FACEBOOK ETQ

ANDREW’S LITTLE BLOG OF FACEBOOK ETIQUETTE

An Andrew Rambling Tirade

“Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

My life is terrific!  No kidding, it’s really pretty damn good.  I have a smart beautiful wife who I love beyond description.  I have 3 wonderful sons, each with unique minds, talents and abilities.  I run my own small business.  I live in a nice neighborhood.  I am in good health and as far I know, I am the master of my own destiny.  Considering all of this goodlyness, I know I should be content.  So, here is the rub.  I was content until about five or six years ago when the little online Vanity Mirror known as Facebook came into most of our lives.  Sure it’s a great way to stay in touch and reconnect with old friends and…..blah, blah, blah. 

Lest we forget, the telephone, email and to a lesser degree texting also once helped us “reach out and touch someone.”  Let’s stop kidding ourselves, staying in touch with grade school pals or looking up old girlfriends and boyfriends has very little to do with why Facebook has succeeded, dominated and defined the world of Electronic Social Media.  It has succeeded because it lets us ask “Who’s the fairest of them all?” to any number of the ubiquitous smart phones, tablets or computer screens in our world.  For this question we are rewarded with a “Like” a “LOL” or it’s bawdier cousin “LMFAO.”  Personally nothing makes me happier than picking up my phone and seeing that little red notification box indicating that my little magic mirror is indeed still quenching my vanity’s never-ending thirst for recognition.

This is a brave new world, and like it or not, new worlds come with new rules.  Some are old carryovers from the pen, paper and stamp days.  Some are new constructions, which have only known existence in the form of binary code.  Regardless of their origins, they have all morphed into social mores that necessarily must be considered and followed if it is your intention to be a “proper” resident of the Facebook Universe.

A – ALWAYS like a comment made about your status, photos or shared links.  (Regardless of how humiliating, offensive or insulting the comment is.  In the event that the comment is beyond your “like threshold”, you should simply delete it.)
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B - BULLSHIT is easy to spot.  (That’s right, we all remember your jutting chin, crooked nose and drooping eyelid.  So keep in mind that we all know that the amazing once in a lifetime profile selfie you posted really isn’t how you look.) 

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C – COLLATERAL insults are just bad form.  (While crass remarks toward a status post are acceptable and expected, abusive, insulting or off-color jabs at another friend’s comment in that “vine” is crossing the line.)    
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D – DISTURBING personal information should never be posted under any circumstances.  (That’s right, ladies!  Your post about how the Monistat 7 is proving to be ineffective in battling your raging yeast infection really doesn’t need to be shared in a semi-public forum!) 
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E – ENOUGH with the cardboard signs begging for “Likes!”  (Asking for Likes via solicitation with an oft poorly printed, marginally legible cardboard sign is the Facebook equivalent of panhandling.  Always try to get your Likes the old fashion way, for instance a nice before and after fatty photo, or a post about waking up face down in a pool of your own sick, is infinitely more acceptable.)
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F – FUCK should never be used in a status or a comment.  (While this beloved word is utilized for any number or reasons at infinite times in our daily lives, it just seems a little coarse for postings.  Frigging, Effing and even F*%@ing get the point across just fine.)
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G – GOD does not have his own Facebook page…yet!  (Posting on the behalf of the Almighty is probably unnecessary.  While posting inspirational messages about one’s faith or prayers is perfectly acceptable, asking members of the Facebook community to validate their faith by “Liking” if they believe in God, Jesus, Buddha, Shiva or whomever, is just plain obnoxious.)
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H – HOW many Likes did your post get?  (This phrase should never be spoken between two or more semi-intelligent adults.  Truth be told, nobody really cares.  Remember, Likes are for personal vanity validation only.)
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I – INVITES to play imbecilic games on Facebook should be punishable by death.  (Farmville, Mafia Wars and Candy Crush Saga are nothing more than Facebook style narcotics.  Don’t be a pusher….just say No!)
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J – JESUS is welcome in my home.  (Despite how many times you may like this post, he probably isn’t going to show up at your next barbecue.  The best practice from this time forward would be to stop posting and sharing Meme’s of this nature.  Jesus certainly has bigger fish to fry than hanging around your place.) 

"Ma, it's that Jesus guy again!"

