This page may be a 'bit' left of centre. It is what I deem to be my RANTS from over the edge. My personal soapbox if you will. IF this is of no interest to you or you are justifyably annoyed by use of the Internet as a personal soapbox please Bail Out...

For those of you that have chosen to remain, gOD knows why...;), The folowing is devoted to those things I have come to believe in as a result of my passage through this life. You may wonder WHY this is important. Perhaps it isn't! However let me suggest another senario to explain the importance of these beliefs.

As the child of a dysfunctional home, and a necessary but equally dysfunctional time (the 60's) I came to a world with little order. Living in a world where the institutions were in flux and the fabric of society was changing FORCED me to look at life in my own way. My family situation and I guess equally my outsider status prompted by internal feelings of Transgender only reinforced this method of dealing with life.

So from my days as a young child I observed life and tried to make some kind of crude sense of it all... I would like to believe that I have achieved some level of understanding in that quest. I leave it to the reader to send me a reality check or two... For like all of us I can become complacent with the years and with practice I have become fairly adept at defending my position, right or wrong.

I will offer my most sincere apologies right now to those hardy souls who have ventured here. As a Survivor, with a big 'S', I tend to be a 'bit' intense. The years have mellowed me only so much. This is all I know. While the recognition of this limitation does serve to mitigate the tendancy it does not provide a cure.

Carpe Diem

NOTE: This page is, as is my life, a work in process. Please excuse the errors, ommisions, and incomplete thoughts. Hopefully time, energy, and my Prozak supply will be abundant enough to allow me tthe luxury of expounding on the ideas on this page... Stay tuned eh...;)

Why do I think about this stuff. You know overpopulation, the loss of privacy, global warming, child abuse, where the stuff the lawn guy dumps on my neighbours lawn ends up, or why we hate each other. Does any of this really matter??? Can I really understand any of this stuff or perhaps more importantly have even the most tiny impact on any of these issues...

Perhaps not...:|

It is true that I would be a much more content person if I just stumbled through life blissfully unaware of these issues. Fat happy and stupid. That is the way to happiness, so it seems, or so I see all around me. Oops my cynicism is showing again. I have a name for such people. I call 'em BEAVERS. I use such a name because a beaver is a nasty little rodent that spends its live chewing down prefectly good trees, damming perfectly good rivers to make a personal swimming hole, amd making little beavers. Beavers don't ask WHY...

So WHY... WHY do I ask WHY....

Well... I don't know... If you have an answer to this question send me an E-Mail HERE!!! ;)

Is there a gOD???

At one time in my life I believed in God. I can even recall a particular event where I felt a strong, almost personal and physical connection to that entity. However since that time I have drifted into feverent defence of the assertion that there is NO gOD only to land within the realm of the agnostic.

Simply put this means I don't know if there is a gOD or supreme being. Further it is my belief that the question is beyond human understanding and irrelevant to boot. My basic understanding of the many 'religious' philosophies in our world leads me to conclude the common basis for our relationship to a gOD is our adherance to a list of rules by which we are to live. Our success or lack thereof will be judgeed and rewarded or punished in the afterlife.

If this is so I am willing to stand on the manner in which I live and the rules I have developed to live that life . If the determining factor in whateverafterlife there may be is the belief in the supreme being I guess I am toast. Only time will tell. Untill then I am too busy living life and trying to figure out my place in it to worry about tommorow.

Needs vs. Wants

When I was younger I wanted it all. The fancy clothes, important job, sports car, big house in the 'right' neighbourhoood, & the 'perfect' wife. Of course an heir and a spare were in the equation too. Then the fantasy ended.

Why?

I don't know. Perhaps my exposure to the children of the wealthy and influential people during my university years showed me that money and position, and possesions are not the route to happiness and fullfillment. This realizaton led me to focus on my personal needs in life as opposed to what I had once wanted. For example while I still needed a car a Chevy or perhaps a Honda would do instead of the Candy Ass red Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet invisioned in my younger years.

