Boom Goes the Dynamite

It is so utterly satisfying to bend people to my will.

A friend of mine once told me: "You are your own little personal hurricane. You suck people in and spit them back out, remade in your image." And sadly, he was sober as a judge when he said it.

It is true that in my history I have been known to howl at the moon and throw fits that would give a normal person pause. Usually, this process ends with me getting my way. It is very rare that I've been called upon to engage in the process for a legitimate reason.

However, let this vinette serve as a warning if you or a loved one finds themselves in the clutches of today's wrecked health care system.

Long story short: A close family member suffered a brain injury and was transported to the local trauma hospital. The care he was given as it relates to his injury was exemplary. The management of his ancillary health care conditions has been acceptable. What has been utterly unacceptable is the level of communication between the family and the hospital. Today I met a family who is getting less information that we did. No suprise: They are spanish speakers and may or may not be legal residents. They had not spoken to a doctor since their loved one was admitted. Social worker --> yep. Translator --> absolutely. But a doctor? Forget about it.

Please, no matter what else you do, always demand answers. Page doctors. Pester nurses. Pilfer whatever information you can. The person in the bed may or may not be in a position to manage the care and ask the question. You must care for them and if that means turning on your own personal hurricane, go to it. It is the best thing you can do for the patient and for yourself

Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

I'm never, ever going to get suicide.

It's so selfish, so hurtful, so cowardly.

So it's been a pretty hard last 72 hours as I've tried to understand how one of the most laid back, giving, strong, fearless men I have ever known decided to take a seat in a running car and gas himself to death.

Look at this goof. Look at the grin. Look at the purple shirt. Are we done?

Let me introduce you to Mike Whitmarsh.

He was, in a word, a god on the beach. He could roof a ball like nobody's business and he was an absolute laugh riot. I've known him off and on for more than 20 years. I met him in the mid-80s and adored him. We lost touch and remet in the early 90s when his redonkulous ass was playing King of the Beach around the country. We drank, smoked the occasional cigar, made fun of each other and the rest of the world when he wasn't too busy talking to woman far more attractive than I.

And that's thing. He was perfectly happy to spend time with a 225-lbs whale as he was talking to a size zero hottie. He had time for every kid with a pen, every fan with a program, every babe in a bikini. He married a beautiful and talented woman. He had two darling daughters. He'd won a Silver Medal in beach volleyball. He'd been a pro basketball player who once guarded Magic Johnson. He'd battled the loss of his first dream - basketball - and battled the loss of his body when a constant dehydration problem almost ended his career. He'd made and lost lots of money. And shit just rolled off his back. Watching him play nearly 50 pro volleyball matchs, I saw him get pissed, really pissed just once. And as suddenly as it started, the anger evaporated and he was Whitty again.

I don't know what lead him to this. I haven't a clue and I pass no judgment. It's been awhile since the last time I talked to him. But if I could go back in time and get to him one minute before he crawled into that car I would have reminded him of what he once told me when I was in a world of hurt: "The sun and sand will always be there. You can usally find a ball and game, but there's always the sand and the sun. What more do you really need?"

So what more did you need, love? What made you rush the dirt nap? Why couldn't you hang on for one more day to see the sun, the sand and maybe a game? What broke your heart and your spirit?


I'll miss you, my friend. I'll miss having you in my world. The sun and the sand just ain't the same without you beating a ball against a net somewhere - even if I'm not there to see it.

Bitch, please...

I would very much like to salute Andrew Card, former chief of fuckery for The Fruitbat, for being the biggest douchenozzle of all time.

Card, who was an active player in several of the more deplorable decisions of the Bush administration, decided he needed to opine on the perceived fashion faux pas of the Obama administration.

Really?

Cuz you got absolutely nothing better to do? No one is paying you $1 million for your memoirs? You cannot find some Republican groupie to give you a hand job? You're so bored you've become the political version of Mr. Blackwell?