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K – KEEP up with inbox messages.  (It is easy to forget that Facebook has this private messaging and communications component.  Try to use this if discretion is a consideration.  However if discretion were a consideration, you probably wouldn’t be blabbing all over Facebook in the first place.)
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L – LESS is more with regard to relationship status.  (Posting every makeup, breakup, quarrel and kindness between you and your significant other is truly too much information for your Facebook family to bear or care about.)
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M – MONEY will never come your way by liking or sharing pictures of “Fat Stacks of Cash.”  (If you were born poor, you’ll probably die poor.  Nothing on Facebook can change that fate.  Praying or maybe even working would be much more likely to remedy your cash shortage.)
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N – Name-calling is worse than a straightforward insult when it’s in writing.  (Facebook is about sharing thoughts, experiences and ideas.  When that results in the sharer being called a dick, a pinko, a fag, a jerk, a loser, a twerp or a Republican, that is just plain hurtful, and this action diminishes the experience for the entire social media community.)
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O – ORIGINAL posts are best.  (While posts about your dinner, the weather or your latest workout routine are certainly riveting to you, these posts leave the rest of us bored to tears.)
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P – PICTURES of all kinds are great!  (Exception:  Those graphic pictures of babies born with their hearts on the outside of their bodies; Soldiers who have been terribly maimed in the line of duty and shots of your feet when you are chillaxing on the beach…..not so great.)
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Q – QUOTES are one of the most inspirational things you can share on Facebook.  (And for an added bonus, when you transcribe them into your post incorrectly, we all get to laugh at you.)
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R – REPORT a post to Facebook.  (Really?  Don’t waste your time.  This action is about as impacting as a fart in a windstorm.)
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S – STOP stopping what you are doing with your friends and family to share your experience.  (Take a picture and share it later.  You should always live for the experience, not for the posting.)
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T – TAKE it easy.  (It’s just Facebook not the Holy Scriptures.  Don’t take any writing or information obtained on social media too seriously.)
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U – UNFRIENDING is serious stuff.  (Wait a day from the time you make the decision until the time you actually pull the trigger.)
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V – VACATION postings serve a duel purpose. (They let you share many aspects of your trip with friends and family and remind the majority of your acquaintances of how pathetic they are for not being able to afford a terrific vacation as well.)

You post shit like this just to piss me off, right?

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W – WEAR a damn shirt in your profile picture!  (Guys, you know who you are.  Nobody wants to see your middle-aged pectorals every time you Like or comment on a post.)
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X – X RATED content has a multitude of online homes.  (Please refer to FUCK to get the gist of this item.)
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Y – YEAR should always be included in your birthday if this information is included in your profile.  (If the Facebook community is going to be expected to wish you a Happy Birthday, then they should at least be able to privately snicker at how bad you look for your age.)
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Z – ZERO likes are a complete repudiation of you and your posting.

OVERUSED

OVERUSED


An Andrew Tirade


“Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law”
-Ferdinand de Saussure


This is a story of words.  Actually, it is much more of an examination than a story.  Regardless of the semantics, I find myself to be unusually hesitant in tackling this little analysis.  This reluctance grows out of my frequent complaint that; the age of electronic media and communication are decimating our language, both written and verbal, turning it into little more than a series of shorthand notations and barely audible grunts.  Before “words” started on their now nearly complete decent into irrelevance, Oratory and Rhetoric were already long dead and fully decayed arts; relic subjects from a long gone age.  In all probability, this current trend is just the next stage of our common language’s progression.  (Or more likely regression.)

So here I sit, willfully working away at a self-acknowledged act of intellectual barbarism.  My sin?  Sounding a rallying call of destruction against the already thinned ranks of our ever-shrinking vocabularies.  However, should my aim be true and my intent be just, then I may be able to play some small roll in the elimination of abused utterances with a nobility of purpose.  This purpose is to bring meaning back to just a few of the words we speak daily and hopefully return a modicum of impact to some of the words that are now so dreadfully overused.

Apparently, the word “apparently” is well on its way to losing a great deal of its apparent meaning and impact.  This started to become apparent in the form of my now ten-year-old son, when he apparently started to preface the majority of his statements with the word apparently.  This overuse would take on a form such as; “Apparently, Minecraft is the most popular computer game in the world, that’s why I like it so much.”  Can’t argue with a kid who has a better handle on this strained adverb than the next most frequent abuser of this word...that’s right, I’m pointing my finger at you CNN.  Go ahead Wolf Blitzer; preface another report with “apparently” one more time, I dare you!

Not the best, but the best we have.  Ugh!

Seriously though, “seriously” has moved away from being another lovely little adverb and has been turned into a freestanding question and more recently, a statement of disbelief all wrapped up in a single term.  This one plays much better with my teenage sons who love to direct it toward me when I bust out an expression that lived, and I should have let die, in the 1980’s.  “Boys, how would you like to go see the new Iron Man movie, I hear it’s totally awesome?” or “ Listen to this guitar riff, didn’t Slash have a radical sound?”  Their answer is always directed at me with a contemptible and disbelieving, under slung stare accompanied by this response; “Dad…seriously?”  It gives me some small comfort to sit back and consider that in a few short decades, their kids will look at them in horror when they as fathers question my grandchildren with their then antiquated and seldom used admonishment of “seriously?”

