My Miracle Drug

The mind can be a poison. Sometimes I wish I could turn mine off. I wish it had a switch that I could flip off when I needed to, when my thoughts turned negative, or simply when I needed to enjoy a Vin Diesel movie.

This morning I missed class because all my work pants were in the washing machine still soaking wet. When I found them it was too late to dry them and then leave, so I put them in the dryer and tried to make use of the extra time. I already didn't feel very well since it was Monday, but I grabbed my notebook, went out on the back porch, and started looking over my algebra work in a patio chair. It was nice outside, sunny but cool. I went over factoring, absolute values, and inequalities making sure I had the process down in my head for figuring out each type of problem. After about 10 minutes of that my mind started to wander and in my head I was far away from that porch and that notebook with the math problems.

I thought about my life and, just like my mind does sometimes, I seemed to pick out all the times I've failed and remind myself just what kind of stupid things I'm capable of. Funny how the bad things always stick out over the good things, like they somehow carry more weight to define us as people. I don't really believe that but I thought about all the relationships in my life that aren't what I'd like them to be, the length of time it's taking me to earn my degree, and all my various character flaws. I thought about how my goal, my ambition, is to become a teacher. But even when I did that I doubted if I could really do it.

Do you really even want to be a teacher? I don't think you want it bad enough, you probably won't even graduate. And even if you do, you'll probably hate it. And you probably won't even be very good at it. And by the way, you are majoring in history, so you might not even find a job.

It wasn't a very good morning for me. Instead of actually studying, I spent a lot of my time wondering if what I was working for was really worth it. I paced around the house, half-bored but not wanting to waste the hours I was gaining from missing class. I stared out of windows, only to walk to the other side of the house and stare out of another window. My mind was in a bad place and I just felt lost.

I even walked outside onto the porch where our dogs were. Bilco was laying on his back with his feet up against the wall. He has a knack for making himself look like he has the IQ of a gnat. I looked at our old German shepherd, Foster, who is 16 years old now and looks every bit of it. He looked up at me but didn't wag his tail. Several years ago he got hit by a car and broke his hind leg. Now that he is older, he has arthritis and that leg is almost useless to him. I watched him try to stand up. He propped himself up with his front two legs and then tried to lift the rest of his body with only one leg. He got about halfway up, straining the whole time, and then gave up. He eased himself back down. Every minute or so he would try and eventually he got up and limped down the stairs to where he could lay under some shade.

He laid down and as I was watching him I started thinking about getting old. I wondered if the right thing to do would be to put Foster out of his misery, but I knew I could never decide to do that. He only had one life to live - might as well leave him to enjoy all of it.

I say this because I felt crazy this morning. Between the doubting, the staring out of windows, and my old dog who reminded me that even though I'm 23 I am still going to grow old and die one day, I didn't feel sane. I felt like I should feel better than I did, not standing around wondering about my future or the philosophical consequences of euthanizing a dog.

I have been through clinical depression before, a few years ago when I was a student at UAB. It was easily the worst few months of my life. I didn't have any enemy that could harm me as bad as my mind did. It was hell. Last year I read an article that said J.K. Rowling's dementors were based on her experiences with depression. She described it as "that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad." I very much agree.

The only way I coped with it was to pray and write. In fact, I looked forward to nothing at all except the end of the day when I would shut myself in my room, turn on some older Andrew Osenga music, and write down my thoughts for an hour or two. I found that if I could get out my thoughts by writing them down on paper, I had a lot more success in dealing with them. In fact, I could look them over and see that I was often being irrational and extremely unfair to myself. If I talked about anybody else the way I talked about myself, I would be an enormous jerk. It was at that time in my life, that dark time, that I learned that I could make it through hell as long as I was able to write it down.

One of my many favorite U2 songs is called Miracle Drug. I have a live recording of them playing the song in Chicago on their Vertigo tour. As Edge starts playing the opening guitar riff, Bono says this:

"I fell in love in Chicago. I fell in love in a hotel room in Chicago, listening to Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. I didn't understand Jazz, I didn't understand Miles Davis or how his music could make me feel until, sitting in this hotel room looking out the window at this city, an Irish boy 24 years old. Just looking around Chicago I kind of understood Miles Davis and I understood his music...

"We don't really look back that much in our music. We don't look at the past. The best bits of the past we try to bring with us. They're our songs, songs like Pride (In The Name of Love), Sunday Bloody Sunday, Where the Streets Have No Name. They're the best bits of the past and we'll take them with us. Because we're interested, we're excited, and we have faith in the future. That's where we're headed. So for a city of the future, this is our music... we think that we are strung out. This is our drug, Miracle Drug."