Where this left me was in the realm of NEEDS. Needs by this definition goes beyond the usual meaning of food, water, and shelter to our personal needs in life. For me this includes a fairly decent racing bicycle, a good pair of running shoes, a guitar, and some kind of Internet access.

While this list may in total be extensive it is a MUCH shorter list than that of my wants. If we try to modify our thinking to approach life from a NEEDS basis is it my assertion that this will provide us with a multitude benifits. First, we will simplify life and in doing so allow us to achieve more of our objectives by virtue of having a smaller list. A smaller list also frees us from becoming a slave to the next THING that may be WANTED.

In essence I believe this approach can lead to the fullfillment of our physical or material NEEDS thereby freeing us to move on to the more important issues in life. So too can the ending of the pursuit of the material we may attain a quantity of what is becoming the most rare and elusive emelents on this rock we call home... that being TIME!!!

IMHO this is enough to validate the concept...;)

Victim or Survivor

Sucess or Failure

How do we measure or success or our failure in life. That is, do or can I look at my passage through this life as either of these two states. I wonder....

I have until recently seen my survival of a dysfunctional upbringing and the escape from poverty as at least a measure of success. A 15 year marriage, 2 healthy children, and a stable career.

Then everthing seemed to change or at least have lesser meaning. Perhaps complaciency is a deadly trap.

I now feel a strong sense of being disconnected that seemed to grow with time; ageing and all the lovely little tricks that process plays on the body; and an umplanned event. An auto accident on a sunny afternoon.

Such is life. EH!

Now I am at the door leading to the dissolution of my marriage, the end of my current career, and perhaps life as I now know it. It is strange though, I really don't know what to feel. I know I am sad and confused and scared to death of starting over at 40. Geeze that is so much like a line from a bad country song. What a legacy with which to start my mid-life.

So am I a success or just a failure or both. I do not know. I know my SO has failed me and that I have failed her. I guess now we both have to hope that we don't TOTALLY fail our children. gOD I hope history doesn't repeat itself in this case.

Life is so much fun when you become a statistic....NOT...;)

My path from 'L'iberalism to 'C'onservatism or can we ever do what HAS to be done?

Fat Happy & Stupid

Are we alone...on this planet...In the universe

Should I propogate myself??? Should you?

SEX, DRUGS, & ROCK&ROLL...

Am I capable of Love???

Perhaps in light of what appears to be an impending divorece I should really focus on the question. However the events leading up to that eventuality are too new and too raw for me to see them clearly. I can only only hope for now that there is the capacity in me to love. Hope there is a spark left within me after all these years.

As always time will tell...:|

Hiding - Sliding - Gliding...

Can I learn to let go...drop my shields...to live

Can We Just Get along with each other...

Live and Let Live...;)

Of course the previous item has a counterpoint concept....

That is "Can a rational case be made for Sucide"

Some will euphamistically call this self-deliverance but lets call it what it is for the purposes of this rant. Suicide, pullin your own plug, ending it all, the big sleep, or whatever.

Do we as semi-rational beings have the right or can we express the desire to leave the world without being classed as depressed or mentally inbalanced. Where DO our rights to our bodies begin and end.

I dismiss of course the legal prohabition against suicide. This is simply the societies protection against the mess those of us who seek to exit on our own terms cause the rest of you. While this is true; so what! The world is a mess already what is the big deal about a little more?

I would like to submit that there are many reasons to choose to exit... terminal illness being among the most obvious. However there too may be a host of other reasons that are equally valid. Can it be that one who has no real place in this world and no real hope of finding such a place can be justified in giving up on the exercise of life. I would like to think that some of us are rational enough to make this determination.

Then the limitation of action becomes the harm such action would cause, primarily to our children. I will not address the harm caured to other adults here specificially. If one gets close to a person that chooses self-deliverance that is just another of the many risks of living as an adult. It comes with the territory.

I wonder what heaven or perhaps more corectly hell is like....lol

Comments?

Hey I guess I really am a space cadet.... To infinity and beyond...;)!!!