Heroes and Geniuses were once people and nouns of rare and special stature, which were set apart from the ordinary ranks of humanity.  A hero was a guy like Neil Armstrong, stepping out of the Eagle onto the surface of another world with his timeless proclamation.  Maybe a hero claimed a nearly unsurpassable accomplishment in the world of sports, like Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak or in isolated incidents, they were even presidents, like JFK staring down the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  These people were true outliers.  Accomplishing deeds at such a heightened level, as to lie beyond achievement thresholds we set for ourselves, or expect of anyone we have ever known.

Does this flag make my balls look too big?

Today, the title of Hero is bestowed on everyone and anyone employed in a profession with risk potential.  Don’t get me wrong; I respect the helpers of society, the people who leap from ambulances to save a life; the men and women who show up to thwart a robbery or quell a domestic disturbance. Certainly, young people who sign up to serve our nation in the armed forces garner all the respect I can bestow on them, but are these people heroes one and all?  Absolutely not!  Sure their jobs require them to routinely perform heroic acts, but heroic actions especially in the routine of employment, and an individual achieving heroism within the definition of the word, are two very distinctive and different classifications.  Let’s give the real heroes their due and stop automatically assigning the classification of Hero to every uniformed public servant or anyone with a high-risk job.

For the most part, the same can be said of geniuses.  Who is a genius?  Jonas Salk was a genius with regard to medicine and the cure of disease.  Mozart was a genius in terms of music and composition.  Steven Hawking is a genius, with his body paralyzed by ALS, he was still able to work out the physics postulations required to explain Black Holes and practically apply many of Einstein’s theories to the physical universe.  Then there was Einstein…what more needs to be said?  Were he alive today, some persnickety blogger would certainly quip;  “That Einstein was smart… but he was no Einstein.”  The scientist yet to cure cancer is certainly a genius, and maybe someday an American politician will emerge who embodies the traits that will again lead us to believe that genius is an aspect of leadership.  Who is not a genius?  Just about everyone else!

Ben and Gerry came up with a brilliant concoction of frozen, flavorful arterial coagulant and figured out a way to sell it to us in tie-dyed containers for a premium price.  Bright?  Yes.  Genius?  No!  (But I’ll be damned if that Chunky Monkey isn’t one of the best ice creams I ever had.)   Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are and were really, really smart guys.  Did they meet the genius criteria?  Probably not, although I do believe they came about as close as possible.  More appropriate, they should be considered extremely intelligent, smart, talented, and timely innovators, more than anything else.  How about Steven Spielberg?  Sure he makes a good movie and tells wonderful stories, but that hardly makes him a genius.  Don’t even get me started on the past and present “Captain’s of Industry.”  Again, even if you do your job extremely well and experience nearly unrivaled success, a genius this does not make.  So let’s save the Genius and Hero designations for those few truly deserving to wear as a mantle of honor.  The other brave souls serving the world’s needs and breaking ground in new territories of technology, discovery, and innovation would surely be happy to be described as courageous and/or brilliant.  That would be good enough for me, if I had any of those traits to offer the world.

Good job boys, but let's not get carried away. 

Words come and words go.  Some fall into overuse, others are misused and some are just incorrect inventions.  Irregardless, looking back across the evolutionary landscape of language we can see “neat” and “cool” grow into multiple meanings.  The dead ends that were “groovy” and “far out” have left behind innumerable fossils.  The “excellents” and the “awesomes” flowed and now seem to have ebbed while “wicked” retreated into the regional dialect of New England.  One thing is certain; language is ever-changing and always fleeting, especially when it comes to the lifespan of overused words.  WORD!!!

ALLAH AKBAR...ENOUGH FOR ME

ALLAH AKBAR…ENOUGH FOR ME


An Andrew Ramble



“He is the source of light in all luminous objects.  His is beyond the darkness of matter and is un-manifested.  He is knowledge, He is the object of knowledge, and He is the goal of knowledge.  He is situated in everyone’s heart.”

The Bhagavad Gita – Chapter11, Section 12



“We want magic…We want magic…We want magic!”  Up goes the chant.  Like children waiting to be entertained by some omnipotent clown at a mystical birthday party, we lay down our demands to the Lord.  We read the ancient scriptures with little reverence for the life lessons they offer.  Most of us internalize very few of their themes, but rather choose to revel in the Hocus Pocus and cosmological slight of hand, which may have, but probably did not ever happen.  Even those most devout in their worship of supernatural miracles, has no choice but to admit that in their time, magic has all but abandoned their world and their faith. 


This has happened for a reason.  Put quite simply, we are growing up.  Regardless of how we choose to deal with faith and God, we have advanced too far to continue accepting God’s creations as a child accepts Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  Despite this heartbreaking reality to the innocence of our beings, the real miracles of creation and the irrefutable reality of universal synchronicity roll on as we continue to spin through space, on the track of one of Gods real miraculous creations, that being Time Eternal.