I don't care of Obama and his staff are wearing leis and dancing the hula as long as they are moving forward to resolve the problems of this country. I never cared that The Fruitbat wore his jogging suit in public nor did I care that Ronald Reagan thought Jelly Bellies were good idea. Obama and the gang are doing hard work and when men (and woman who like long sleeves) are doing hard work, the sleeves get rolled up.

So, Mr. Card, please feel free to zip your lip or, even better, bounce on out of the spotlight and join the rest of your ilk hunkered down in dark places to avoid service from the Court of Public Opinion suing you for multiple counts of douchenozzelry.

All connected yet all alone

If you don't know who he is, (a) put down the bong, (b) crawl out from under your rock and (c) turn on a television.

First, he "landed" a plane in the middle of the Hudson River safely. Second, he walked the length of the plane not once but twice to make sure all of the passengers on this plane were out of harms way. Then he gave a drenched, shivering passenger his shirt in an effort to stave off hypothermia for the passenger. The man is a god.

On Friday morning when I got to work, listening to NPR, I heard there were eight Facebook groups dedicated to our man Sully. I logged on to FB as soon as I got to work and joined one of the groups, which at that point had 6,200 members. Mere moments ago, I went back and that group has swelled to 72,000 members. And reading the wall, I got to thinking about the way we share our experiences in the techno age.

In my grandparents' day, it was talk at the coffee shop or beauty parlor and you knew what you knew from the radio or the newspaper or the local gossip. News moved at a snail's pace, as we would see it now, but then the wireless mean a radio, not a phone, and to that generation, the news came at breakneck speed.

In my parents' generation, it was Walter Cronkite on the evening news and your choice of newspapers. The advent of television and the evening news changed how people saw the world but again, the delivery system would seem slow and bleak to us who are now use to color pictures, banners, scroll bars and catchy themes to our news coverage.

Now, in our generation, we have a community not only in the locality in which we live but in the cyber town halls. People are posting messages up on a Facebook wall to a man who will most likely never read them. Yet, post we must. In our technological world, this is the town square, the water cooler, the place we go to feel a part of something. We're all connected and yet, we're all alone. People reach out to and on FB to feel a connection. Even with friends and family, we still want to be part of something else.

I hope Sully gets his kids to sign him on and let him read the wall posts. As much as we all wrote on the wall to him, we were writing for each other and sending out our thoughts and prayers and energies to betterment of all.

Admit it. You couldn't help but feel the world is a better place today because of the actions of two pilots you'll never meet.

If it seems I am over you

Yes, i know, it's been awhile since I've been here. And it's not that I am over you, dearest blog. It's the life has been crazy for a good long time. So for those of you looking for an update:

Since my last post, the followings have happened:

1. A good friend has moved forward with an adoption despite the credit crunch in this country. Now, just how does the credit problem impinge on an adoption? Visit http://www.5forhope.com/ to get the full story and while you're there, don't be afraid to let your heart do your thinking.

2. Another dear, old friend and I reunited via Facebook. The love story that is his still makes me well up and you that know me know how hard that is to do. The joys of rekindling old friendships is one of life's little wonders.

3. Lots and lots of baby news for my friends: my law school roomie (whose cat serves as my profile pic) is blessed with her first, another girlfriend is blessed with her fourth and first girl and my daughter dearest (from law school) has a bouncing baby boy on the way - he, however, is a great dane.

4. Israel invaded Gaza. I have an opinion but really it boils down to this: Forget the past and forge a future together. Neither side is going any where so figure it out.

5. Law life involves 15 criminal cases, three divorces, several civil cases and in the next month, oral arguments before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, two briefs to the state appeallate court and a trial. Who said this wasn't fun?

6. Hillary Clinton is still annoying.

7. So is Richard Lugar.

8. Bush did his last press conference...and provided several new facial expressions which can be compared to all members of the simian family.

