Wow, so much has happened in the last week

November 7, 2006 at 11:11 pm (Stuff About Me)

Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, 07:02 PM

If you tell by the fact that this is my fourth post for the day, a lot has been going on. My Fiancé got a job working for a distribution company, I presented some of my fiction for a group of writers that I belong to, I’ve seen a few movies, transferred a car’s title into my name, and had to purchase a new insurance policy for said car. All in all, this has been a very eventful week.

I can sum it up best by saying the following:

DMV Sucks, and paperwork is evil
Car Insurance in California is painfully expensive thing
I’m blessed beyond anything I can express to have a great group of peers to pray for me in my writing endeavors
I have a wonderfully understand Fiancé that loves me more that I’ll ever understand
I have the world’s best job, and the world’s hardest job
I’m getting married in 101 days as of today

All in all, a good week.

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Eulogy

November 7, 2006 at 11:10 pm (Movie Reviews)

Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, 06:53 PM

I saw the trailer for this movie what it was coming out, and knew that I just had to see it. I’m all about watching movies that make me feel good about how bad my family is not. I think that everyone can relate to this, as we all secretly wish for some form of validation that life could be worse. This movie is about a family that brings the meaning to “dysfunction.”

The basic plot, Grand Pa (Rip Torn) dies and the family is forced to gather together to pay their last respects. The children are all grown up with kids of their own, or at least life partners, and all of their issues of a family just boil to the surface. The over controlling oldest sister (Jesse Bradford), the has been child actor who now can only get rolls in cheap porn movies (Hank Azaria), the sister who discovered she is a lesbian (Kelly Pereston), and the son that lived in the shadow of all of them and only got attention by acting out (Ray Ramono). In the middle of all of the ensuing chaos, Grandma asks the oldest grand daughter (Zooey Deshanel) to give the Eulogy at her Grand Pa’s funeral.

The Grand Daughter spends the whole movie watching how her family grew apart, while dealing with her own loss. And just when it appears there really is no good thing to say about Grand Pa, she discovers her own true love and realizes that no matter what Grand Pa always chose to love his family no matter what the circumstance was. This is accented by the magnificent Viking funeral that Grand Pa requests, as carried out by his twin grand sons that give a new definition to the word “terror.”

Word of warning, this movie is very dark! It’s hysterical and funny, but only if you have a dark and twisted since of humor, or the ability to not take your own pain and life so seriously. That is the lesson the family learns in the end, is that you can’t take life too seriously or it will destroy you.

Eulogy
Rated R
Released 2004

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To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

November 7, 2006 at 11:09 pm (Movie Reviews)

Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, 06:38 PM

I heard about this movie when it came out, but did not see it. To date myself, I think that was back when I was still in high school. But growing up in a conservative Christian home, this was not one of the films the family gathered around the TV to watch after dinner. The story is about two drag queens (Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes) in New York that win a pageant, and get sent to Hollywood to participate in a national competition. They pick up an aspiring drag queen (John Leguizamo) as their protégé. Along the way they break down in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

When my Fiancé told me I need to see this movie, I was skeptical. But, as I am learning, she does have really good taste in movies. So we watched it, and I loved it. It’s not a movie about being a drag queen, or even a movie that laughs at three gay men that dress as women. There are some very serious issues that are dealt with about society in general, and a very good statement made about being yourself no matter how hard people try to get you to be something else. The town is forever changed with the three queens teach each person to respect themselves, and to believe in them selves. A once dead and quite town becomes vibrant and lively as it’s people start to do things in new and exciting ways, breaking with the traditions that have held them captive to a very boring existence.

I have not laughed this hard in a while. Thank God my Fiancé watches movies that are weird and out of left field. Anyone who has a since of humor, and does not mind being freaked out by how much like a woman Patrick Swayze actually looks, will probably like this movie.

Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
Rated PG-13
Released 1995

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A Hard Realization

November 7, 2006 at 11:07 pm (Stuff About Me)

Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, 06:14 PM

I guess as I get older I really am starting to learn some things about myself. Sometimes I’ve had to learn them the hard way, while others I’ve been lucky enough to see what is going on around me and figure out what is going on before something bad happens. I think that I have finally come to a realization about the job I currently work at, and it’s a good thing that I’ve caught it before things got too far along.