In our time, the grand events and the sublime occurrences of antiquity, along with the unusual the unnatural and the grandiose miracles can be reclassified and absorbed into the collective consciousness that perpetually inhabits the landscapes of humanities childhood dreams.  So, I’ll conform to the magic and mysticism of the past and to a great extent accept the 2x2 march of the beasts onto Noah’s 300 cubits by 50-cubit cabin cruiser.  I will visualize the pillar of fire etching the Ten Commandments into the rock face of Mt. Sinai as Moses looked on in awe.  My minds eye will witness the blinded Samson’s destruction of The Temple of Dagon as he “bowed himself with all his might.”  What the heck, I’ll even accept some of the big miracles, Jesus brought forth in his time.  Raising Lazarus was impressive; turning water into wine was symbolic; the loaves and the fishes was charitable and rising from the dead was just old fashioned miraculous.  And these are just skimming the surface of messianic miracle working!

15 Comandments?

I love these tales as much as anyone.  Without question, they comfort me; they teach me; they enrich me; and they entertain me.  (Personally, I am the most fond of the Flood Story more than any other in either the Torah or the New Testament.)  However, setting aside the entertainment and allegorical value of scripture, I am once again brought back to the reality of my self in my world, that being my existence as a critically thinking, reasoning adult man.  It is this reality that make it incumbent upon me to stand before and look to God and his infinite miracles utilizing a much wider lens than standard historical or contemporary ideology provides.  Contrary to the critiques of this practice, I feel this is faith’s ultimate and truest endeavor.  Regardless of this belief, the dreamers of such views will always be categorized as Atheists, Heretics, Universalists, Rationalists or Hippies.  There are those who have even referred to me as a Liberal Pinko for my never-ending wondrous view of God’s miracles.


Despite my attempted “wide-lensed view,” I am necessarily limited, being that I am a limited part of an infinite universe, whether I am willing to accept this limitation or not.  Yet I continue to look for and spend my days working to commune with the higher power, the infinite that some call God.  The more I look the more I accept that his creations are, and always will be beyond true universal comprehension, but at the very least, I, as many before me continue to look.  Our views reveal usually subtle variations of The Almighty’s greatest miracles of Creation.  Miracles that never seem to get their divine due from the little creatures God created, as the story goes, from dust and a rib.  To me these big miracles are the creation of Time, Force (both gravitational and electromagnetic) and Matter in all its forms.

....or something like that.

I will spare the reader a long dissertation on the three aforementioned miracles as their explanation and definition, in their truest sense, are beyond my comprehension.  I can only say that I believe, Time, Force and Matter were created and I surely know that they exist, just as I know that I am older today than I was yesterday.  As I know that there is a solid desk under the black and white composition book I am writing this “ramble” on and the fact that if I tilt my chair back any further some invisible force will reach up and land me on my ass.   How are these things made?  How do they perpetuate?  Why do these miracles of existence even exist at all?  These are the “Biggies” and the deeper we dig into the questions of these divine creations, the more ominous and ever-present the answer to the questions of Time, Force and Matter becomes.  I simply have no choice other than to believe that they are along with all the old miracles of the olden days, extensions of Gods will, nothing more, nothing less.  The greatness of The Lord simply abounds.


As I sit back and ponder these “ultimate” miracles, I am struck dumb by an infinitesimally small portion of the greatness of their magnitude.  It’s enormity forces me to take and long deep breath; fully exhale…. then mutter to myself; “God is Great.”

Either I'm getting smaller or.............

WHAT I'M DOING

WHAT I’M DOING

An Andrew Ramble

“Showing up is 80% of life”  -Woody Allen

Most of my realizations occur within the confines of the fifty three inch by eighty six inch tile box otherwise known as my master bathroom.  There must be something about certain bathrooms that focuses thought, because I've heard of this phenomenon occurring with folks from almost every walk of life.  The thing is, today I didn’t have just any thought, today I had The Thought. Much like The Apostle Paul being knocked from his horse on the road to Damascus, this thought was the biggie of my life up to this point.  This is it:  I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!

 This epiphany doesn’t just apply to my life today; or my life as an adult; or my career; or my tastes; or my role as a husband and father.  Not knowing what I am doing permeates into and through every facet of my existence.  My accepting of this cosmic clarification goes back as far as I do and cannot be understated.  What I’m getting at is that this quirk of mine goes back to my days in the womb.  No bullshit, it’s the God’s honest truth.  I literally didn’t know how to be born.  Mom needed a C-section, not because of my size (at under six pounds I was certainly small enough). I just happened to be one of those babies that decided to lay side to side and never realized that this whole endeavor was part of a larger process involving the birth canal and a short trip.  So good old Dr. Dugan came in and removed me via skylight.  And like most, this is where the story of this, often oblivious, “not knower” started. 

