I am sitting here contemplating birthday number fifty, only two days away and counting. As an INFP personality is want to do, I spend a lot of time in introspection. I spend so much time thinking that I rarely find myself doing. Sometimes the lack of taking action can be paralyzing. Alas, like all of my human brethren I trudge on, hoping and praying for salvation, railing against the injustices of the world, and wondering why God doesn't destroy us.

I sit and contemplate the physical part of my body. After a major heart surgery (Ross Procedure 1998), torn ACL, degenerative arthritis in both knees, and the usual bough ts of common illnesses, I find it amazing that I can still run 5k races, albeit at a snail's pace, lift weights, albeit not as heavy as before, and basically function pretty well. We adjust physically to handicaps pretty well. It is the emotional adjustment that can be taxing at times.

I think hitting forty and having the heart surgery was more of a midlife crisis. My grandfather died at 51 and my father at 58. This could be my decade or maybe I will continue the trend and make it to 65. Researching my ancestry I found a four times removed grandfather who fought in the War of 1812 and lived to be 96. Fought in a war and with no medicine lived to be 96. Go figure, but then again they didn't have the endless streams of pollution going into the water, food, and air, that we have today. That is why we need medicine to cope with the crap we have suffered our own bodies to endure.

Where is our Shangri-La? Where is justice? We can fly to the moon, but we cannot stop kooks bombing us. We can transplant hearts,but we cannot stop genocide. We can cure the one,but not the many. We Islamic terrosrist who claim they need to kill to protect God. Is God so weak he needs a feeble minded murderer to defend him against innocent women and children? My God is not weak, he does not need protecting. My God desires love, not hate. The god of Osama is not the true God of Christian, Muslims, or Jews.

I want to do good in the world. I have a friend whose entire family went on a mission to the Phillipines. As usual I sit and ponder, amazed at my own inability to act.

Certainly has been a long time since I last posted. Nothing much has changed in my life the last few months. This summer my family, consisting of two teenage girls and two pre-teenage boys, and my wife, took a trip through Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.


The highlights of the trip from my point of view were seeing my step-brother for the first time in ten years and staying in Ouray Colorado for three days. I will write more later on our adventures, but once again I came home yearning to live in the mountains.

Our church had to let our priest go because of finances. I have filled in and led the services on a couple of occasions and the other times we have hired visiting priests. I have considered going to a seminary but my wife has threatened divorce if I do.

Work sucks, my managers are evil buggers who lost their souls years ago. Amazing how they can treat people like dirt and then brag about it. Out of 1300 people we have had 77 quit this year alone. That is a high turnover but AEP does not care as long as the plant produces power.

Christmastime is the only part of winter that I truly enjoy. Yes, the first snow is always beautiful, but then driving and shoveling become a chore and make the snow more of a nuisance than anything. Christmas is truly a time of brotherhood and goodwill to men.

Speaking of which, I joined a men's group at my church. We meet every Saturday morning and so far it has been a rewarding experience. Unfortunately when I came home from work this afternoon there was a message on my machine that one of our members fell down his stairs and broke his nose and an eye socket--ouch. I pray that he recovers soon, he really is a good man. In fact he spent this last Saturday helping to feed the homeless here in Niles.

My writers group has also become a rewarding experience. the introvert in me struggles to engage in conversation. However the passion in my soul is writing and that wins out over introversion.

Christmas is a time to give thanks. It is also a time to remember our loved ones, both those who are living and the departed. My fondest memories of youth are spending Christmas Eve at my Great Grandmother's house. Oh, how I wish I could return to those days.

Today is Pearl harbor day and it would do us all well to remember what happened so long ago. We all think that the world was a simpler place back then. In some respects it was. But in the world of politics it was pretty much the same. Reading Upton Sinclair has opened my eyes to a lot of the political intrigue that existed in the early part of the last century. In some ways the Middle East has not advanced. Assassination was the political weapon of choice in that time and in the Middle east it still seems to be that way. God help Lebanon--certainly no one else will. the Persians are setting their site on a new empire, the Europeans hide from the inevitable, and American stumbles with corrupt, inept, and sometimes incredibly stupid politics and media.

911 should have been a wake-up call to our politicians and to our society. Alas, it was temporary and the ridiculous people who set our sights on Iraq have set us back over thirty years. Our military is to small to fight a real war. We Americans are not willing to sacrifice our children to stupid needless wars, but the time will come when we will pay for our short sightedness.

Back to Pearl harbor, I googled a satellite picture of Pearl Harbor. The water was so clear that you can see the Arizona. That is a sad reminder of what can happen when we let our guard down.

