Spam can be amusing

Posted on 27 July 2012 by Susan

I was much amused by this message I found in the Spam box this morning. The e-mail address and URL definitely marked it as spam. Fortunately, the book I read on setting up my site (referenced in a comment elsewhere and I don’t have time to go get it) gave a very nice video on recognizing sneaky spam.

Considering what I want this site to be, I got a giggle from this comment, “I was curious if you ever thought of changing the layout of your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 pictures. Maybe you could space it out better?”

More content? A lot of text? Needs more pictures? It has plenty of content, as much text as needed to tell the story, and only uses pictures to prove a point.

But I got a good grin from it all.

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What is funny?

Posted on 24 July 2012 by Susan

Humor is different for everyone. It depends on your background, your education, and your tolerance. Some people like fart and poo jokes. According to a comedian I heard on our local 24/7 Comedy Radio Station, it’s most men and not women.

Some like cruelty humor. A current popular comedian is in hot water for making a rape joke and, when a woman in the audience objected, suggesting 5 male audience members gang rape her. She fled the show in terror. Many of the men thought it funny. The women, not so much.

Some like putdowns against ethnic or national groups. Who hasn’t heard a Polish joke? Of course, I’ve heard most of the Polish jokes rewritten as Aggie jokes, having gotten my degree from Texas A&M University. Jokes against Jews, Muslims, Latinos, Canadians, and many more have been heard by me on the radio in the last week.

Then there is teasing people for their looks. I’ve heard fat jokes and midget jokes. Most of those are quite mean. So are the ones about amputees.

I’ve even heard jokes about red-haired people, but it was a red-haired person telling them and I honestly thought they were hilarious. I’m going to share two of my favorites. They stemmed from his premise that red-haired people are the “true minority.” The first was pointing out that if you get on a train filled with one ethnicity or race, such as Latino or Black, no one thinks anything of it, but if you got on a train in the U.S. and everyone on it had red hair, it would give you pause. The second was the theory that red-haired people never date one another. (This is not true because I have some good friends who both have red hair, got married, and had red-haired children, strengthening that gene for further generations.) Here’s why he says they don’t date: If you pass two Asians, two Indians, two Latinos (one of each gender, of similar age) walking together on the street, you might think they were dating. Two red-haired people in a similar circumstance? “Oh, you must be brother and sister.”

The comedy team of Penn and Teller made a guest appearance on the TV show Babylon 5. I was much amused when they discussed comedy with the Captain, pointing out that most human comedy was based on cruelty (like laughing at someone after a chair was pulled out from under them). Other races were not the same. The Minbari preferred wordplay. They then proceeded to tell a joke to Delenn that made her laugh hard. In my head, I was saying, “Oh, my! The Minbari love puns!”

I know it is said that puns are the lowest form of humor, but they are particularly enjoyed by my family and my friends. You have to be well read to get them and I think that’s part of the fun. My former roommate, Ed Tatom, was a grand master, and there were days when the puns flew fast and deep in our home or at gaming. The day he joined the D&D game at my husband’s and my house and announced his character name as “Dexter the Sinister” to a room half-filled with heralds was definitely banner moment.

I’m out of time to write, and I’m not sure I have much more than a point than this: yes, comedians have the right to say anything they want. But why would you want to say something hurtful and call it humor?

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How many traffic fatalities does it take…

Posted on 19 July 2012 by Susan

When I worked at Samsung as a contractor, there was no stoplight at the entrance. Turning left into or off of the campus from Parmer Lane, a 4-lane, 55-mph stretch of road was a hair-raising daily experience for most of us. Some took the long way home just to be able to turn right when the left, as they had when they entered, but otherwise, either coming or going, you had a left turn.

One of my coworkers was very frustrated by this and asked, “How many people have to be killed before we get a light.” “Three,” I answered. She was appalled, but I was serious. It had been the history in our community that one traffic fatality is considered an anomaly and it isn’t until there are more than one that something gets done about it.