I turned fifty this year, and while this milestone has brought about an inordinate amount of reflection and self evaluation, it has also brought about an equal measure of acceptance.  The acceptance that more than sixty percent of my life is now over (Eighty Percent if I exclude the anticipated Crapping In My Pants Years) and I will undoubtedly go out of this world the same way I came in.  Asking myself these two simple questions: What the fuck was I thinking? And, What the fuck am I doing?  But still, I look back on the vast majority of the things I've done: I look to the few places I've been and I recall the dreams I've had, and I think that life itself must be an extremely easy affair, because even me, an often detached and clueless participant in my own existence has made it this far all with one foot in the present and the other in some remote quadrant of outer space.

So like I’ve been saying,  I've been pretty much out of it my whole life.  Never was it more pronounced than during my childhood.  From age four ‘til about age thirteen I was totally “out there”.  While other kids were learning letters and numbers, telling time and eating paste,  I was staring at the wall.  Other kids were playing games and socializing.  They went from building blocks, to Cub Scouts, to reading and writing, to Little League, to church, to Friday night roller skating.  I went from staring at the wall to staring out the window.  I didn’t read until late.  Math in almost all forms still eludes me, and writing?  Well, if you’re reading this then you can fully appreciate the gravity of my shortfalls.   I honestly don’t remember much about being in school back when we were supposed to be learning the three R’s.  It all just seemed like a hive of activity that went on around me.  I had some friends on my street, I had Monster Movies, Planet of the Apes Movies, and from age nine onward I had Star Wars.  Learning really wasn’t a concern on any level, I just went through some motions while the motions of the  world mostly went over my head.  Sports, nope, I missed the parade and the first game of the first little league game of the only season I ever participated in.  Why?  I dunno.  I guess I just never got the memo.   Talent, nope, from handwriting to art to music to taste, the wiring just doesn’t exist within me.  I recently came across some old school papers of mine.  As I looked through them and thought about the crayons and construction paper, the dotted line writing paper and the now yellowed report cards, I had a moment of complete self honesty.  And this was it: “Wow I was really a total retard.”  Okay, maybe that’s a little strong, after all I was a nice little tyke, but still I  was far from being the typical kid, and here is the beauty of the whole thing; I had no friggin clue.

 Now relationships were a whole other thing.  Family relationship are universally demented on almost every level, so I won’t even go into those here.  As far as friendships go, I always had a fair amount of neighborhood kids and a solid block of buddies from high school onward that I am still blessed to be in frequent contact with.  For “guys” friendships are easy that way.  And when it came to girls?  Well, most young men face their own battles on this front.  So what I’m gettin at is that when it comes to women, I  really don’t need to recant any unique experinces here. I think it can be  agreed upon, across the board,  that if you have an X & Y chromosome, then you DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING when it comes to women.  Any guy who states otherwise is full of shit.

The real not knowing what I am doing comes in the form of career preparation and execution.  This is not to say that I’m not happy in my current position as a Maintenance Man, because truth be told, it’s actually the most rewarding and enjoyable job I have ever had.  This disclaimer aside, how does a guy who was a decent high school student and an A/B college student end up as a Maintenance Man?  What was I doing when people around me were focusing in on a profession, completing internships, establishing career objectives, setting a path forward for their lives?  I was spacing out, thinking about my plans for the summer and the easiest possible route towards a degree.  The first move in not knowing what you're doing is not having a shred of interest in anything relating to the “left over jobs” that might someday be available to someone who knows naught.  For me that was finance or business.  I now know that if you want a career in business, an interest or aptitude in this field is probably something you should have developed.  So for the fifteen odd years I worked in Banking and Mortgage, I probably should have had gained some skill set going in or during my tenure in these positions.  But naturally I didn’t.  Who knew?  Not me, that’s for sure.  

Then I followed my heart.  This is the most detached,  not knowing what you're doing thing you can professionally do. Sure it sounds great, but it’s a fairly uneducated approach to ones financial future, especially when you consider the hard reality.  A disinterested Mortgage Risk Analyst with three little kids at home, a mortgage, a boat load of monthly expenses and a wife who was then a stay at home mom decides, “Hey, I always loved doing carpentry, I did it for a while for my Dad’s company, I’ve done a little to supplement my income on the weekends, what the hell, this is how I’m now going to make a living.”  Talk about having your head up your ass.  I didn’t know how to run a business, especially one that needed to generate the revenue necessary to survive at that time.  I didn’t truly know the market.  I wasn’t properly capitalized.  And I really didn’t know what I was doing.  But I learned.  I learned that you can’t operate that type of business without being devoured by stress and debt.  I learned that a job is often better than a trade, and a job with a bunch of trades could be the best thing yet.  And it only took me forty nine years to figure this all out.  In the end, careers are not made or lost because you do or don’t know any number of things.  They are made or lost because you are willing to do more than some other schmuck or you’re willing to learn a little more than the dopes around you.  That much, this dope has learned. 

