New!

Happy Holidays!

Am I heartless?

Friday night, I got some rather dour news that my father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. For most people this would have caused immediate sadness, but for me, there was…nothing.

Full disclosure, I am not close to my father. That is not to say I hate him or that we are estranged. I’m just more of a momma’s boy.

I know that had she said it was her with the cancer diagnosis, I would have dropped everything and rushed to see her. This brings to question, why the big difference in caring for my parental units? Perhaps I can go even further down that rabbit hole and ponder

This is not the first time my lack of empathy has caused me to question myself. About 15 years ago, my grandfather passed away. Aside from my mother and little brother, he is probably the closest family member I had, so one would imagine I’d have taken his death hard. Perhaps even broken down in tears at the funeral. That wasn’t the case, though, as I found myself itching for the ceremony to end. Granted, I was distracted by the death stares certain family members (who i only see at funerals) were giving my fiancee at the time.

Another such incident happened a few years back when a really good friend from college passed away. Again, no sadness, tears, or any such feeling, but I was in shock. Having not talked to her for a few months and then suddenly having a conversation with her that night, only to wake up the next morning and see facebook posts announcing her death. Making it worse, her husband said that she passed away not long after we logged off. It was just a heavy load knowing that you were the last person someone talked to, aside from their significant other.

This brings me back to the heartless topic. Many have called me out on not having emotions, some going so far as to call me a robot. Long ago, I stopped having feelings, choosing to channel them into other avenues, such as music. However, I am reminded of the game, Kingdom Hearts. In it, there are these characters called heartless, which are the soulless embodiment of the darkness in people’s hearts. Could it be that I am a version of one these creatures?

I kid, I kid. I do ask though that you keep my dad in your thoughts, prayers, and animal sacrifices that he makes it through this. Losing a parent, no matter how close or distant you are from them, is not a pleasant experience and I do not wish to have to endure such.

Let me end this with something positive

Until next time!

 

Link

Just a public service announcement

Tomorrow is Museum Day. Participating institutions will allow you to get in free. I highly recommend you take advantage of some free culture. Personally, the reason I don’t go to museums, besides none worth seeing being around here, is the price.

Here’s the link…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/search/?q=

Hope you can find something in your area!

I did a thing….

When I’ve had a few moments here and there I’ve put together this seemingly never ending list of movies i’ve seen (to my memory) over the last 11 years.

If you have time, take a stab at my quiz/list

https://www.listchallenges.com/11-years-of-movies

What’s good? (out of town)

Apologies (again). There will be no “what’s good” post this week. I’m out of town for work. Hopefully, this won’t affect any other posts this week

Sorry, again!

 

Mystery Man

Lt. Dan…ICE CREAM!!!

Today is National Ice Cream Day. To celebrate, I went to Dairy Queen and picked up a Oreo Blizzard.

 

As delicioso as that was, there is a reason that I “settled” for a cup of ice cream goodness, rather than going to the store and purchasing a gallon of cookies and cream. What is the reason? Well…

Surely you have seen this video by now. This person, and I use that term lightly, apparently had the flu and wanted to start an epidemic. So, she goes to a Wal-Mart, opens a container of ice cream, and licks it while her friend videos it for people to see.

A tweet from this “person” has surfaced showing that she wants to start a movement. Thankfully, this hasn’t gained much traction, but there have been copycats. Most notably for me is a guy, roughly about 45 min from here, who did his own ice cream licking. As it turns out, he had already bought it, but still…

I read an article earlier today saying that police have located the original licker (and her boyfriend). A decision is still being made on whether to charge the boyfriend (clearly he’s an accomplice), but she could face up to 20 yrs in jail and be charged with a second-degree felony for tampering. However…

It turns out she is a juvenile, so as much as ice cream lovers around the world want her to suffer a fate worse than death (such as being strung up by her pinky toes, having her skin slowly ripped from her body while being doused in urine and acid), we have to wait for the Texas juvenile courts to decide what to do with her.

Will justice ever be served? I can’t tell you, but at least police actually did something besides kill random minorities and found her. There is hope…as long as the buck stops with her.

In the meantime, I’ll keep my ice cream options outside of grocery stores for the time being. That being said, I want another blizzard!

Just a little escape

Going away for the rest of the week. I’ll be back Sunday. Hope everyone enjoys the July 4th holiday!

Mystery Man

Through the eyes of babes

Yesterday, I had the chance to observe little kids at play. What makes this something worth writing about, other than the fact that I’m trying to get back into the swing of things? Well, all these kids were of different races and yet, here they were playing together as if they had no differences.

Surely, we can all remember these days when all we had to do was be released in the “wild” of the playground and all was good. I miss those days so much, i tell ya! Even moreso because I grew up in the 80s..you know where we could do things like fall down in the dirt and not have child protective services called on our parents (i’ve actually seen this happen, btw).

These days, you can’t even let a kid ride in the shopping cart without people freaking out and judging. A lady, probably in her later 60s or 70s, at Costco literally got in front of a couple at Costco yesterday and watched as their child was jumping in the basket. She then pleaded for the toddler to sit down because it was “making her nervous”. When the child didn’t bow to her paranoia, she fetched the store manager and had the mother strap the child in. This is the world we live in people!!!

Anyway, back to the reason I started writing these thoughts down. The kids at the play area were oblivious to any differences…race, economic, gender, etc. Remember those days? I even saw one little girl break down in tears and hug all the other children when it was time for her to leave. Ah…the innocence of a child.

A small observation, though. The parents, obviously as multicultural as the children, all kept to themselves, save for a couple of friendly queries (“how old is she?”, “where does he go to school”, etc). The rest of the time can you guess what they were all doing? If you said watching the kids play, you would be wrong!

Yep, they were buried in their phones! Watching this, I wondered were they doing this because this is the culture we currently live in, or is this a way for them to avoid interacting with people that are different. That sounds harsh, but it is what it is. Sad part is, the kids will be doing the same thing in a few short years. *SIGH*

Seeing the joy on these kids’ faces, though, brings me hope that this generation coming up will be just fine…and hopefully not a slave to technology and prejudice.

Relapse and return

Yes, I am still alive. I had a relapse of the sickness from a couple of weeks ago and just haven’t been up to posting. Rest assured, though, I’ll be back soon with a new focus on this blog.

In the meantime, help this blog grow by spreading the word and telling people about what’s going on here, whether you like it or not. Any publicity is good publicity!

 

Until next time….

 

Mystery Man