A Friday Coffee Break

This is one of those internet gems that had me on the floor laughing. Come to think of it...


A guy who purchased his lovely wife a pocket Tazer for their anniversary submitted this:


Last weekend I saw something at Larry's Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest. The occasion was our 15th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my wife Julie. What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse- sized tazer. The effects of the tazer were supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety....

WAY TOO COOL!

Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button.

Nothing!

I was disappointed.

I learned, however, that if I pushed the button and pressed it against a metal surface at the same time; I'd get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs.

AWESOME!!!

Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to Julie what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.

Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all that bad with only two triple-A batteries, right?

There I sat in my recliner, my cat Gracie looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh & blood moving target. I must admit I thought about zapping Gracie (for a fraction of a second) and thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong?

So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and tazer in another.

The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of
water. Any burst longer than three seconds would be wasting the batteries.

All the while I'm looking at this little device measuring about 5" long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference; pretty cute really and (loaded with two itsy, bitsy triple-A batteries) thinking to myself, 'no possible way!'

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I'll do my best...

I'm sitting there alone, Gracie looking on with her head cocked to one side as to say, 'don't do it dipshit,' reasoning that a one second burst from such a tiny little ole thing couldn't hurt all that bad. I decided to give myself a one second burst just for heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and . .

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ... WHAT THE HELL?!?!?!

I'm pretty sure Jessie Ventura ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over and over and over again.

I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs?

The cat was making meowing sounds I had never heard before, clinging to a picture frame hanging above the fireplace, obviously in an attempt to avoid getting slammed by my body flopping all over the living room.

Note: If you ever feel compelled to 'mug' yourself with a tazer, one note of caution:

there is no such thing as a one second burst when you zap yourself! You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor.. A three second burst would be considered conservative?

IT HURT LIKE HELL!!!


A minute or so later (I can't be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape.

My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. The recliner was upside down and about 8 feet or so from where it originally was. My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. I had no control over the drooling.

Apparently I pooped on myself, but was too numb to know for sure and my sense of smell was gone. I saw a faint smoke cloud above my head which I believe came from my hair. I'm still looking for my nuts and I'm offering a significant reward for their safe return!

P.S... My wife, can't stop laughing about my experience, loved the gift, and now regularly threatens me with it!

If you think education is difficult, try being stupid!!!

The Culture of Divorce

The Culture of Divorce

"The unchallenged acceptance of divorce has infected our world with hopelessness" from the Retrouvaille vision statement

A friend lamented recently, "Why wasn't I taught how to be a wife when I was growing up?"

I thought on that for a split second and then I opened my mouth and said something along the lines of: well, my mom had tried her best. She wanted to teach me to be independent. She made sure I knew how to balance a checkbook and stay within a budget. She stressed the importance of maintaining good credit, limiting your debts, and paying your bills on time. She also trained me up to maintain a house for myself. I could cook, clean, maintain a decent schedule for myself so I didn't burn out. I resisted all along the way, of course. She insisted on choosing a solid, dependable career as part of my training, and it was in college that I learned to resist anything that resembled "women's work." If it smacked of the domestic chains, I wanted nothing of it. She had her work cut out for her.

When I took a breath and she had half a chance, my friend, obviously a tiny bit irritated with me a bit, said, "Not that stuff. That other stuff."

Come to find out what she really meant was the skills like keeping your mouth shut when you want to let loose, apologizing without rationalizing, allowing space for emotions without letting them run the show. That's a whole different kind of training.

All my married life I've struggled to learn That Other Stuff.

The more I thought about this the more I realized I've been trained to be divorced better than I'd been trained to be married.

Here's some Divorce Preparation Tips I picked up along the way:

• Get a career and keep your own money in case he dumps you.
• Keep track of what belongs to whom.
• Let him know exactly how you feel.
• Men want to rule women.
• Men are silly.
• Men don't feel.
• There's no difference between men and women--it's all cultural.
• Because you feel it, it must be true.
• You're not just arguing with your husband, you are arguing with thousands of years of male domination and female repression.