The absolute apex of my befuddlement is fatherhood.  Man, talk about not being ready and really not following the step by step approach.  First off, I didn’t even know how to hold a baby when my first was born.  I would just hold out my hands flat at chest height and my wife would place the baby on them. So poor baby Jake got held kinda like I was smelling a fresh baked apple pie.  Then there’s the more traditional aspects of being a father to three sons.  Again, being that I’m generally clueless and uninterested in sports, I was not able to pass this on to my sons, so now they are slightly socially detached and generally clueless about sports and the social structures surrounding them, which undoubtedly will result in at least one of them turning into a serial killer by his 30th birthday.  Maybe by then they will have realized that they don’t know what they’re doing with their lives either?  Dynasty!

Then there's the whole “talking” part of fatherhood.  My go to approach is to give my son’s a lot of leeway until they become unbearable, then I essentially resort to screaming and threatening their lives.   This might be seen as another aspect of incompetence on my part, but as a father of three teen-aged boys, be assured this is the one thing I do which is totally by the book.  Despite my ineptitude and detachment, I somehow ended up with three very different, but equally amazing sons.  They all have sharp analytical minds, copious talents, and bright joyful personalities.  So this just goes to show, you really don’t have to know squat to be a parent, and if you do in fact think you have a handle on being a dad, then you are likely the one who will be shouting; I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING, before you know it.

Finally we arrive at my death.  Why jump ahead?   Because between now and then my life is mostly on autopilot and I really don’t need to know what I’m doing any longer.  However, there’s still one thing I plan on getting wrong.  And this is my final resting place.  Cremations and coffins just really aren’t the thing for me when it comes to an eternal decision.  (I just have too many phobias in life relating to both of these methods.)   After all, I came into the world not knowing what I was doing, so why not go out making everyone wonder what I was doing.  Therefore my final resting place will be within the root ball of a tree.  Such a thing exists however I don’t know if it is being done in the United States.  But if possible, I see it as the perfect way for my future grandchildren and great grandchildren to climb the limbs above me, seek shade under the branches spread out across me, and maybe on some crisp autumn morning many decades from now, one of my descendants will  look at the sunrise as it comes up over the the top of my tree’s highest branch…. I can already hear them saying; “Whoever planted that tree knew exactly what he was doing.”

FRAIDY CAT

FRAIDY CAT

An Andrew Ramble

“The porcelain manikin with shattered skin fears attack.”

The Carpet Crawlers – Genesis

It rules me.  It rules every person I have ever known.  It rules the world.

It can crush love.  It can smash hope.  It can stifle rage. 

It is a hybrid that is our creator and serves as our guardian. 

It’s an emotion.  It’s a reaction.  It’s and instinct.  It’s a belief.

It can be physical, psychological, fictional and comical.

Define it as the infinite unknown.  Picture it as a dark basement.  Personify it as the Grim Reaper.

It lies outside of time, but it drives us through all the years of our lives. 

It is the demon I battle from my first waking moment to my last unsettled dream.

Regardless of my best and truest efforts, I have as little power over it as you do. 

Both good and evil, benevolent and oppressive it is simply FEAR.

THE FRAIDY CAT HANDBOOK 

 I am and always have been what DSM IV clinically categorizes as a Fraidy Cat.  I was a Fraidy Cat when the mere sight of my big sister’s dolls made me shit my pants at the age of three.  (Fortunately for all involved I was still in diapers.)  I was a Fraidy Cat at the Age of 10 when the sound of water running through the baseboard heating in my little-boy bedroom, ran like ice water down my spine.  I was a Fraidy Cat when I was fourteen and I insisted that my mommy sit at the edge of the bed until I fell asleep, because she terrified the BeJesus out of me by bringing me to see Poltergeist at the Century Movie Theatre.  I was a Fraidy Cat the age of 21 when a pretty young lady told me she was all but certain she was going to have my baby.  (False alarm…thanks be The Lord)  And I was a Fraidy Cat the day I met, then married the girl of my dreams.  Everything from there on has been the ultimate terror.  This is the fear of failure, failure to be a good husband, a good father and a good provider.   The specter of Fraidyness has driven me to and through careers.  It has guided every day of my adult life.  This might sound bad, but fear has also equally worked to my benefit.  It has protected me and made me a more thoughtful person than I probably ever would have become had I been born with any measure of natural toughness or God Given stoicism.   I honor Fear every day and thank it for giving me a life that would make any man with a modicum of common sense thankful.  I do this by fearing every hour of all the days of my life.