This was brought back to my mind by the fatal accident on Goodwin Drive yesterday. In that case it is a neighborhood street that is being used as a shortcut. People are speeding by 10-20 mph over the speed limit and accidents are common. This time someone died. If the neighborhood’s pleas for speed bumps had been heeded, perhaps that would not have happened.

A couple of years ago an elderly gentleman was crossing the street at night using a walker. He properly crossed with the walk signal, but according to the newspaper report, it was a very short light and he was just over halfway across the street when the light turned green. A car coming up the street saw the light change to green, but did not see the gentleman crossing the street, and the pedestrian was killed.

A woman was walking her child to school, while pushing a stroller, down the street of a four-lane divided road. There were no sidewalks and the grass was too high to accommodate the stroller. Major intersection, not in the boonies. Fortunately the car that hit them didn’t kill anyone and missed the stroller completely. Also, in this case, the furor caused sidewalks to be put in immediately.

But, as I said, the changes didn’t come because someone asked. The changes came because someone got hurt or killed.

Why can’t we be more proactive?

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It pays to be nice

Posted on 18 July 2012 by Susan

I stopped at the Sonic on my way home from the vet this morning to pick up some lunch. I pressed the button and waited. After a while, I wondered if perhaps I hadn’t pressed it hard enough and pressed it again. Still no service. One of the wait staff had passed to go to another car earlier. She was visiting with them. When she finally came back by, I asked her to check to see if the light was coming on as no one had checked in. She pushed the button several more times and promised to take my order herself when she got inside.

Of course, the minute she came on the speaker, my vet called. I apologized and told them I had to take the call. They told me it was fine and to just press the button when I was ready. I had to wonder if they were standing in the window and watching for me to press it, because when I pressed it, they were there right away, apologizing for the wait. I told them it was OK and ordered.

The manager came on the speaker while I was waiting for my food. He asked if I’d had problems with the button. I told him I’d pressed twice with no luck, but just caught the lady on the way by and that she was very helpful. He thanked me for being nice. He told me he’d had the button fixed twice. I told him I believed him and it was OK, “these things happen.” That’s when he told me he was sending me out lots of coupons. I was surprised, but said, “Thank you.”

My order came out shortly, with the same lady delivering it. She was also thanking me for being so nice. I was beginning to think they were making a big deal of not much, but she told me how nasty some folks got. I was given three coupons for a free hamburger and a coupon for a free drink. Nice coupons! I gave her my normal 50 cent tip and completely floored her. “See,” she said, “that’s nice!” I just laughed, thanked her, and headed home.

What I did shouldn’t have been a big deal. I was just a touch patient, didn’t lose my temper, and was courteous to those who were not at fault. It is true that I am a regular and my order is just strange enough to cause notice. It never occurred to me that they had noticed, though, until today, and something the manager said made me think they did recognize me for a regular.

I’m not perfect and there are times I get impatient, just like everyone else. Most of the time, though, I find that staying pleasant makes life a lot smoother. Rewards like today, though, are real nice.

Internal soundtrack: Leap of Faith Soundtrack, Are You Ready for a Miracle?

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Grace under fire

Posted on 18 July 2012 by Susan

Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist Connie Schultz is a nice lady. Even to someone who might not deserve it. I hope you get as big a laugh from the article as I did.

Thanks to Ms Wanda, the Austin Hat Lady, for bringing this to my attention.

Internal Jukebox: Pat Benatar, Papa’s Roses

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God has many faces

Posted on 17 July 2012 by Susan

God has many faces. That is my belief. While I call myself Christian, and choose to worship God through that framework, I believe my friends of other faiths are worshiping the same God.

If you’ve never had the chance to talk to Hindus about their faith, it is very fascinating. I took the time to talk with two of my Hindu coworkers when I was taking a Major Religions of the World class at church. At the last minute, the pastor asked me to teach the section on Hinduism. I read up on it on Thursday night, then took my questions to the friends at work on Friday at break. One of the things I’d discovered in my reading, which was new to me, was that Hindu is not a polytheistic religion. They have one God with many aspects, both male and female.