If you have read any of the posts on this blog about how much I love my current job, you may find it no surprise that I’ve run into a snag with it. And before I go any further I just like to say that I do have the coolest job in the world, and that I have never been more happy at any place I’ve ever worked. I am crisis councilor for a non-profit organization that services Riverside County schools.

Yesterday was a hard day. I had to file thee reports with Riverside Child Protective Services. I also had to deal with an evaluator from the Superior Court of Riverside. In a nutshell, not only did I have to endure the results and handy work of the lowliest forms of life in modern society (child molesters and abusers), but I also had the opportunity to work with a member of the court system that is too busy feeling powerful to actually be swift an efficient. All in all, I chalked it up as another day on the job: it was another day making a positive difference in the life of students who have very little positive I their life right now.

But then an image stuck in my mind, as if it were seared there with a branding iron. I was asked to speak with a first grade girl who was in the Nurse’s office at my elementary school. Her arm was a skew, and had obviously been broken. I had spoken with this girl before, and she always had a smile on her face even though she was very quiet and said very little. When I entered the Nurse’s office and waved hello to her, she recoiled against the wall in fear. She pulled her knees to her chest, and held her broken arm, obviously scared by my very presence in the room. I told the school’s principal that I can not speak with her, that the girl was too scared of me. The Principal asked me to try again, and offered to collect what info she could if the child did not respond well to me a second time. So I got a sucker from my office (never work with kids if you do not have candy), and walked back into the Nurse’s office. The Nurse was sitting with the girl this time, and when I can in the poor little thing clung to her like a scared kitten. I slowly put the sucker down next to her and, told her that I just want to help her. She then broke into tears and I left the room.

As a crisis councilor, I am exposed to all kind of horrible things. I have dealt with teenager students who resort to self-mutilation in order to relive their pain. My first week at my middle school site, a kid tried to commit suicide on campus the week after his mother died of a brain embolism. I’ve had to call CPS to come and pick up a teenager whose dad is beating her. But I have not yet had to face a situation where a defenseless, helpless, first grade girl with pig tales and the most adorable smile, has been prayed upon by her own father. They train you for it, they try to prepare you with pictures of abused kids, and they give you a really good training to fall back on when you are in the moment and have to act. But you have to be the kind of person that can walk away from it at the end of the day, and leave it at work, and resume your life that you have away from work.

After talking with my fiancé, I’ve decided that I am not that kind of person. After two days I am still haunted by that image of that little girl, afraid of a man, a man whose job is to help protect her, because of what her father did to her. That look of fear has been etched into my mind and I have to purposely push it away from the forefront as I go about my regular life at home. Does that mean that I’m a bad councilor? No, it means that I posses a quality that all councilors must have: Compassion and a willingness to help those who cannot help them selves. What it does mean is that if I do not leave this job, it will consume me.

So its back to the job search, and finding a new place to work. But at least I can say that for six months, I had the coolest job in the world and did it well.

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Rainbow Six: Tom Clancy

November 7, 2006 at 11:06 pm (Book Reviews)

Posted Wednesday, June 22, 2005, 06:16 PM

Have you ever re-read a book that you once thought was really cool, only to discover that it was less than what you remember? I read this book for the first time back in my Junior Year of College (five years ago), and I loved it. So I blew the dust off it recently and got set for a great adventure. Maybe I’m just getting old, maybe I’m just a little more aware of global politics at this stage in my life, or maybe I’m just a completely different person now that I was back then.

In this book, a major drug corporation comes up with a great idea. They modify a strain of the Ebola virus and find a way to distribute it across the entire planet, effectively wiping out the entire population. Of course, there are a few bits and pieces of humanity that they want to save, so they come up with a vaccine that will protect “selected” individuals, how understand that the natural balance of nature has to be maintained to save the planet. After all, man is going to kill everything in the next few years. SAVE THE TREES!

What the company does not know is that the “good guys” have a new weapon in their arsenal to defend freedom. They have put together the ultimate antiterrorism response team, made of an international coalition of bad ass covert operations officers. Based in England, and run buy an American (of course), this team can be on the ground to respond to various situations within six hours of being called in by a countries officials.

This is a great book for republicans, and for people who generally think that it is worth any cost to secure freedom. The book starts out good, and I have very little difficulty with anything that happens in the first have of the book. Bad guys take over a bank, and take hostages, they all die in the end because they are stupid and make a lot of mistakes. But then terrorists take a whole bunch of kids hostage at an European amusement park (similar to Disneyland). One of the soldiers makes a tasteless decision after what happens to one of the kids, and is simply slapped on the wrist for breaking protocol for a serious breach of the code of ethics that separate the bad guys form the good guys.