Maybe as a kid my copious fears weren’t exactly practical.  I look back on them more or less as fear training for the life that was ahead of me.  As my Mother or older siblings will affirm, dolls, more precisely baby dolls, were and in many ways, continue to be the ground zero of everything that induces a sweat beaded chill to run from my temples to my ass crack.  It’s not rational, but there remains something about the artificiality of the human form that will disturb me to the day I die.  The more life like the baby doll looks, the more terrifying it is to me.  If it has eyes that open and close, then I won’t even touch the thing.  If it has one eye open and one eye stuck in the closed position, then I won’t even go in the room with the goddamn demonic thing! 

FEAR INCARNATE

It wasn’t until my adolescence started to fade into memory that I started putting the pieces together.  Maybe being afraid of a fake baby was a warning to my future self to be afraid of a premature fatherhood which could have resulted from a pre mature…..well moving on.  As a little boy, I was afraid of skeletons and skulls.  To this day I harbor this fear and continue to be disturbed and fascinated by every type of organic calcified animal and human remains. Shouldn’t everyone be afraid of skeletons? They are death image incarnate.  The fresher and younger the life force the more it should naturally fear skeletons popping out of coffins in the swimming pool of the poltergeist family.  (Don’t even get me started on that friggin clown doll!)  I could easily rant about all of my bowel loosening phobias that have and continue to plague my past and my daily existence, but I’m afraid that would be too easy.  I’m here for the bigger picture, not the childhood titillating scares but the psychosis inducing midlife mind meltdown issues that drive some of us to write nonsensical rambling blog articles.   

Most folks want to know what love is and most want it at all costs.  I fortunately have been blessed with love in more forms than I deserve, causing me to take it for granted much more than any living soul should.  I want to know fear, or at least I want to be able to deal with it.

Fear, the thing that I don’t want, but that I never take for granted.  I just really want to know what it is.  Is it an emotion?  Is it a reflex?  Is it a condition?  Is it a force?  Is it inspiration?  Is it protection?  Is it creative?  Is it destructive?  Of course it is.  But more than anything fear, while not uniquely Homo Sapien, is essential to what has made us all human. 

Fear is the propulsive force of human evolution.  Sure every organism on the planet knows fear to a greater or lessor degree, but the human form of fear, this special niche in the way that we experience this sensation, is arguably what drove us from the African Savannas, ever eastward to the shores of the Atlantic.  To us it’s more than an instinctive defense mechanism.  It is a virus of the mind that infects us all in the form of emotional motivation and perceived markers of abstract achievement.  In other words… we are the only animals that God has ever placed on the face of this planet who are consciously afraid to fail.  And it is failure in all its forms, be it heartbreak, conquest, starvation or stagnation that drives us onward day by day to break new ground; to better ourselves; to murder our fellows; to secure our homes and to plan for our futures.  Neither good, nor bad fear is simply human. 

FEAR OF INEVITABLE FAILURE

 So what’s the problem with this simple yet often unspoken constant of human nature?  It is that we are inclined to accept it but eager to exploit it in each other.  Media and advertising sell us life’s “necessities” with little true care other than profit.  The new cars, the smart phones, the diet bars, the anti anxiety meds, the roof top mounted solar panels and on and on.  We are sold fear from dawn to dusk and we willingly consume it as a suitable replacement from mother’s milk to prune juice. 

So it’s a balanced system in essence and it seems to work for most.  After all the days go by; the malls open and close; Facebook assures us that we are failures compared to everyone else in our peer group; the TV continues to tell us what we need to survive; FOX News told us a Black intellectual living at 1600 Washington Avenue wanted to devour our first born and we cringe every time a neighbor buys better patio furniture than the crap we sit our ever spreading asses on.  Maybe it really is just a little too much for me to personally absorb.  Maybe all these minor concerns plus another thousand major concerns are the building blocks of my life.  A life we have all built on being afraid.

Sure I love all the advancement fear has brought to me and my forefathers, but most days I just want to hide from it all and hope that when I pull the sheets away from my ears that I’m not facing a weird world of demands and deadlines, invented achievements and dystopian politics.  I really only wish for the simplicity of The Garden of Eden and a tree of knowledge free of any scary serpents.

I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW    (originally posted April 16, 2013)

An Andrew Ramble

“We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”

E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

The person, whom is I, Andrew Goldman, is more or less a mystery to no one.  I wear my heart embroidered with crimson thread on my sleeve; rarely missing an opportunity to cry on any dry shoulder I come across, or just whine to an unsuspecting friend or acquaintance.  In my everyday affairs, my tendency is to never hold my cards close to the vest, but rather to consistently lay them on the table, indicating each Joker and Jack of my persona with a Klieg Light intensity.