Most of this "helpfulness" came from those women's magazines that are chock full of articles my husband and I joking refer to as "How to be divorced in 6 years or less!" The real stuff took some real maturity and some real pains to learn.

The Real Stuff like:

• There's no winning an argument.
• Actions speak louder than words.
• Emotions are just emotions.
• Love and trust are not emotions all the time: sometimes they are conscious decisions you make.

There's No Winning an Argument

You can win debates. You can even even win the lottery, but an argument with your spouse is unwinnable. Winning means there's a loser and when there's a loser, you both lose. It's like scoring a touchdown against your own side. You and he are in this together. You're a team. You may have won the war of words, but you've lost something more important. Keeping score and using conflict to do it is a no-win.

You need to approach conflict as the inevitable result of two people living in close proximity. You're going to have to come to a compromise of some sort. This other person has needs and desires that are at the very least just as important as yours. Try to find a way to accommodate each other. The first step is to listen to him. Try restating his argument for him. "Are you saying...help me understand." Let him know you are really listening and really considering his side. That generally takes the heat out of the friction between you, and once that happens you can get down to the business of working things out.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Are you still acting single? Do you have your own space, your own money, your own stuff? Do you make decisions that will affect the two of you without his input just because you can or even because you merely feel like it? Do you resent the demands he makes upon you?

If so, consider how loudly you are communicating two thing: my spouse doesn't make a difference in my life and he is not worth any extra effort on my part. You may not ever say such rude comments out loud, but consider how much wear and tear is done to the relationship when you daily act as if they were your truth.

But He Isn't Perfect!

If you are expecting him to be perfect before you are willing to make any changes yourself, you'll have a very long wait. Neither he, nor you, will ever attain that glorious state. Waiting for him to change first is a perfect excuse. It's your handy dandy get of responsibility free card. When you find yourself thinking he doesn't deserve the best from you, I can pretty much guarantee you probably don't deserve the best from him either.

The Catholic Voice in Healthcare

When the Catholic Church takes a break from its evildoings, it takes a redemptive stab at charity. Although the Church can not compete with atheist charity greats such as this and this here, it does manage to carry its own massive weight charity wise.



That said there really is something to consider in the USCCB's rejection of all the current healthcare plans up for debate.

“So far, the health-reform bills considered in committee … have not met President Obama’s challenge of barring use of federal dollars for abortion and maintaining current conscience laws,” the USCCB wrote in its Sept. 30 letter to members of the Senate. “These deficiencies must be corrected.”

As one of the largest providers of healthcare in this country, the Church has both a moral and a financial desire to see healthcare reform passed in this country. Costs and access to care need to be placed within reach of the poor. No one is in argument of that.



What is being rejected is the perversity of giving care to some while killing others, giving access to care while denying the rights of the caregiver to be caregivers and not abortionists.



It is not healthcare to purposefully kill a patient. Fundamentally, every abortion involves two patients, and for one the procedure is always fatal. It is not charity to rid yourself of the burden of the poor by killing off the children of the poor.

Friday Coffee Break

With news that Zimbabwe has no fertilizer for those farms Mugabe ruined in the breadbasket of Africa (this one is word of mouth from a friend), families using their children to stage hoaxes for fame , the media going into a tizzy about a talk show host buying a sports team, and a presidential staffer who is a fan of a mass murderer, I needed a little break. Here's a reality check for you:

Another Double Standard

Two pictures of Christ displayed in violation of an ordinance. One is inoffensive and is put up by people on "the wrong side" of the life issue. Police instantly respond.

The other picture violates the same ordinance. In addition it is offensive, makes fun of Christianity and Christ himself. It is put up by people on "the politically correct side" of the life issue. After months of complaints, still no action.

What a lovely lesson: the laws only work for the politically correct?

Extraordinary

Today is the feast day of a 20th Century saint: Padre Pio. He was known for many miracles and I could go into many examples of his extraordinariness to impress you with the facts of his life. But I won't for this reason: his life was not meant to glorify himself, it was meant to glorify God.


