Road Apples, #107

Mayor Leighton...see my postings as a "substitute blogger" on NEPArtisan that chronicle Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton's asinine hiring of his daughter and niece.  To be blunt, I thought this guy was better than this kind of stuff.  Guess I was wrong.  Speaking of all things "hayna"...

Hayna 500...I recently discovered what was once called the "Hayna 500".  Interesting stuff.  For the uneducated (or those from north/east of Avoca), this was a cruising circuit in and around Wilkes-Barre and Kingston.  Actually I just think the term "Hayna 500" is funny.  Kudos to Ms Rivers for that one.

Casey Armstrong...I do think that it is horribly tragic that a little girl is dead and an accused murder may have gotten away with the crime, but seriously, where is the uproar when any number of actually more pressing issues come up for public debate?  If half the people who followed the Armstrong case also followed, for example, developments in educational policy in this country, then I'd think there really would be a ground-swell for real change. This is, in a nutshell, what is wrong with Americans today:  we pay attention to the wrong things.

Kennedy Home Movies...I've been watching a History Channel show on the home movies of the Kennedy family.  Fascinating stuff.  It really does make you believe that the Kennedy clan was "America's Royal Family".  This was a clan full of beautiful people that had the world by the testes.  Well everyone except Rosemary.  Ouch.

Facebook Etiquette...At what point do you decide that those people you don't know really shouldn't be your "friend" on Facebook?  I do an every once in a while purge of Facebook, but I still have a few people that I don't actually know listed as a Facebook "friend".  All this modern technology does come with its challenges.

My Cat...had a few visitors today, and I have to say he was very well behaved.  Actually he is more of an attention whore than Lady Gaga, so his good behavior shouldn't have been much of a surprise.

Independence Day...a belated "Happy July 4th" to one and all.

NEPArtisan Posting: NEPOtism...the story continues

My latest posting on NEPArtisan, which you can link to HERE.

Casey Anthony Verdict

Disclaimer:  I didn't follow the Casey Anthony case, not for one moment.  I did, however, hear that...

...she allegedly killed her daughter
...she was found innocent of murder charges this afternoon

...and now there is an uproar.  Sign-o-the-times?  How the "Casey Anthony is Guilty" Facebook page?

I don't know if Casey Anthony is actually guilty.  Certainly it seems like she could be guilty, but that isn't what the jury determined, and in the end that how the system works.  Failed?  I think that anyone who looks for perfection in anything created by man is always going to encounter that which fails.  We are, it seems, perfectly incapable of perfection.  At best, let's hope that we get it right most of the time.  Maybe this just wasn't one of those times.

For now I say leave Casey Anthony alone.  Her trial wasn't an election and we didn't get a vote on her guilt or innocence.  The jury did, period.

NEPArtisan Posting: NEPOtism (W-B Style)

My latest "substitute blogger" posting at NEPArtisan can be found HERE.

New York Times - OpEd, Defense of Marriage Act

Worth reading...

July 3 2011 NYT Editorial.

As an extremely heterosexual male, I know that people don't "choose" to be homosexual.  Who would? I know I never would, but that fact alone tells me that being gay is more a notion of who someone is at their core, not a flippant "choice" that is more a kin to trying to determine what flavor of soft-serve is tasty at the moment.  If we accept the fact that for the vast majority of homosexuals it isn't a "choice" in as much as it is a matter of nature, then why deny them the very basic notion of determining a legally recognized partner?

I don't favor any religion being forced to recognize gay marriage, but then again I don't favor any religion being forced to recognize any form of marriage that differs from their specific dogma.  This is no different that Catholics not recognizing the religious aspect of a Protestant wedding.  What we are talking about here are basic legal rights, not infringement upon religious practice.

Time to end DOMA, once and for all.

Oh, and a final note:  It's also time for President Obama to get off the legal and moral fence on this issue.  Come out strongly against DOMA or don't come out at all.  Enough with the "I'm against this but I won't say how I feel..." nonsense.  His wishy-washy fence sitting is nauseating.

Thought Worm (follow-up)

Well the thought worm is gone, but I do find myself thinking about why it appeared in the first place.  I also sit here in amazement that I have the kind of life whereby I can actually move beyond these kinds of things.

To the former, I think I have it figured out:  I was simply mentally exhausted after a few days worth of extroversion and, being a dyed-in-the-wool introvert, the effort required to be so "on" simply took a toll.  The result was that something which really doesn't deserve "front of mind time" actually got that kind of time.    Yes, there are some weights that we carry for a long time (to borrow a line from an Abbey Road song), but that doesn't mean we have to focus on that weight.  Hell, we all carry some emotional weight with us, and who is to say that mine is any heavier than that of anyone else?  Thoughts of anger, questions of "why?", trying to understand why you allowed yourself to get so exposed, all of these things take effort but yet produce nothing in the final result.