Fighting for religion--have you ever heard anything so stupid? Muslims kill Christians and vice versa all in the name of defending our God. You clueless misguided people. Do you think God is so weak that he needs your help in defending himself? Do you not believe that God could wipe us all out of existence with a breath? The reason the Osamas of the world kill is because they want too. Look at the way the Palestinans cheered on 911. Look at George Bush justify killing thousands of innocents in the name of religion with the excuse that we are fighting for what is right. Perhaps we are right ... perhaps. But when Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek we cannot possibly justify going to another country and the killing of thousands of women and children. No more so than that sick bastard Osama and his band of deranged misanthropes.

I say abandon the Earth, venture forth to the stars and colonize new planets. Leave the meek minded behind to destroy this ball of dirt and themselves in the process. Spend the billions on research, not in conquest. We could be on Mars already if we had spent the money on research and not war. My God Bush, if you wanted to destroy the Iraqi people then drop a Nuke on them. Meanwhile drop one on everyone else that doesn't want to be a Capitalist.

Listen you moron fundamentalists of all the world's religions. God is God ... get it ... he needs your faith, your worship, your love. He does not need you to kill innocents in his name, in his defense. Those who crave power are evil, make no mistake about it, no one wants power for altrusitic reasons. God gave us dominion over animals--not dominion over each other. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

Go ahead and kill the children of God. You will gain dominion over Earth for a few years and then what do you plan on doing for eternity? Those who believe in a just and loving God know that our salvation will be in the afterlife.

Quit killing each other in the name of religion. If you are going to kill be truthful. You kill for greed, power, property, self-satisfaction, ignorance, lust, and just plain evil. Evil is pervasive on this planet and that has never been more evident then in last 100 years.

Stop murdering each other!! That is my ramble for today. This monkey has been on my back for a long time and I wanted to get it off. I will be more cheerful next time.

Writing is fun!

There is nothing I enjoy more than writing. Okay, maybe sex, but writing does give me a high. I can sit for hours pounding away at the keys and when I finally run out of steam I feel exhausted and fulfilled.

How about our president going to Vietnam and making a speech about Iraq. Somebody on his staff has a screw loose. The older I get the more cynical I become on the subject of politics. I am currently reading Between Worlds by Upton Sinclair. This is the second in a series of eleven books dealing with World War I politics and going forward to the cold war. The main character, Lanny Budd, is an interesting youth and I look forward to reading about his further adventures.

Work is not fun anymore. Who am I kidding? It never was fun. Try working in a nuclear power plant, the money is excellent, the people intelligent, and the politics bizarre. Even intelligent people act stupid when they put their own agendas first and ignore everyone else. The longer I work the more Dilbertish situations I see. Believe it or not, my sojourn in the Navy was more enjoyable. Most of the people in the Navy looked out for each other. For sure there were backstabbers, I think that is the worlds third oldest profession after prostitution and politics. But most of the time in the navy I worked with a good crew, we worked hard and we partied hard.

Enough pontification and rambling for tonight. Time to polish up a story for my writers group.

This is my first ramble in my blog. I chose the name Insular Tahiti from a quote by Melville. "For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return."

So what is my half-known life? Where is my, Insular Tahiti, confined inside this not so verdant body of flesh? I have endured the fully known horrors of life: death of loved ones, destruction of Hurricane Andrew, Open-Heart Surgery with a near death experience, divorce, depression, and more. The half-known is more insidious. I was born with a vivid imagination, a wandering daydreaming mind that for some years has served me well. I wrote my first story in 1970 and then quit. I wrote again in 1996 and then quit. Finally after my heart surgery I decided to do something for myself and I enrolled in a Master of Liberal Studies as Indiana University. During the next four years I took many English classes and for my Master's Thesis I wrote a novel that earned me an A. I tried to get it published and after many a rejection letter I put my marketing efforts on hiatus--2005. Now I have joined a writers group and I am slowly getting the resolve to write again.

The ideas I have kept locked up inside my cranial cavity have served the purpose of keeping me sane. Or maybe that is my bane--the fantasy in my head seems so much more pleasant than the outside world. Perhaps that is where the soul rests and seeks comfort.

I must warn any readers who might have stumbled into this blog. I plan on rambling philosophical from my opinion of our Military Industrial--Cheney Driven--World Dominating--Greed and it's conflict with our Christian "love thy neighbor," religious philosophy. I will wax poetical on the difficulty of getting published, the fun and excitement of a first draft, and the emotional turmoil of raising a teenage daughter that does not like school.

There is nothing I enjoy more than writing and nothing I abhor more that criticism. But, alas, that is life.