After that, Clancy goes down hill. Rainbow, in my opinion, goes further down the road of necessary evil. When I first read the book, I believed that it was ok, because the terrorists didn’t deserve to be treated like human beings because they had proven themselves less than worthy. Now… I believe the reason the good guys stay good are because they play by the rules even when the terrorists do not. To do otherwise makes the good guys no different than those they fight against, only from an ideological stand point.

I found the ending quite a stomach turner. Now, I will be the first to admit that in the world of covert operations things are done to protect our country that are in violation of international law, and nothing is ever done to us because we are America. We have the luxury of enforcing our own ideologies on other nations, while completely disregarding things like international treaties. Who would dare stand in our way and risk being label terrorist sympathizers. Post September Eleven, and with all of the changes that America’s government has gone through in the quest to propagate our way of life, this book scares me. Why? Because what happens in the book can happen with very little difficulty. And that includes the government taking military action against it’s own civilians in order to secure the perception of security. I look at what is going on in Guantanamo Prison, and shudder when I think about what is the next step. This book embraces the idea that the government should do things that go against the constitution, in order to quietly keep things safe and allow Americans to go about their lives without a thought about what is going on in the world.

Rainbow Six
Tom Clancy
Berkley Fiction
ISBN 0-425-17034-9

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A slight brush with the LAW

November 7, 2006 at 11:05 pm (Stuff About Me)

Posted Tuesday, June 21, 2005, 01:16 AM

I just got back from dropping my Fiancé off at her house for the night, and the weirdest thing happened to me. I got pulled over by the Rancho Cucamonga Police. Now, there is a light that I have to turn left on, that is really short. And I’m always afraid that I one day I will not make the light, and that a cop will be there to see it happen. Tonight, I approached the light as it turned green. As I pull into the intersection and start my turn, I see a RCPD car coming, and putting on his signal to turn right. I stay calm, and have the presence of mind to remember that I must turn into the correct lane, and not just pick any of the three that are on the street I’m tuning on to.

I do everything flawlessly, and think I’m home free, when the lights go on in my rearview mirror. I pull over, and turn the car off. As I’m sitting there, waiting for the cop to get out and explain to me what I’ve just done wrong, I’m going over the whole thing in my head. And there is nothing wrong, at least that I can see. The officer asks me if I can show the License, Registration, and Insurance, and I give it to him (saying a pray of thank you to God for the fact that I have insurance for the first time in my life that has not lapsed). And I sit, and I sit, and I sit some more. Mind you, it’s 12:45am, and I would like to get home so I can get some sleep and go to work in the morning.

The nice man with the gun comes back and give me my paperwork back and looks at me in a condescending way as he says, “Do you know why I pulled you over Sir?” So I politely answer, “No officer, I’m don’t know why you pulled me over.” This is his response.
“Sir, I pulled you over because you do not have a licenses plate displayed on the front of your vehicle. California requires that all vehicles display a license plate on the front and back of their vehicles at all times.”
“Oh,” I say aloud. “Really? I didn’t know that my plate had fallen off.”
“Yes Sir,” he said. “I won’t be writing you up today, but make sure you find that plate or get it replaced Sir.”
“I will do that officer,” is my response.
He bids me a good night and I drive home, thinking about all the crap I have to go though now, to get a new front license plate. I hate going down to DMV, I hate standing in line with all the other people that hate going to DMV. And I really hate it when the DMV people hate working with the people that hate them because they are DMV people. Now I’m starting to get bummed about going the DMV.

I get home, and a though strikes me. I walk to the front of my car, and check to see if the plate fell off or if it was removed by someone wanting the plate. I was surprised to find that the plate was there, firmly affixed to the front of my car. I walk to the back, thinking the officer must have meant my rear plate. It was there as well. So, now I’m thinking, “What the F*&%!”

Maybe it was just a routine stop. Maybe they were looking for someone driving a car like mine. Maybe I fit some kind of profile that they were looking to find tonight. But at least tell the truth Mr. Police man. How the hell are the people supposed to trust you to up hold the Law, if you don’t tell the truth. A simple, “Sorry for the inconvenience Sir, you have a nice night,” would have been fine. But they didn’t have to lie about it.