Sometimes it helps to just say to yourself "get the f&$k out of my head".

Yes, the above is a perfectly valid strategy for dealing with the errant thought worm.  That, in and of itself, isn't enough though, at least not for me...not all of the time.  No, I'm far more blessed in that I have a wonderful support system that miraculously allows me to both give and receive when it comes to taxing situations that life brings.

Ah, giving and receiving.

I've always been good at giving...so much so that it became a kind of cover for not dealing with the real challenges facing my life.  It's been the receiving...receiving support in this specific case...that's been something of a challenge.  I've always had this "balance of payments" concept in my head whereby I never wanted to "owe" more than that was "owed" to me.  This comes from an innate fear of not being quite good enough (and therefore somehow needing to draw on that positive balance of payments).  How pathetically sad! Life isn't an accounting ledger.  Life isn't about counting your chips so that one day you can cash it all in.  Life is missed, in part, when you constantly have to constantly think though the balance of payments.

In the end this whole episode has been very, very instructive.  I've learned to accept the weight that I will be carrying.  More importantly, I've learned that for the first time in my life I actually feel supported.  There will be future stumbles, but I don't have to face them alone.

NEPArtisan Posting: Matt Drudge's Jungle Fever

By way of preface, I am acting in the capacity of "substitute blogger" for NEPArtisan blogger Tom Borthwick while he is on a well-earned vacation.  As a result I'll be adding (strictly) political content to that blog during the month of July.

My first NEPArtisan post, "Matt Drudge's Jungle Fever" can be found by clicking on THIS LINK.

Thought Worm

Okay, I haven't written much, but in my defense I was traveling this week, have a busted netbook (broken screen) and, well, last night I was suffering from a bad case of thought worm.

Now I don't know if there is a formal definition for a thought worm, but I figure that it is related the ear worm.  If you are not familiar with an ear worm, well it happens when you have "that song" running through your head that you just can't seem to out of your head.  Replace "song" with "thought" and you have the concept.  Anyway, the thought worm occurs for me, on rare occasion, when I have a thought/problem/idea that just keeps borrowing through my head like an earthworm through a pile of dead leaves.  Basically we are talking about something that I just can't seem to let go of, no matter how hard I try.

How did I get this particular thought worm?  Well I'm not going to get into the specifics of the thought, but near as I can figure it happened in part because I was so mentally tired from three days of off-site meetings.  These kinds of things typically take a lot out of me...I am usually very focused, very conscious of my surroundings, very much "tightly wrapped".  Of course eventually the tight wrapping comes off, then everything just mentally seems to just fall out.  It's then that the thought worm seems to start its boring.

This particular thought worm was especially insidious because it hearkened back to a situation where I was faced with something I just really could not understand.  To this day I still can't understand it, truth be told.  The fact that it was wrapped in a lot of emotion made it all that more difficult for me, as I find it especially difficult try to "process" some emotions.  "Process" is an important thing for me, as I'm a problem solver at heart, and understanding the nature of a problem is the first step to resolving it.  All well and good except for the fact that there are some things in life that you encounter that simply defy analysis...they can not be processed...they simply can not be "solved".  Beginning to see the nature of the thought worm now?

So yesterday evening my head is full of the thought worm, and I accomplished basically nothing.  I became this obsessed blob of nothingness that was locked into trying to figure something out that my rational head knows is impossible to figure out.  No wonder I was up until 1am, and what sleep I got was filled with thoughts and dreams that all centered around the thought worm.

Where does this all end?  Well I suspect that the truly insane have thought worms that manage to take up a permanent residence side the skull.  As for me, well I am many things, but being truly insane is not on the list. My day began with the thought worm still in control, but getting back to the routine of a day in the office helped to create some order out of my personal chaos.  Hitting the gym also further diminished the power of the thought worm, as for some reason physical exercise has this way of sorting and ordering my thoughts.  Finally the thought worm was mortally wounded this evening, as I had the opportunity to talk about all of this to a dear friend who mainly just listened.  It's amazing the power to be found in a pair of open ears.

So now my thought worm is on it's last gasp, holding on to a tiny fraction of my mental process.  It may take a few days to truly eradicate the power of the thought worm, and I do know for sure that it will probably never truly disappear because the dirty little secret here is that I'm going to carry this particular situation with me for the rest of my life.  It reminds me of the scene in the movie Rocky III where Adrian confronts Rocky over his inability to get motivated for the rematch with Clubber Lang.  Rocky is afraid but will not admit it.  The actual scene goes like this:

Can I talk to you?
I wanna ask you something important, and I want you to tell me the truth.
- What? - Why'd you come here?
I just don't want it no more.
- If it's over cos you want it to be, I'm glad. - I do.
It's just, you've never quit anything since I've known you.
I don't know what you want me to say. I mean, what happened?
How did everything that was so good get so bad?
What's so bad? Tell me. What?
I wrecked everything by not thinking for myself.