I have friends who practice “pagan” religions. Some of them are centered on a Goddess, rather than a male deity. One of those friends long ago told me, “Any religion that teaches you to do good to other people is a good religion.” I like that and I believe it in my heart.

There are many who worship through nature. I remember reading a quote from a Native American (I forget what tribe) who absolutely could not understand how Christians could go inside to worship, shutting themselves away from everything God had created. I can understand that. I often feel quite close to God when I’m in a forest, or listening to the waves roar at a beach, or anyplace where I can experience nature and not be interrupted by the sounds of technology.

I came across an article in CNN today about a lady who decided to experience 30 different religions before she turned 30 years old. She’d lost her faith and was on a quest to find it again. It is an interesting read and she came a bit to the same conclusion as I.

Another way I’ve seen it put is, “God is too big for one religion.”

Which brings me to a topic that has brought some humor among my thinking friends. There is a State Representative who assumed that educational money earmarked for religious institutions could only be used at Christian schools. The pundits and bloggers have had a field day with it. One of my favorite quotes from the Representative is, “Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion.” That just proves to me that she doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of our founding fathers. While most were Christian, they belonged to many different denominations. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were Deists, which would completely offend a fundamentalist Christian of today.

That takes me back to the days of the Kansas State School Board, which was deciding whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. Thanks to one lovely, creative man, what was created was the idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, complete with creation myth. My first knee-jerk reaction to someone wanting to teach Creationism in school is to ask whose creation myths are to be taught. There are so many. Every culture has one and some of those cultures have not been superseded by the Judeo-Christian ethos.

Kansas itself has multiple Native American tribes, each with their own creation stories. The Arapaho, Commanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Missouri, Osage, Otoe, and Pawnee Indian tribes each have their own stories. The Kansas School Board was not offering these stories.

I love reading the creation stories of all religions. I love seeing how they are different and how they are similar. They are so beautiful. Why should we not share them? Why must we insist that only one is right? If they teach you to do right by other people, love them, and honor God, isn’t that following the true way, no matter what name we hang on it?

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Pain is a pain. Or is it?

Posted on 16 July 2012 by Susan

I’ve been having a pain in my back. It’s a new pain and pain relievers aren’t touching it. I get new pains checked out if they don’t go away in a reasonable amount of time and I can’t explain them with an injury. I had the sudden idea this weekend that this one might be a kidney stone. I’ve seen the PA at my doctor’s office. We’ve done some tests. Jury is still out. Meanwhile I’ve been given a prescription for a muscle relaxer and a massage therapist as I definitely have a muscle in my back in full spasm. It does not, however, explain the pains that have been appearing in my abdomen that made me consider kidney stones. So we are on watch and wait.

Meanwhile, I was contemplating pain. I have a higher tolerance for some kinds of it than most folk, having had problems with my back most of my life. On a scale of 1 to 10, if it isn’t above a 3, I usually don’t even notice it, and if it isn’t at least a 5, I usually don’t bother to medicate for it. If it is a known pain, no matter where it falls on the scale, I can usually push it to the background and just keep living my life.

This actually makes my nurses nuts when I’m in the hospital. After both of my abdominal surgeries, they would come in regularly to ask my pain level. I would always have to stop and think to answer the question. I’d pushed it to the back of my mind and was ignoring it. When I couldn’t ignore it, I’d hit the magic morphine button, and keep going. But to stop and think and then tell them “7” was just unheard of for them. Anyone at a 7 should know automatically. They shouldn’t have to think about it.

I’m told that after my first abdominal surgery, the surgeon went to my family in the waiting room, told them what she’d found, and said, “I’m amazed she didn’t come crawling into my office, screaming in pain.” In perfect unison, my family answered, “She has a high tolerance for pain.” I laughed when they told me.