9. The NFL regular season proved that (a) Ted Thompson is an idiot, (b) Aaron Rogers is a pretty decent little QB despite Mike McCarthy's inability to call the last 2 minutes of the game and (c) Brett Favre, while not the godsend all hoped for, brought the Jets to a respectable level and (d) he was dropped on his head too many time because he started the retirement shit with two weeks left in the season.

10. The BCS proved once again that it sucks, totally.

My new years blog resolution - at least one post a week until I run out of Buffett songs to use as headings.

Living and dying in 3/4 time

I should have written this a long time ago. But this whole working thing gets in the way.

Barack won. Let's see if we all get the importance therein:

1. He is black by virture of his father's race.
2. He is white be virture of this mother's race.
3. He lived in Hawaii, Indonesia and Chicago.
4. He married an African-American who knew no other way then the way the world treated here.
5. He is the first successful politician that has lived both the black man and the white man's view of the world.

Now that the transition is underway, it is clear that he lives the message he sold us as the Audacity of Hope.

Gays, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, they're all there. I've even spotted a good Dago name (and yes, I'm allowed to use that word - I'm one.) Every view, even Republican, is represented in the transition and will be represented in the Administration. Here's pulling for Chuck Hagel and the Senator from New York for Secretary of State.

Everybody's on the Phone

Who knew a finding a phone number would be an archelogical dig involving generations of cell phones.

I was trying to get in touch with someone I hadn't talked to in several years. The person called me but the signal faded when she was leaving her number. So I thought well i can random dial until I get there or I can hope I still have her number someplace.

My current phone is a Blackberry Curve.
The phone before that was a Motorola Rzr-3.
Before that was the Motorola Razor.
Before that was a Sanyo something or another.
And before that was another Sanyo something which I ran over with my car.
The one before that was red, might have been a Kyocera.
At the same time the work phone was a Nokia.
Before that, it was a Motorola flip phone that weighed six hundred pounds.

So anyway, I have all but two of those phones still: the one I ran over and the one that belonged to my former employer. I don't know why have the others. I even have a Nokia I picked up in Ireland so that I could call my friends when I was there. In any event, I fired up each one of the phones, scrolling literally back through time. Upon m first cell phone - circa 1996 - I found my friend's old home number. And her cell. Neither of which worked. Then I found her mom's number on the oldest phone.

Success at last. Thank god in a day and age when many have forsaken land lines that the old folks still like a dial tone.

Sorry for the delay

For those who read this rag, sorry for the long delay between posts. Since July, I've taken the bar, taken a job, started work, bought a new car which is the twin of an old car of mine, picked some fights, passed the bar, retained my job and written more briefs and memos then strictly necessary.

Today, I am still thinking about 9/11 and all the things we've seen since then. A tsunami in Indonesia that claimed more than 250,000 lives. A hurricane that drowned New Orleans. Wars in two theaters of operation that has claimed thousands and thousands of American lives and even more civilian deaths. Westboro Baptist Church. The capture of Saddam. The continuing freedom of Osama. The rise of Obama, the rise of McCain and the cult of Palin. Civil rights abolished. The ever-present Geraldo.

But still, time marches on and so does our human race. Despite the color, the faith, the language that may attempt to devide, still we march on, more or less together, looking for peace and holding fast to hope.

Remember

Do you remember this photo?

His name is Fr. Mychel Judge.

His death certificate carries the No. 1 for the first identifiable fatality of the World Trade Center attack.

Fr. Mychel had just finished giving last rites to a fallen firefighter when he himself and his charge were killed by falling debris.

Remember Fr. Mychel. Remember all the fallen. Remember the heros.

Random

It is six days to the bar exam, I am now officially employed and I can honestly say that I still don't care about Federal Income Tax. Isn't that what H&R Block is for or did I miss a memo?

When I was a kid, you couldn't step outside after the end of May without seeing lightening bugs. This is the first year in recent memory that there have been as many as my childhood memories seem to recall. But I will say that they make me laugh and giggle when I see them again because when I was kid I knew they were twinkling and blinking just for me.