It’s no secret, those familiar with me are aware of my complete lack of Stoicism.  For lack of a better term, I am simply an open book.  But wait…there are a few things in my structure that some may not know about this regular, yet mildly, repellant character who over the past four and one half decades has developed into Andrew William Goldman.  So here are some of the things (listed in no particular order) about myself that are ultimately of zero interest to most, but someday might just serve some useful purpose to those who just otherwise think me strange.  Maybe this little ramble will help flesh out some aspect of who I was, to one of my yet unborn descendants.  Whether it matters now, or ends with this blog, I can only offer answers to the yet unasked questions, by offering up this little unsolicited declaration of; I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW!

I can saddle a horse. – My father lived in the semi rural town of Warwick, NY.  Additionally, he was a procurer of broken down Glue Horses.  When I was about ten years old, he obtained a few old mounts, which he kept in the broken down old barn on his property.  I learned to ride, care, and saddle horses on my weekends with him.  Maybe someday when I’m broken down, I’ll procure a broken down horse of my own!

LETS RIDE!!!

I hate to dig. – It’s not the effort involved that makes me hate shovel work, it’s just some unexplainable aspect of my personality that makes me dislike working below grade level.  Furthermore, I hate working in crawl spaces and basements.

Dead mammals make me wretch. – Large or small, decayed or fresh, I can’t even look at them.   A dead deer on the side of the road has almost caused me to drive into oncoming traffic on more than one occasion.

In my youth, I was too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.  – Now I’m fat enough for heavy work and not light by any measure!

I can sail a boat. – Sailing started for me as a wee lad on a small Styrofoam sailboat called a Sunflower.  Eventually, I moved up to a 30 foot fixed keel style boat.  I haven’t been sailing in close to twenty years now.  It’s probably the most relaxing activity every created…if the wind is right.

My good cholesterol is really low and my bad cholesterol is really high. – Nice knowing ya!

YEAH, BUT IS IT GOOD OR BAD CHOLESTEROL?

I don’t really “get” art and poetry but I pretend I do. – What kind of pseudointellectual would I be otherwise?

I choke on food frequently. – This action has led me to near death experiences on more than one occasion, and has the effect of making me a less than desirable dining companion.

Once in a while, I think of building a small greenhouse in my backyard. – I would only grow flowering plants, because vegetables, cacti, and evergreens are a total bore.

I always feel like an outsider around other Jews. – All paranoia aside, I think other Jews think of me as an outsider as well. (Is this a psychological condition?)

I hold my breath for really long durations when I sleep. – This has two effects.  One, it annoys the crap out of my wife.  Two, I’m almost certain this problem is giving me cumulative brain damage.

I am unable to tie all but the most basic of knots. – I don’t even tie a slipknot on my shoes.  I just wind two loops of shoelace together in a square knot and off I go.

I WONDER IF IT'S ON KINDLE?

I have tried to teach myself to play guitar three times. – I have purchased three separate guitars and have failed at this undertaking three times so far.

I am actually very conservative. – I just follow a politically liberal ideology because my heart tells me that this approach makes me a better person.  Then again…maybe I’m just a phony.

I enjoy romantic stories and movies more than I care to admit. – Romance is the only way I can think an author can convey humanity through storytelling.  (But those Lifetime Channel Movies are still crap!)

I feel a great sense of satisfaction when my wife makes a purchase she is happy with. – I only wish I could give her more opportunities to do this, despite the fact that she is the most unmaterialistic person I have ever known.

When I was six years old I dreamed of being the Six Million Dollar Man. – These dreams included scenarios where I would utilize my bionic strength to pull a tree out by the roots and clobber my “duller than dirt” first grade teacher with it.

NOBODY ROCKED THE ORANGE TRACK SUIT LIKE LEE MAJORS

Every time I look in the mirror I feel totally gypped by my looks. – My minds’ eye says I look like Brad Pitt, but the mirror insists I look like Napoleon Dynamite.

I really wish I had one of those “cool” Scottish accents. – They are intense.  Especially when you agree by saying “Aye” or referring to another dude as “brother.”

I had a Charlie’s Angels poster in my room when I was eleven. – It wasn’t even one of those cool Farrah ones.  It was a Charlie’s Angels 2.0, with Cheryl Ladd.  In spite of this décor, I still turned out to be a heterosexual.

My temper can be harsh and violent in nature. -  I just want to give a formal Thank You to the Pfizer Corporation for first making Paxil, and then Effexor.  Without your noble efforts, my wife and children would have surely run for their lives by this time and I would probably be in the “big house” for some offense relating to rage and idiocy.

Most mornings, I am afraid of the world.  – But by the time late-night rolls around, I am reluctant to give up my battle with the day.

I am a praise and attention-craving psychopath! – Why else would I write a blog?

HERE'S LOOKING AT ME.