That is the whole point of existence after all: reflected glory. Those of us who have bought into the falsities of the world believe otherwise: our lives only reflect our own small pieces of a puzzle. Someone like Padre Pio or Mother Theresa shows us how incredibly a life can be lived. They make us wonder. They show us how magnificent humility can be, what great things are possible when we choose to get out of God's way.


So with this in mind I will share with you this great saint's humble prayer. He prayed it after Communion when he felt closest to God. As puffed up with my meager accomplishments and small talents as I am, I can only hope, one day, to sincerely pray this way:


Prayer of St. Padre Pio

Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You.

Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often.

Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life and without You I am without fervor.

Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light and without You I am in darkness.

Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will.

Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You.

Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much and always be in Your company.

Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You.

Stay with me, Lord, as poor as my soul is I want it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of Love.

Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close and life passes, death, judgment and eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You. It is getting late and death approaches, I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile!

Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You.

Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of the bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the Light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.

Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love.

Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for, Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more.

With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity.

Amen.


__________________________________


For more information on an extraordinary life:


http://saints.sqpn.com/saintp27.htm

A Fine Example of Oddball Thinking

I saw this headline from Yahoo "Birth control could help combat climate change." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_condoms_climate_change)
The logic of the article was, basically, reduce the number of people in third world countries through the use of condoms and other devices and we could help save the world.

Let me just sit quietly with the idea of limiting the one resource the third world actually has--the available and as of yet untrained and untapped human resource. I could get lost daydreaming about investments in information technology and India-style customer service centers cropping up in places like Uganda and Belize, but no. This article would rather see less people instead of actually helping people.

Putting that idea aside and taking the article at face value, the logic behind it seems plausible until you factor in actual carbon usage. We in the "first world" are the main carbon emitters. Here's a beautiful example of our emissions by country. The US is looking chubby here.





In fact, when checking the accuracy of this map on Wikipedia, I found that the majority of nations considered to be third world were actually less than 1 percent of world carbon emissions per country. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions)

What is going on here? Could it be that the overall goal is to reduce the world population? Yeah, that's pretty much the gist here. But why start in the third world? If you buy into this theory, why not start in the US?

Is it because we here in the west would never stand for the idea of mandated reproduction laws? The third world has much less of a voice. We'll just trim them down to size first, work the kinks out of the system, and then try to push through the agenda here in the West--er, let me check that map again--the North.

But since I'm working on illogic, how illogical is it for environmentalists, of all people, to advocate that countries with limited GNPs should invest in artificial contraception that not only produces waste in the manufacturing process but also as a discarded product? Our waters are full of hormones excreted into the watershed by women on various forms of the pill (http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/3151 and http://www.nywea.org/clearwaters/08-3-fall/05-EstrogenInWastewater.pdf) Do we really need to add this environmental hazard to the already shaky infrastructure of third world countries? Discarded condoms and excreted hormones are contaminants that are unnecessary as there is a nonpolluting alternative in the form of Natural Family Planning (NFP).

NFP only takes training and a bit of discipline to use effectively. In a quick, simplistic summary, there is a monitoring and cross checking of female fertility signs and a monthly abstinence period of several days per month when those signs are present. Its effectiveness rate is right up there with the more pollution laden condoms and only slightly less effective than chemical alternatives, and it has the added benefit of being more cost effective to implement. (By cost effective, I mean it is free).

Here's a few links to back me up in case you are too lazy to Google:

http://www.ccli.org/nfp/basics/effectiveness-p01.php
and a cross check from a secular source
http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/women/contraceptive/126.html

The effective use of NFP both as a means to avoid pregnancy and to achieve pregnancy presupposes someone who is willing to be disciplined in checking and cross checking fertility signs and to engage in sexual activity during opportune times. In the West (and North), we have been trained to think that sex is an on-demand sport. The idea of actually waiting a few days seems foreign and a bit ridiculous to us.

But that is just another example of our oddball thinking.