Recently I got bit by a dog. My father has waged a lenghty battle against dogs for many years because of the dogs that roam and howl and generally disrupt the quiet place he lives. And I've told him for years that there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. And I stand by that with this one coda: There are also bad consumers of dogs. After being bitten, I tried to figure out where I got it in my head that all animals were safe, understood what I was thinking and saying and just generally could be trusted. Here's your answer: http://youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U.

Now the truth is, I knew about Christian and had forgotten. When I was young and apparently impressionable, I read Born Free, a moving memoir of Joy and George Adamson's committment to saving the big cats of Kenya. That story taught me it was okay to love and to believe you were being loved in return. George Adamson, by the way, is the old guy in green shorts near the end of the video. But I forgot one of George's other lessons. As much as George did this

He also carried this

George had a healthy respect for what these animals were physically capable of and still held, too, a deep and abiding love for them. I missed that part of the book and have 16 stiches to prove it. But I don't blame the dog that bit me: I leaned over him putting him by instinct into a subservient and scary position. Which is why George carried a gun when he was with his big cats and people who were strangers to them: He knew an animal will attack if provoked, no matter how well intentioned the human.

Liar, liar, liar

John Ashcroft is a big fat stinky liar.

Ass-croft got up in front a House committee yesterday and defended waterboarding. Fine, fine. It is logical (if creepy) that when you're trying to torture information out of a guy (who may or may not have any) you need a full panoply of tricks in the torture toolbag. This statement, of course, is predicated on the idea that torture is morally acceptable in any circumstance and that you actually get right or good or accurate information when you're twisting a guy's jibbly parts or forcing water down his throat "to create the sensation of drowning."

(For a personal perspective, read Christopher Hitchen's experience - he actually paid someone to do this to him: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808)

Now Ass-croft tried to soften up everyone in the room with the Bushian plea of "national security" and "terrorists are coming" and then delivered the punchline: only three people ever got waterboarded and the infliction in his officious little voice was "Only three got it so what are all you weak kneed namby pambies whining about? Only three, man. It's not like we've choked out the entire Iraqi population here. Beside you cannot handle the truth."

Anyone who has seen A Few Good Men knows the last line. But here is the truth: Bush, Ass-croft, Cheney are worse than Jack Nicholson's Col. Nathan R. Jessep. Not only don't they think we can handle the truth - that they've created a war, a torture center and killed thousands of Americans for a religious war - they don't want us to ever know the truth - Ibid. So they lie and prevaricate and pay lots of money to protect their sleazy truth.

The voters in the State of Missouri got it right and the rest of the country should have known what they were getting in their former Attorney General. Ass-croft is so utterly bereft of humanity that Missouri voted him out of the Senate by voting in a dead man. We should have listened to the Great State of Missouri and never trusted Ashcroft when Bush and his corrupt cronies entrusted Ashcroft with the role of being the nation's top law enforcement officer.

He was okay with torturing foreigners, denying them access to the best court system in the world and keeping them locked up in Cuba. He has master mined the deepest erosion into civil rights and civil liberties this country has ever seen. He was defeated by a dead man.

Are we done? Crawl back into whatever hole you slithered out of yesterday and darken my airwaves no more for you have nothing to say that I will believe and children die today because of you.

Piss off, Mate

Okay, I'll admit to being a sports geek. (Although I am still not as bad my husband. Case in point: he refused to pay $5 a month for hi-def until the Golf Channel made the technological leap. I ask you - are the dimples on the ball that important?)

Anyway.

I have been known to get up at 2 a.m. to watch America's Cup live. And don't ever bug me the second Monday and Tuesday of February 'cuz I'm going to be busy watching the Pooch Parade that is Westminster. And I am a devotee of epic proportion to the Tour de France. It started when Testicle Boy made his recovery and I've been addicted (pardon the pun) ever since. Even law school couldn't detour me from the Tour: the laptop went to class so that I could watch the lifetime racing feed. I am a tool, I know.

