the playlist I change out every month. I like sappy music but I try to put some more upbeat stuff in the rotation to help me get motivated for the day.

Something last week made me stop for a minute and have a look around in more detail than I had any other morning. I stopped and looked around at the buildings, at the people, at my reflection in the glass of the window with my long coat and scarf on.

How did I get here?

Sicko

Lady in news conference: "I work three jobs." George W. Bush: "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it, I mean that is fantastic."

On a documentary I saw a few years ago, the obscure film maker of this other film compared the advancement in medical care to Napoleon and a homeless man, by that statement he meant that a homeless man in 2007 receives better health care than the leader of France did in 1807 due to the medical advances over the last 200 years. While the film maker was making the point over advancement in science and technology, he did miss a large grasp in politics and greed.

It's been a movie kind of weekend, tonight's viewing was a DVD from Michael Moore called Sicko. a documentary that focused on health care in the United States. It covered in some detail of how bad many of us Americans go everyday without any health coverage whatsoever. However, the main focus was on the majority of us who pay an extraordinary amount of our income to health care benefits only to have claims denied that could have made their quality of life much better or in many cases, saved their lives altogether.

He compared our health care system to those of Canada, The United Kingdom, and France and we came out not looking very well at all, it was eye opening and deeply embarrassing actually as an American. In fact, with all of Michael Moore's over inflated methods of making a point, he does a good job at making the the absurd look very real and very sad.

One of the most moving scenes in the film was after making the point that the prisoners at Guantanamo receive better health care than most Americans do, he took some rescue volunteers from 9/11 to Guantanamo to see if he could get them the same care. Unsuccessful of course, he took them into Havana to a Pharmacy where one of the American women who had been paying $120 a month for breathing inhaler medicine, could get the very same here for the equivalent of .5 cents. The woman was moved to tears when she saw this. The Hospital was modern and well run in Havana where various medical tests were performed on them even though they were not citizens of the country. The doctor said several times this was the same care any Cuban citizen was given.

Moore's film is more thorough than most of his others in the past. He gives many facts in very real reported statistical numbers. America is failing in the health care system unless you are incredibly rich or can never get sick.

About a year after I moved to New York City, I started having bad allergy reactions. My asthma was worse than it had ever been and the allergy attacks were causing conjunctivitis (pink eye) inflammations and swelling in the brow and bridge. After seeing several doctors, I was given a variety of medications. My out of pocket expenses come to about $120 a month, if not for insurance, the bill would come to $780 a month. You should see the list of side effects that come with these medications too. Luckily my allergies have lessened somewhat and I have been able to dial back on the amount of them I take.

The insurance company I had at the time however, seemed to have a standard policy to deny every single claim that came across it's review the first time, only to have to be called, bullied and brow beat many times into finally agreeing to pay a very simply policy for a very simple office visit. Imagine having something critical to deal with and then go through the stress of having to get your insurance company to play fair?

When my son was born we had very limited income. I was just out of university, I worked a night shift job at a prepress lab and my company provided insurance didn't cover pregnancy. Nathan's birth was uninsured and even with some state assistance, we had a take home bill of about $4,000 when it was all done.

The part that kills me the most is, we let them do this to us and make us think we are getting a good deal. Sure we have some the most advanced medical facilities in the world but it doen't matter when a great deal of us wont get access to it.

"Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic - see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern."

No Country for Old Men

" You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity "

The movie ends and you are just left there trying to figure out what the path you had just been taken on, was supposed to have meant. It's interpretive, many people left the cinema a bit confused and mocking the final scene if not the entire film. I was trying to let it soak in, I like Coen Brothers movies and I was really trying to get this one, but it was rough. It was an intense chase scene drawn out over most of the movie.

When I got home, I did some research of the film online. I kept thinking there was something brilliant about the movie I simply wasn't getting yet and by the scores and reviews, I assumed I was right. Terrific reviews all over the place and on metacritic it scored a 91 out of 100, more perfect reviews for a movie than I recall ever seeing before. I just couldn't get anything out of the other scores that justified it's brilliant review besides the traditional clichéd buzzwords. Then I came across the Washington Post's review by Stephen Hunter and I couldn't have agreed more;

I appreciate No Country for Old Men for the skill in the film craft. I understand No Country for Old Men for its penetrating disquisition on narrative conventions and its heroic will in subverting them. I admire No Country for Old Men for the way it tightens its grip as it progresses, taking us deeper and deeper into a hellish world. I just don't like it very much.

High marks for the typical off beat humor as well as the climatic gripping story line, but that was just it, all that suspense takes you somewhere disappointing in the end. In my opinion, there was a lot of metaphorical use in the characters, all shared by only one unifying factor; death.

If you like Coen Brother movies, you should see it, if for any reason because you will appreciate the Coen style merged with intense action and familiar dramatic undertones. If you didn't care much for Fargo or Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, you probably wont have great feelings for this movie either.

On a side note; If you grew up in Oklahoma or West Texas in the 1980's, you're going to go on a magical time warp in this movie. As much detail in the sets as Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, this movie felt like my midwest past down to the single wide trailers, the draw in the old men chit-chat and the chairs with coin op television sets in the bus station terminal. Looking out the window for miles and besides farm land, only seeing a tree and fence in your front yard. It was eerily familiar.

thankful

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful."
- buddha

"It isn't what you have in your pocket that makes you thankful, but what you have in your heart."
- unknown

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."
- Oprah Winfrey quotes

"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose."
- Woody Allen

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."
- Albert Schweitzer

"If you can't be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped"
- unknown

"And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream."
- Homer SImpson

the gate to the hundred acre woods

When I was young, we lived on a rural farm in Oklahoma. No other kids to play with, nothing else around for miles except lots of land, cows, farming equipment, abandoned oil well equipment, and undiscovered ways to amuse yourself with the isolation you haven't yet realized will start to make you a weird kid.

