I’m so interesting

My wife is in grad school. My real wife, not like Alice’s wife. ( Alice and Amber are back BTW – I’m happy ). But my wife is in grad school. It’s kind of cool because she’s taking online courses so she never has to go to class and hear anyone say, “Bueller … Bueller”.

She lets me help her with her homework to see my opinion. This one question – and it seems like all of them are this way – was about environment’s effect on learning. Seems there was this one psychiatrists dude, Watson, who conditioned a kid to be afraid of white rats. The kid, Albert, grew terrified of rats and anything white and fury including Santa who had a white fury beard. Watson never got to recondition Albert.

At first you think, “No way, he’s an evil guy,” because that’s all the text book tells you. But then you go look it up and you learn Albert was and orphan and was adopted during the conditioning and we never know the end of Albert.

I don’t believe we are products of our environments. I believe we make choices. Having his belief means I disqualify myself from ever using the excuse, “Well, that’s the way I’m born.”

I believe we are given the ability and responsibility of making choices in our lives. We call the choice shots and our choices are based on what we believe to be right and wrong.

Recently my mom was in a car accident and I got a chance to catch up with my sisters.

I’ll leave it at this … I could be on Jerry Springer with their kids.

And that makes me wonder if I’m doomed to be a product of my environment or not.

Hi … my name is Jef and I’m a (fill in the blank)

There are lots of things worse than needing to sleep but not being able to. People say stuff like, “The WORST thing ever …” and then they go on about something that’s not so bad.

I just can’t sleep. A normal side effect for me when I’m stressed and have a lot to do.

So do you mind if we talk for a little while? It’s 6:48 AM and I’ve been up since 5 on my week off and you won’t be reading this until, ohhhhh at least 10:00 AM.

Little a went to band rehearsal with me last night because I wanted my wife to rest, but wife is all depressed about not being able to go or do anything and she’s tired but gets plenty of rest. Normal surgery stuff. I would have a problem with cabin fever too if it was me.

So I took little a with me to church to rehearse. She was the popular kid with the laptop and the Barbie Fairytopia video.

She fell asleep on the way home so I had some time to think.

The problem is us.

We like to think the problem is political parties or “them” or the blacks or the illegals or terrorists or whomever. Personally, I like to pin it on the Hippies and the illegals. But really … it’s us. Ya, like you and me. If we got our stuff together as individuals and stopped worrying about the proverbial “them” that my grandmother talked about, I think we would be a lot better off. The “them” my Nana talked about was usually the Republicans, specifically, Ronald Reagan who was out to take her “check” away from her.

But think about it. Whenever we twist off on someone it’s usually just nailing a bunch of stereotypes or loose facts to a broad group. I do it. It’s wrong. Most of the time we are all just trying to get through the day and it’s easier to pin our problems on someone else instead of ourselves. That’s why I have a hard time with people who don’t take ownership of their problems. You got yourself there, ya know?

There’s this verse in the Bible I really like that has to do this. It goes something like, “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.” ( I Chr 7:14 ) There you go, the solution to big time problems in the world. That’s how we “fix it”.

When you look at it, it’s pretty self-explanatory. If you look at your life and see where YOU screwed up and get over it and admit it, then I’ll do something to help you. But only if you admit there’s a problem there.

Beyond that, the problem is none of us think we have a problem.

And what a wild weekend it’s been

To say my life has been turned upside down would be a bit of a misnomer. Take a bowl of spaghetti turn it upside down on a white carpet and go live in a circus and that’s close to what it’s been like.

Friday was not my best day … ever …

I started off by putting the wrong kind of gas in my car. And now I know that Ethanol 85 does not work in a 1999 Honda Civic ( or “Civi” as I’m missing the “c” on the end of the logo on the back ). What happens is your check engine light comes on, it runs rough and you have to spend your afternoon under your car draining your gas out and putting in about $40 worth of engine cleaner to get it straight.

But before that, you have to totally lose your cell phone. I mean lose it. Like it’s attached to your hip and then Houdini says “Abracadabra”, or maybe Steve Miller, and it’s gone. You can spend 30-45 minutes retracing your steps in the rain, and never find it, like I did, and end up having to spend $20 on a SIM card for your spare phone that plays some kid of Rap song because you got it cheap off Ebay and then pay $50 in insurance to replace the old one.

And then on Sunday, when you think it’s going well and you fill your grocery cart with food and you’re checking out and they total you up, forget your wallet like I did and have to go home and get it and run back and hope your milk and butter and stuff isn’t spoiled.