Which is way I want Riccardo Ricco's head (both of them) on a platter. This little bastard boy had won my heart with dashing victories in climbing stages. He blew past another rider on his way up a Category 1 climb like the other guy's wheels had melted to the French roadway. That should have been my tip-off. Last year, my heart was broken by Vino, who dusted off his road-rashed ass after a nasty crash to decimate the field the next day. (But, in my defense, I always thought Floyd Landis was a lying sneak cheat. It was something about his close-set beady little rat eyes. But I digress.)

I want to know when someone soars above the peloton, when someone rides on the wings of the wind in a sprint or crunches out a climb to touch the face of the gods that it's all him. Not steroids. Not EPO. Not someone else's blood.

I want to believe that once in a generation, Fate gives to us a god in every sport, a man or woman who will change the way the game is played and make the next generation strive to achieve even greater feats.

But mostly, right now, I want to remind Ricco that he is a pezzo di merda and that he has shaken the faith of all who love the sport he used to claim as his own.

Of domestiques

Domestique: a road bicycle racer who works solely for the benefit of his team and it's leader.

George Hincapie is the man, even though he isn't the man in the Tour de France. He is in 12th Tour and he has one exactly one stage - the first stage of the 2006 Tour. That was the first year he rode without Lance Armstrong, who retired after winning his seventh Tour in a row in 2005.

George powers up hills for his lead rider. George breaks wind (not in that way or at least, not that we know of) in the front of the peloton on the straight aways. George guards his lead rider in the two-wheeled scrums as the race 120 kms or more to some picturesque place in France. Surrounded by classic chateaus, towering mountains and bucolic fields, the riders breeze by on a mission to claim a yellow jersey. Seems to me that George Hincapie would be more at home with a finish in an industrial park or near a rail yard. In a sport that has been brought nearly to its knees by year after year after year of doping scandals, on rides George.

Never a hint of scandal, never a scent of doping, never a murmur of discontent. George remains the paragon of a domestique: Never selfish in desire for the malliot jaune, never selfish enough to dope, never selfish in riding kilometer after kilometer for the glory of someone else.

All hail Big George Hincapie.

Shit, piss, fuck

Carlin is dead.

Long live Carlin. Long live the Seven.

To the man who was arrested in Milwaukee for uttering the rest of the Seven...

To the man whose alternative version of American the Beautiful is always the one I sing...

To the man who pointed out the irony of Ali not wanting to kill people but enjoying the shit out of beating them up...

To the man who made fun of the national pastime and religion and some many other sacrosanct subjects... I say

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. (Balls and prick optional of course.)

Sunny

It is the solstice. The summer one. My favorite day of the year (besides the highest of state holidays - my birthday! May 13th for those of you who have shamelessly forgotten).

Usually on the longest day of the year, I make it my personal mission to spend 12 hours in the sunshine. Insert your skin cancer joke here. Today, not so much. It was a special circle of hell known as Saturday Bar Prep. But still the sun was on my mind.

Do you know you can watch shadows move? Honest. And it is the most peaceful thing if you pull it off. I was tucked up on a park bench and noticed the shadow moving across a sidewalk. There were pebbles in the crack and I thought I'd mark the time by seeing how long it would take the sun to move on to the next pebble in the shade. I was zoned out, thinking about other things, and my eyes stopped focusing directly on the pebble and the sun/shadow line. And then it happened. I could watch the shadow and the false shadow move out and the sunlight move in.

Try it. It's fun. And it opens up that child like innocence that we all need a dose of every now and then.

And you

I don't even know what your thing is.

This post is irrelevant to most of you and I apologize for taking up your reading time so if you are not the person this is aimed at, click off and wait for the next post.

I know you are still watching every move I make. There are things in the cyber world, fafi, that track even the most stealthy - or those whose arrogance leads them to think they are stealthy. I can tell every time you look at my facebook, my my space and this blog. Don't think I don't know. And don't think I'm not watching. And don't think I'm not keeping score.