The ambient sounds. Oil pumps scattered out on the land, working day and night and going up and down to pull the sludge out from the earth. You could see at least three at anytime in any direction and they made a drumming noise in repetition; thut thut, thut thut, thut thut thut. You fell asleep to this noise in the distance, you woke up to the same. Menacing looking machines too, as dangerous as any rail road crossing. Where I went to school, we didn't watch films about the dangers of drugs, we watched films about the dangers of Rail Road Crossings.

There was a creek near the house that was covered in growth that led into a cave under the highway right next to the house. It was the creek our sewage was dumped into. This cave became my time tunnel. If you could be brave enough to get all the way through the dark, damp, cobweb infested tunnel, you would be rewarded with a trip to another time. I made it through several times actually. Near this creek, the water became more of an actual river on the other side of the tunnel. With the help of a an abandoned pallet crate, this became a sub standard but somewhat able to float boat.

Behind the house, was a road that had a gate to keep the cattle in. Past the gate and up a dirt road a bit was an old feed barn for storing hay for the cattle. The water trough was mildly interesting with the patterns of moss growth on it and the cows that wouldn't let me pet them would have to submit once i corralled them in the barn fence and shut the gate. Eventually when they realized resistance was futile, they uneasily allowed me to love them with simple petting. They never got used to me doing that.

the creek I mentioned earlier went far back into our side of the property as well and became almost a canyon. Nothing much to do down in it except climb on pipes that I discovered later were covered in insulation that had fiberglass particles and left you feeling cut up, but you had no visible cuts.

The two star attractions were the woods just past the canyon end (the Hundred acre woods, aptly named for the Pooh stories) and the cave on the mountain. The Woods were covered in pine needles and had one very large tree that mushroomed up so large, you could walk inside to what felt like a hidden bunker. I made forts in these woods many times, it was my favorite place to be but I never had anything to do there. I found some old lumber and nails once and made my own ladder so I could climb up the trees better. I was proud of that ladder. It was the first thing I ever made, on my own, that had a real purposeful use. On the best of days, it was beautiful in these woods, but it was still just me enjoying them.

The cave in the mountain was my fortress of solitude. A mountain with a water tower on it no less, so there was a neat structure on my fortress. Just a few feet over from the tower, facing towards the town of Cement , Oklahoma just a few miles away on the opposite side was the opening to the cave. I'm sure teenages came up there to get high and have sex and drink beer, but weekdays and weekend mornings, this was mine. I used to imagine the soldiers or Indians who would bunker up in here for defense in a war many years before. Once, I climbed up to the cave just to have a goat jump out at me when I walked in. That's right; a goat attacked me on a mountain with a water tower on it, in a town called Cement.

Sometimes, I would walk into town along the old roads used for the roustabouts checking on the oil wells. Often, it was so hot out there in the summer, you could barely go half a mile without having to take a break in some shade.

We sometimes had dogs. The coolest dog we had was a big white husky who ran away a week after we got him, he didn't care for the fireworks on the 4th of July. I saw him almost a year later on one of my walk abouts and hugged him. I was going to take him home but he had a collar on. Someone else had been calling him their dog for a year now. I figured he was pretty much their dog now since I only knew him a week before he left. I hoped he would come down and visit sometimes, he never did again.

The fields and the land had a sulfur smell to them from the old oil machinery and rusted pipes left everywhere. I used to think there should be a law to keep this from happening (there was) but, eh, the land was kind of ugly for the most part to begin with. Oh, cow pies; that smell was abundant everywhere as well. Cow pies from cold emotionless cows.

I did have one friend I took there, this kid from school, an indian (native american) kid who spent the night once. We went out and played in the forest the entire next day. I remember his face but not his name. He died a few weeks later. I was never really told how except that he "went too fast on his bicycle into a wall" Sounded like an unrealistic explination to me, but what was I going to do, start pointing at everyone and screaming "LIAR!"?

Anyway, I was watching Bridge to Terabithia tonight and it reminded me of the hundred acre woods behind my house when i was a kid. Our house on a farm that didn't grow anything but stupid cows and oil pumps.

You can't always get what you want

This year, which has not been bad at all, has been going by at an incredible, mind numbing speed. Seems like yesterday it was New Years Eve in Times Square and now we are at Halloween again already. This year however, has been different than the past. For the better actually. See, I haven't found out things yet, but I've had to deal with a lot of things I been avoiding and I have had to confront some pretty big fears. Yea, I know, sorry, cryptic and I apologize but, I like to let you in on the fact that I am having these insights, just not as to what they are.

Tomorrow is Halloween night and I was going to try and get back to Oklahoma to be with Nate this year, simply because even though we always video chat every year before and after the event, I haven't been with him dressed up in his little outfit in four years now. It's a trade off to have Christmas and it's an easy choice, but still, how many years does your kid still want to dress up as a Star Wars Clone Trooper? I'm missing out on that and it doesn't go by me without difficult notice. So we video chat again and we enjoy the time we spend at Christmas and we hope next year allows us to get both.