I thank God for that tolerance. It helps me through the rough patches. The long-term pain has also given me empathy with a lot of people. It’s allowed some of them an outlet for their frustrations that they can’t vent to those who don’t understand chronic pain. Truly healthy people really can’t get a grasp on how exhausting constant pain can be and how it can change your mental outlook.

I was much amused at my doctor’s office today when they gave me a sheet of stretching exercises for my back. I literally laughed out loud and said, “Preaching to the choir here! If these were working, I wouldn’t be here.” I gave them the sheet back. Thinking about it later, I realized a lot of them were abdomen strengthening exercises. For those of you who haven’t heard, ab exercises are completely contraindicated for me. I am the 1 in a 1000 who should NOT do ab exercises. I am a singer. My abs are actually so strong that before I got special exercises to strengthen my back to compensate, I could actually pull my short ribs out of alignment just by sucking my gut in to tuck in my shirt. Ow. Major ow.

Reminds me of another joke. A dark one, if you will. I had been seeing one chiropractor for a year. Each visit he would ask me how I was doing. Often, the answer would be, “I’m doing fine.” It took a year before we realized that that what I meant, “I’m not hurting any more than usual today,” was not what he heard: “She’s not hurting today.” Since then, I’ve been careful to let chiropractors know of this idiosyncrasy of mine.

So, I have pain, but I have the tolerance to handle it without meds most of the time. I can’t lift heavy things, but I have friends who will come over and haul my cat litter canisters from my car trunk upstairs to the litter box for me. I have arthritis in my back, but I’m still flexible enough to startle doctors and massage therapists when they do range-of-motion tests on me.

Most of the time, I can just ignore the limitations and live my life.

God is good.

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Jasmine Chocolate

Posted on 12 July 2012 by Susan

I copied the recipe for Jasmine Chocolate from the Discovery Channel website many years ago, though the link is broken now. But I wanted to give credit where credit is due. I quote the entire article below.

I would absolutely love to taste this. Cooking is not a strong talent of mine, cooking candy even less so. Please, somebody make this and share it with me. Pretty please?

The recipe for Jasmine Chocolate:

10 librae of roasted cocoa, cleaned and coarsely minced (1 libra = 12 oz.)
fresh jasmine petals
8 librae white sugar
3 ounces vanilla flowers
6 ounces cinnamon
2 scruples (7.76 grams) ambergris

Put layers of cocoa and jasmine flowers in a box, one layer over the other. Let it rest for 24 hours, then change the jasmine flowers with fresh ones. Repeat 12 times. Add the other ingredients and combine them on a warmed marble surface until the chocolate dough forms.

“It wasn’t an infusion, neither it was water flavored with jasmine. Making jasmine chocolate wasn’t a simple preparation of food, it was an operation of botanical-gastronomical engineering,” Danielo Vestri, a chocolate maker who has reproduced the Medici recipe, told Discovery News.

Layers of fresh jasmine flowers and cocoa powder were put one over the other. The process had to be repeated every 24 hours for 12 days.

In this way, the jasmine petals provided the cocoa dough with a flavor never tasted before.

“It is simply delicious. And it is easy to digest: the cocoa dough was melted in water, not in milk. The Medici did not only influence the arts, but also chocolate. People at my shop go crazy for jasmine chocolate,” Vestri said.

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When women are blamed for being attacked.

Posted on 12 July 2012 by Susan

I came across an article in CNN. A social media post was released by the Shanghai, China, metro showing a scantily-clad woman saying that women dressed this way invite sexual harassment and should expect it. The warning came after there were four separate complaints of sexual harassment in June.

There has been quite a bit of backlash from the women in Shanghai subsequent to the release of the post, which at the time of the article being released had not yet been taken down. The women want to know why it is their fault if someone attacks or harasses them.