So ya, I’ve lost my mind this weekend.

My Hips Don’t Lie

I’m not really sure how I stumbled on Shakira, but I like that song “Hips Don’t Lie”. I used to know a couple of belly dancers. They had a blast at it. There was a question on Yahoo questions about how Shakira could make her hips move that fast. They said she wasn’t that good and her choreographer taught her how to do that. And Shakira is 1/2 Lebanese. Interesting. “HDL” is a catchy tune, but I couldn’t resist the spoof video on YouTube – it’s marked as adult content, but it’s really just funny. Google video has it not marked as adult so you won’t have to log in if you want to see it there.

Right now my wife is asleep from surgery. She had a little baby factory work done. We’ll just say that little a won’t have a little brother or sister unless someone wants to pay for my vasectomy reversal AND find us a serogate or as A’s doctor says, “An incubator”. I like that guy AND he’s a Tech grad.

So enjoy the video I’m enjoying the hospital’s wireless network and my offices laptop.

Actual Conversation

Coworker: I’m going to read about suicide. I may not be here when you get back.
Me: You’re just reading about suicide, right, cause that sounded bad.
Coworker: Yikes. it DID didn’t it?

Pizza Patron Accepts Pesos

Let’s talk about immigration. I don’t have anything against immigrants who are here legally. Hey, at one time part of my family were immigrants. They got tired of the King of England and headed out for a road trip on the 3rd ship after the Mayflower. Somewhere along the line one of them hooked up with an Indian squaw ( sorry Native American woman ) and I became this odd mix of Irish and Native American. Basically, I can beat on the tom tom and shoot a bow and arrow but get a really bad tan. I think my Indian name is Burns Like Toast.

So the U.S. has been dealing with this immigration thing for a long time. You know we’ve always had illegals here. The difference is that in the way back machine we brought illegals over from Africa. We got around that until 1861 saying they were property, which in my opinion, the whole slave thing was wrong, but I have no idea why we still hash that out.

Somewhere in the 1830’s Mexico and Spain decided they didn’t want the natives south of the Rio Grande so they started kicking them out and sending them as far away from the “home office” as possible. That happened to be Texas and they haven’t stopped. I think their excuse was, “Hey man, whee don’t whant no poor peoples!” So they kicked them out and have been exporting criminals for well over a century, because basically, they can and we don’t say anything about it.

So how do I feel about immigration? You really don’t care what I think, you have your opinion, but the people who make the rules regarding illegals don’t live where I live. They don’t live where people speak languages other than English and expect me to learn their language. They don’t live where, tons of them commit crimes, clog welfare and insist on free handouts. A co-worker actually told me the other day – and this is verbatim – “You should learn some Spanish.” Umm no, they should be learning English. Ya well try that sh!t in France or Germany. It doesn’t fly so why should the U.S. be different.

Second thing is this, the immigrants we get, mostly Hispanic, don’t make an effort to integrate into American culture. They almost insist on resisting learning English, not educating themselves and live off of welfare. Yes, they may get a better deal here, but it’s a drain on everyone else for free services.

I had a conversation with a coworker who was from India legally. Our conversation centered on immigrants from India. Most from India are the elite. Basically, if you’re poor in India, you can’t get out. And I know that’s true in other parts of the world as well. But where I live, Hispanics really don’t do well in school, they have high drop out rates and they have the highest unwed teenage pregnancy rates. And we’re paying for it. There are exceptions and there are stellar performers, but the large population, not so much.

Let’s say you snuck into a movie theater without buying a ticket. The manager tells you to leave, but instead of leaving you insist on getting free popcorn and free drinks and you want to stay and watch other movies tomorrow and the next day and so on and so forth, and hey, you don’t want to pay for it. That’s what the illegals do and are proposing and are about to get in this country.

I just read the “immigration bill” – read “Bill to allow tons of current criminals to stay and mooch off of us – got an amendment voted down. I’ll let Yahoo News state it:

“The Senate defeated an amendment by Sen. John Cornyn … a Texas Republican, that would have barred large numbers of illegal immigrants from taking advantage of the proposed legalization program.
The measure would have excluded anyone convicted of document fraud or identity theft, ignored deportation orders or committed felonies from gaining legal status.”

Hmmm, so we’ll let you stay now if you’re a criminal? Well, I guess it doesn’t make a difference, you’re already a criminal anyway.