The World Would Be a Better Place....

if there were more people like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

I know, I know. You mostly hear about their baby making capabilities and all the variations there of.

But, would you do what they do? I don't mean the acting, the jet-setting and the gazillion dollar chateau in France.

Would you strap on body armour, knowing you're four months pregnant, to draw the camera lights and the attention to the plight of Iraqi refugees? Would you give up a large percentage of your income to fund a rebuilding project in the Ninth Ward to fix what the government can't or won't? Would you use whatever fame you might possess to focus the attention of those around you on the plight of those less fortunate?

Here's to a couple that is dedicated to themselves, their children and their world. The world would be a better place if there were more people like them.

Of Generations

I'm on my 11th generation of babies.

Seriously.

Think about. How many generations have you seen come and go in your life time?

Generation 1: My step brothers
Generation 2: My step cousins
Generation 3: My IU friends' babies
Generation 4: Stepbrother's girls
Generation 5: My nephs.
Generation 6: My god kids
Generation 7: My college buddies' babies (interestingly everyone has two except the Frogs who welcomed three to be the trend breaker)
Generation 8: My drinking buddies' kids
Generation 9: My workmates' babies
Generation 10: My cousin's kids
Generation 11: My law school kids' kids

All this got me thinking about what exactly is a family - and who decides who is your family?

I have three fathers, I've been the only, the oldest, the youngest. I've had grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, friends too numerous to name but all added something to the calaloo that is me. What makes up a family?

I think it is this simple: Whoever has a claim on your heart is your family. Titles don't matter. The imprint does.

Why God Don't Own A Car

I've gone green, at least in my commute. I take a bus to the law school where I'm doing the Bar Prep high colonic. Every day I stand at a bus stop and watch the world go by. I'm usually the only white person there: the other white people hang across the street on the campus side of the street until they see their bus coming. I wouldn't stand over there with them for a 258 on the bar.

Today, a young black man, still a child to my eye, approached the crowd and was encouraging them to register for the upcoming general election. All visible parts of his body - sans face - where covered in tats, most of them gang related. He was nervous in approaching me but I offered to fill out a card. As we talked about his criminal career and how he got into this gig, I was amazed by him. He'd done juvy time for drugs and attempted murder and here he was out there trying to change the world, one voter at a time. And sweet. Oh, this child was gentle, soft-spoken and by his admission, broken but recovering. Some of the other folks at the bus station were giving me grief that there was no way a whitey Nancy Northshore was going to vote for a black man, that the only reason I was talking to the kid was because I was afraid I was going to get mugged, etc., etc., etc. I told them I had planned on voting for Barack since the keynote at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

Sometimes the world comes in snap shots. As the young man talked to me about his belief in change and hope for his life, I could see an elderly white man was rummaging in the street side garbage can for food over the boy's shoulder. I broke off the conversation with the young man for a moment to give the elderly man my lunch. When I came back to the young man, he was shaking his head from side to side.

"All this carrying on these folks doing about you being white and monied and whatever they think about you, and you just upped and gave up your lunch. None of them would do that and they all gots more than he does. Hell, I got more than he does. And that ain't right. It just ain't right."

And off he went, clip board and voter registration cards in one hand, the other guiding the old white man down the street to get some food. And that's why God don't own a car.

My Window on the World

Welcome aboard.

I make no promises that I won't offend you, piss you off or make you want to punch me in my face. Now that's the clear, let's begin.

Anyone who knows me well will know exactly where the title of this blog came from. When in doubt, consult the Bible of Buffett. A friend of mine who blogs always titles his entries with song titles - which was the inspiration for the title of my blog. Thanks, Froggie.

This blog will undoubtedly be part politics, part law, part my friends and part what I see on a daily basis. This isn't about changing the world, changing what you think or changing your perspective. It's about the internal dialouge that happens in my head. And as of right now, it appears there is no need for medication.

I hope you enjoy it. I hope you hate. But above all, I hope it makes you think.