That really meant a lot to me hearing that because I could think about times when I had a rough day, a day full of setbacks, and then I heard a song and it just completely changed how I felt about things. My problems didn't change one bit, but because of that song I felt like I could make it through - I felt a little bit of hope.

I feel the same way about writing. In a way it would be my miracle drug, I suppose. This morning I stopped the pacing around the house and the looking out windows, and I finally sat down to write. I channeled all my thoughts down onto a piece of paper, and it was like the weight that they carried was lifted off of me. And I was able to dismiss the awful ones as nonsense. It's true, I would never speak or write half the thoughts that come into my brain because they are ridiculous. From the 20 minutes I spent writing, I realized that I was still sane. I wasn't losing it, and I wasn't the failure my mind was telling me I was. I also realized that I was human, and that everybody feels this way at some time or another. And after that I was alright. I got some food, went to work, and had a great day.

I guess everybody has moments when they seem to lose their sense of up and down. Life doesn't make sense, we doubt our own abilities, and even wonder what it's all for. We cope with it in different ways. Some of us try to escape through alcohol or drugs. Some of us go completely cold and numb. Some of us try to bury those feelings by buying new products that will only make us feel better for a little while. I think that my miracle drug is pretty good for dealing with things. Those notebooks will always be there (unless they get lost or my house burns down or something) as reference for me to go back and read in the future. And they've already helped. This is my drug, my Miracle Drug.

Hey, want to read a good book?

I have to say, I am loving this book. Got it in the mail Monday and I'll probably finish it before the weekend is over. That never happens for me with books. Usually I become uninterested and start reading another book, and end up reading about 3 books at a time. But no, not this time.

I would recommend this book to anybody. It's an easy read, the chapters are short, and it will make you look at your life a lot differently.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

%$#@!!!!!!!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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I missed this for the last 3 weeks. The 10 pm to 10:30 pm time slot was a lonely, desperate time for me. But now that The Daily Show (and for that matter, The Colbert Report) is back on, I can satisfy my frustration from politics through the mocking of government and media. And oh man, it feels good.

Of course, my last post was making fun of Glenn Beck and various other right-wing extremists who made all too much of the president's speech to school kids. And while that was targeting crazy Republicans, it was more about people who put partisanship and political gain ahead of doing what's best or the people who live in this country.

It goes both ways, which is why Nancy Pelosi is one of my least favorite politicians in Washington, and she is a Democrat. From a few months ago when she said she had no idea that the Bush administration had authorized torture, and then later when she actually did know but couldn't do anything about it, and then when she did know and could have done at least something, but chose not to - to now when she says that the house of reps is past the Joe Wilson "truth-tourettes" and then 2 days later passing a resolution to make him apologize on the house floor.

I may be naive to think this is possible, but can we please stop with the petty, selfish partisanship? Can we at least avoid stupid, meaningless actions like forcing a Congressman to apologize after he had already done so and said apology been accepted? For crying out loud, there are regular American citizens with more sense than some of these people. Get something done that matters, and stop trying to seize every opportunity to squeeze all the political points you can out of one man's mistake.

My Audition for The Glenn Beck Show (or anything on Fox News for that matter)

President Obama is at it again. Everything that he is doing is somehow storming up a flurry of controversy, and the latest is something that hits very close to home - a speech given directly to our school children. I was skeptical of the controversy at first, the right-wing critics who were outraged and declared that Obama was taking this opportunity to indoctrinate our youth with socialist ideology. I dismissed it as no more than an overblown media/political circus. But that was until I did a little more crack... research...

I read the original speech as it was posted on whitehouse.gov. Everything seemed fine on the surface. It was just stuff about staying in school and working hard, which appears harmless. Not to be outwitted by whitehouse.gov, I actually posted the speech in Google's socialism calculator* and I was shocked at the results.

Just take this excerpt from the President's speech as it appears on whitehouse.gov:

"I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things."

Pretty normal, right? But this is what came out when I pasted the same statement into the socialism calculator:

"Ich weiß, dass manchmal, Sie bekommen das Gefühl aus dem Fernsehen, dass man reich und erfolgreich sein kann, ohne harte Arbeit - das ist Ihr Ticket zum Erfolg wird durch Klopfen oder Basketball oder eine Realität TV-Star, wenn die Chancen sind, Sie werden doch nicht zu jedem dieser Dinge."

Are you shocked yet? Or are you afraid? Maybe you should be, because this statement reeks of socialism. Notice the word "reich." Hmm... that sounds familiar. 3RD REICH maybe???? Also notice the character ß as well. What is that? You would probably have to be a socialist to know.

Here is another example written in free market capitalism:

"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best."