OK, that’s my vent for the day.

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How the cheese melted

November 7, 2006 at 11:03 pm (Reflections)

Posted Monday, June 20, 2005, 01:14 AM

“Because my Maid of Honor’s maid of honor was a freak show, and is doing the same thing to me to get revenge for her!”

This illogical statement came out the mouth of the wonderful woman that I am going to be marrying in 109 days. Why, under the vast blue sky, would she say such a thing about a woman who is her best friend in the whole world, and who she loves like a sister? The answer is simple: She is planning a wedding and therefore temporarily insane. Or, as my father would say, “the cheese has slide of the cracker.”

Now, in defense of the Maid (Matron) of honor, who is the wife of my best friend in the whole world (who incidentally is the Best Man), she is in England and coordinating dress measurements between the Queen’s Standard and the American standard can be dicey at best. Let alone the fact that, apparently, the sizing standards for woman’s dresses are more loose guidelines and really mean nothing at all. As a man, this a very strange thing to try to comprehend, but apparently it is the way it has been since before I was born. That is not an easy thing to coordinate while you are out of the country.

This really is all leading up to a point, and here it is. Wedding planning is the first step in proving that you can actually stay married. It’s true. My fiancé and I have gotten into more “discussions” about table lines, color pallets, signature mats for pictures, and about what kind of privileges our children will have (God willing we ever have any), than I ever would have if we had just started living together. I swear, that the process of us having to figure out how to diplomatically have all the family members we want at the wedding in the same room, and being able to afford to feed them all, is something that will destroy your relationship if you are not careful. Especially if you are pour (like most people my age), and do not have the saving grace of parents or family to aid you.

Word to the wise: Weddings will kill you if you are not careful. I’m now convinced that the reason a couple goes on a Honeymoon as soon as they are married, is to get away from the wedding planning aftermath. You spend hours, days, weeks, months, planning this big event, and then you have it and life goes back to normal. But it doesn’t go back to normal because it is completely changed forever from that day on. So, you slip away for a week, pretend your crazy relatives do not exist, live like you have never lived before (and probably never will again), and get away from the craziness that you started the day you asked the woman of your dreams to marry you.

Wedding planning sucks! Actually, it blows. It blows those huge, big, industrial size chunks: the green kind that smells really bad. But I’m told that the day is well worth the effort…I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Only 109 days left till the whole thing happens. I just hope that my fiancé and I can hold onto what little sanity we have left in that time. Because if the cheese does not slide off the cracker, it just may melt by the time we get there.

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The tragic truth about a normal life

November 7, 2006 at 11:02 pm (Stuff About Me)

Posted Monday, June 20, 2005, 12:51 AM

Ever notice how when you least expect it, things change? Well, I guess I should be used to it by now. Now, things have not plunged into yet another dark a depressing funk in the journey that is my life. In fact, they are actually looking up…sort of.

My Fiancé finally got a job!!!! Mind you, she has been out of work for almost 2 years now. She picked up a job through a temp agency, and is working at a distribution center for a local company in Chino. She is getting loads of over time, and is settling into a new routine very well. She does work odd hours (10 am till 8pm), but it is working out.

My job is about to go through some major chances. My boss is moving on to another position elsewhere, and the organization I work for is merging with another. The good thing is that I’m getting some better pay options in the way of mileage and benefits, but we are currently in a state of limbo with a lot of our everyday tasks. We are not sure how are contracts are going to be effected by these changes, which means we do not know if all the people currently working are going to be working at the end of the summer. Yet, on the other hand, for the first time in my organization’s history, everyone has a summer assignment that wants one.

The school district I am contracted to for my specific job, is changing some things too. I will not be working at the middle school I’m at right now after July fifth. Instead, I will be working more days at the elementary school I am currently at, as well as two other elementary schools. While this is not what I prefer to do, as I really enjoy working with middle school kids a lot, it could be much worse. For instance, I could be out of a job.

So what does all of this mean…it means that life is finally getting back to normal. Yes, that is exactly what it means. Life is finally resuming it’s random, hectic, chaotic pace. I will soon be so deep in wedding planning that I will be certifiably insane. I will soon be so over come with projects and work that I will be screaming for someone to just shoot me and end the whole thing. But in the midst of all of that I will still have one thing to remember and make me feel like life is complete. For one belief moment, life was normal. Kind of freaky, hu?

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