Why couldn't Mickey tell me where it was really at from the start?
He didn't have to carry me and lie and make me think I was better than I was.
- He never lied. - Those fights weren't right.
I never fought anybody in their prime.
There was always some angle to keep the title longer than I shoulda had it.
Do you understand?
You've gotta understand, he loved you! That was his job, protecting you.
Protectin' don't help nothin'. It makes things worse.
You wake up one day thinking you're a winner, but you're not. You're a loser.

So we wouldn't have had the title as long. So what?
- At least it would have been real. - It was real!
Nothing is real if you don't believe in who you are.
I don't believe in myself no more!
When a fighter don't believe, he's finished. That's it.
That's not it. Why don't you tell me the truth?
What are you puttin' me through? You wanna know the truth?
I don't wanna lose what I got.
At first, I didn't care about what happened. I'd go in the ring, get bust up.
But now there's you and the kid. I don't wanna lose what I got!
What do we have that can't be replaced? What? A house. We got cars, money.

We got everything but the truth. What's the truth, dammit?!
I'm afraid! All right?
You wanna hear me say it? You wanna break me down? I'm afraid.
For the first time, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid too. There's nothin' wrong with that.
- There is. For me, there is. - Why? You're human.
I don't know what I am. I know I'm a liar, and because of that, Mickey ain't here.
You didn't push him into anything. He was a grown man. He did what he had to do.

And you have no right to feel guilty. You don't!
You were a champion. You did what you were expected to do.
You did what everybody thought you should do.
And you wanna tell me that those fights weren't real? I don't believe it!
It doesn't matter what I believe. You've got to carry that fear inside you,
afraid everybody'll take things away, that you'll be remembered as a coward,
that you're not a man any more. Well, none of it's true.

It doesn't matter if I tell you because you're the one that's got to settle it.
Get rid of it! Cos when the smoke clears, and they stop chanting your name,
it's just gonna be us.
And you can't live like this. We can't live like this.
Cos it's gonna bother you for the rest of your life. Look what it's doing to you now.
Apollo thinks you can do it. So do l.
But you gotta wanna do it for the right reasons. Not for the guilt over Mickey.
Not for the people, not for the title, not for money, or me - but for you.

Just you. Just you alone.
- And if I lose? - Then you lose.
But at least you lose with no excuses. No fear.
And I know you could live with that.

You can link to the script for Rocky III HERE.  The moral of the story, at least for me, is that sometimes you just have settle the things that bother you inside, even if you don't completely understand them. You have to use them or in a very real sense they will use you up.

Post #1000 - Chris Kelly on the Muchak/Cordaro Trial & Verdict

Now I actually have something a bit more introspective for the "momentousness" of posting #1000, but then I read the Chris Kelly column in today's edition of the Sunday Times.  Simply put, it's nothing short of outstanding.

Now while I am loathed to link to the Scranton Time's pay-per-view site I'll make an exception here.  You can read the June 26th Chris Kelly column HERE.

(post #999) Giving Corey Credit

As I slowly catch up on the weeks (local) news, I read in this morning's edition of the Scranton Times that Lackwanna County is considering taking action against former commissioners Cordaro and Munchak to recoup some form of financial damages.  Now given that I have been pretty hard on Mr O'Brien (half of the "Great-Haired Duo" running for commissioners in the Fall) I'll be fair and give proper credit where credit is due in that this is something worthy of at least exploring.  Do I think there is actual cash to be had from the smoldering carcasses of Cordaro & Munchak?  Probably not, but it doesn't hurt to at least look into the possibility.

Note to the above referenced half of the Great-Haired Duo though:  be careful throwing those rocks, as you know how that old saying goes.

Along the lines of the glass houses thought, what makes even more sense here is for some outside body to take a look into the operation of county government in areas such as professional services procurement and other county contracts to make certain that any and all stains of "pay to play" have been removed.  Am I implying that such arrangements still exist?  No, but I am claiming that local governments in this region are right up there with Chicago when it comes to finding creative ways to fund political campaigns and reward supporters, so while we are cleaning house it probably makes sense to do some procedural pressure-washing, if you get my drift.

I suppose much of what I've written above comes down to the following:  I don't trust ANY of them now.  Yes, Cordaro and Munchak are the convicted ones, but anyone who thinks that the behavior examined during the trial is unique to those former commissioners is sadly mistaken.  Put another way, they were the ones who simply got caught.  Credit that to the Fed's for diligence and Bob Cordaro for having such an inflated sense of self worth that he eventually believed his own act.

Poor AJ...he most likely just got sucked into the vortex.