I flashed back to a rape trial that happened when I was in high school. The gang rape had occurred in a high school stairwell. The judge, from the bench, stated that women who dressed in scantily clad clothes should expect to get attacked. The victim, at the time of the attack, was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a pull-over sweater, belted (full waist, not hip-hugger) blue jeans, knee socks, and sneakers.

A couple of years ago, I read an article written by a Middle Eastern woman. She was walking down the street to market, fully clothed, including burqa. A man came from across the street to admonish her for being too much of a temptation because her sleeve had moved slightly and her wrist was showing.

What is wrong with these men? What was wrong with the people who raised these men?

I loved how the trooper who was teaching us the sexual harassment portion of our orientation put it when I was hired back with the State 11 years ago. “Is there anything in your job description that requires you to touch a coworker? No? Then don’t do it!” We laughed, but it’s a good metric.

I don’t mind the occasional hug at holidays and such when I’m at work, but I had a manager who stepped a bit too far once. He felt me stiffen up. He said, “Too much?” I asked, “Would you have hugged Kevin in that same situation?” “Um, no.” “Then not appropriate,” I smiled to take the sting out, and walked away. That was the last I needed to say because he was a reasonable man.

No means no. Women who use it otherwise are fools. Men who take no to mean no and act appropriately each time will take care of the few fools. The SCA has a wonderful story of a couple who were being amorous and at the last possible moment, the woman said no. The man immediately stopped. The woman protested, “Why did you stop?” “You said no.” “I didn’t mean it!” she whined. “Well, I’m sorry, but it’s going to take some time to get me back to where I was so we can continue.” I bet she never used no for yes again. I bet every father wishes his daughter met men so considerate.

Basically, though, it all comes down to respect. The men doing the attacking and harassing think the women inferior to them. If there was a mutual respect, there would be very little of this happening, I believe.

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What do you do when there are no services available?

Posted on 11 July 2012 by Susan

A mother in Illinois has abandoned her adult daughter because she could no longer care for her. From the account, the daughter has severe mental deficits and is unable to care for herself. In a former time, she probably would be living in a state-supported school with full-time care.

Across the country, the services for people with mental health and mental retardation issues are having their budgets slashed. Many think the community is the place where they should get their services. What if the family is unable to give them? This mother has another child with disabilities at home and decided she could no longer cope with two. She decided her best option was to drive her daughter to a state that had what she said was the “No. 1 health care system in the United States of America,” let her out of the car to go to the bathroom at a bar, and drive away. The daughter couldn’t even tell police her own name and address.

Let me be clear. Nothing illegal has been done by the mother. The daughter is legally an adult. Morally, I don’t think it is our place to judge. I have to wonder when the last time this woman had a few hours to think of something other than her family. Time to take a walk, read a book, visit a friend, without her children being present.

If there were adequate services for her daughter as a child, she probably “aged out” of the system when she turned 19, if not earlier. It is all too common for children to be able to get some sort of services through the school systems, but lose them when they get too old.

If institutions are no longer the answer, and many think they should be closed, then we have to have viable alternatives in the community. That includes alternatives for people of all ages who need 24-hour care by someone other than a family member. For people with mental illness who will NOT remember their meds on their own, but function just fine if they have them. For people with mental retardation whose parents are willing to help, but truly need to take a vacation now and then.

Folks in the community need to understand that group homes for these people are part of life. NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) needs to stop being a kneejerk reaction when they hear one might be moving in. We determine what property values are, and we need to stop letting a group home affect the property values. Stop blocking services for these people and start embracing them as neighbors. Just like people in general, most of them are quite nice when you get to know them, some of them are jerks, and once in a great while one will be dangerous. The percentages are probably not that different from what you find in the general population. They might just look or sound a little different.

They are people. They need support. They need services. Many of them can give back to the community and earn a living if they have these services and that means paying taxes to help with their own services. Without the services and support, many of them end up living on the street. Which would you prefer? A neighbor or a vagrant?

Let’s be neighbors.

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