But how does it come out in the socialism calculator?

"Die Geschichte von Amerika ist nicht über Menschen, die beendet werden, wenn es hart kam. Es geht um Menschen, die laufenden gehalten, der versucht, härter, liebte ihr Land zu viel, um nichts weniger als ihr Bestes zu tun."

HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF GOD. It says "Die... Amerika." And somebody better warn Beendet Werden and Laufenden Gehalten as well, if they're not already dead.

How can we allow this in our great nation? Obama must be stopped. We should all boycott the speech. If this gets into the minds of our children, it may be the end of the world as we know it.

Glenn Beck, please let me be on your show.

*By socialism calculator, I actually mean that I used the Google English to German translator.

The Road to Glory

Fantasy Football Draft Picks:

QB: Drew Brees
WR: Anquan Boldin
WR: Chad Ochocinco
WR: Vincent Jackson
RB: Brandon Jacobs
RB: Clinton Portis
TE: Anthony Fasano

Bench:
Eli Manning
Lance Moore
Lendale White
Le'Ron McClain
Michael Vick

I'm a little disappointed I didn't get Brady this season, even though I won without him last year. Still, Drew Brees slings the ball around with the best of them, so I'm happy with him. I really like my running backs. I like the guys who score lots of touchdowns, so I'm pretty happy with all four of them. I took a chance on Chad Ochocinco, hoping he'd have kind of a comeback year, and I got Lance Moore because I always like to have a receiver on the same team as my QB for double points. Also, I know I'm going to take a PR hit with Michael Vick but he was my last pick in the draft and I figured, What the heck?

I've been waiting for fantasy football to start for weeks now. I have a 2 year championship win streak going in my league, and I'm pretty excited to defend it. It should be a fun year.

D-bag of the Day

At work, one of the things that my coworkers and I have invented to deal with the stresses and frustrations of working in retail is invent an award for the one person who has seemingly gone out of their way to make us have a crappy day. Whether that person is a customer, fellow employee, doner, or some schmuck on the radio, if they turn a good day into a bad day or a bad day into a worse day, they are considered a serious candidate for this award. This unique individual, if chosen, is cemented forever in history as that day's douchebag of the day.

It's the guy who comes in the store 5 minutes before close and buys a set of sofas and a large desk to go along with it. It's the person who takes a slam in the toilet and throws in too much toilet paper, thus clogging it for one of us to fix. It's the couple who brings a trailer load of pure and utter junk that has been rained on to us as a reasonable donation and then puts $1,000 on their tax receipt. I could go on and on.

But today, the d-bag of the day award goes to a person who went especially out of his way to earn this honor, and his name is: Guy-Who-Stole-My-Dog.

Ok, so I don't know his real name. But his name doesn't really matter. Guy-Who-Stole-My-Dog essentially waited until night time to pick up one of our family dogs, Bilco, and apparently take him away to his own house just a few miles down the road. In other words, he stole him. Now, the dog may have wandered off, but he never goes far, and he doesn't resemble a stray at all. He even has a collar. So, GWSMD took Bilco to his own house, put him in his fence, and removed his collar (because of course without his collar we wouldn't able to identify him). At this point, I suppose the man assumed that Bilco was his dog.

But it gets worse. My dad actually had a friend who noticed our dog at this other guy's house, and when he ran into my dad at a gas station, brought it up. They went over to GWSMD's trailer and found Bilco laying on the front porch. It was obvious by the poor dog's looks that he wasn't being fed. His ribs were sticking out more than normal, and his fur didn't look quite as healthy. No one actually came to the door when they knocked, probably because they knew they deserved a beatdown, and so my dad and his friend took Bilco and brought him home.

I guess the moral of the story is, don't mess with a person's dog. I don't know what would make any sane individual see a healthy dog with a collar out somewhere and immediately think he had a right to take it for his own and then not even go as far as to feed it, but it happened. And it makes me mad, because we've had the dog since he was a puppy. I mean, that's the dog that sits beside me every day when I go in out in the front yard to read a book. That's the dog that Stephanie and I ran through a freaking lightning storm to rescue from our dad's shop. It's the same dog that gets scared to death every year when we shoot fireworks on the 4th. And it's the same dog that wouldn't stop jumping on me once, and so I tossed him into our pond. And you're just going to steal him? Douchebag...

But I am glad that Bilco is back. Even if he is a stupid dog, he is our stupid dog. Last night when I was going to bed, I really hoped that I hadn't seen him for the last time. You can imagine how relieved I was when I pulled into the driveway and heard his familiar bark (the same one that wakes me up in the middle of the night because he is barking at a leaf or something).