Digital Cowboy

When I threw this blog up on a whim one night, I promised that I would soon put some style on it. Of course I never got around to it. Graphic design is NOT my thing. I’m a code geek; totally left brained. I looked at a few templates a couple of times but never could get enthused. I kept telling myself that “it’s about the content anyway!” so that I could justify letting the site design languish.

I just got off the phone a few minutes ago with Difster. He looked at the new site and proudly told me that the old one was an eyesore.

I knew that. But it’s about the content! Actually, it’s not. I was just being lazy and, in my typical perfectionist way, avoiding tackling something I knew I couldn’t do well.

Now that I’ve explained all that, I have to confess that this design is not remotely mine. It’s the default theme for WordPress 1.5. My hosting service had a problem today (the first problem I’ve had with them in over 5 years) so I decided that since the blog had already been down for a while today, it was as good as scheduled downtime for the 10 minutes or so I’ve been needing to do this upgrade.

I like the new look and I love the new features. WordPress really rocks.

Maybe someday I’ll even get motivated to do some tweaking and add an email address or a background image for that huge frickin’ blue banner or something. The next project is going to be pop-up comments. I’m hoping to complete that tonight… But “The Dukes of Hazzaard” is on as I type this so… no promises.

UPDATE: Pop-up comments are now working. I want no crap from anyone about how the text is all centered and too small and the banner at the top is too big. I’m aware, but I have Dukes to watch. I’ll pretty it up later tonight or tomorrow or sometime later this year. Just be thankful that the main page isn’t an “eyesore” anymore you ungrateful jackals!

I told some of this story in a couple of comments at Vox’s, but I want to tell the whole story.

My neighbors are very nice people. Good neighbors, hard working, etc. They have many hangers-on and because they are so generous their house is a revolving door. Sometimes, I can’t keep track from one day to the next who’s living there and who’s just visiting. The homeowners are a man and his wife. They have one son.

The woman that lives there has a sister. She has three kids. The oldest is four, the next is three and the third is an infant. The baby has a different father than the other two and neither father is in the picture, at all.

Last weekend they had a birthday party for the boy that lives there. He was turning six.

Loser Broad first picked a fight with me by saying, “I don’t go for no ‘no-strings’ relationships. You wanna hook up with me, you’re gonna pay some bills.” (PLEASE note that I was only standing around witnessing the conversation up to that point! I was NOT involved. She was also smoking pot and I wasn’t.)

So I said, “There’s a name for that. It’s called ‘prostitution.’”

For some reason she didn’t like that. Truth hurts, I guess.

A few minutes later she literally gets in my face. I was a bit startled and stepped back. Turned out she was just trying to make our conversation private so she could say, “Mark, PLEASE put those girls in school!”

“MY girls?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Not a chance and I really don’t wanna have this conversation with you right now.” (We were at a party.)

“I know you’re a really smart guy and you can teach them everything they need to know, but they’re not going to learn the social skills they need from you.”

At that point, I turned behind me and pointed to the bounce house about 20 feet away where my kids were playing with about 5 others, including hers (this was a birthday party) and said, “Does it look to you like they’re lacking social skills?”

“But our schools here are some of the best ANYWHERE!”

“It’s a funny thing about that white speck on the top of chicken shit. It’s still shit.”

“OK. This conversation is over!”

“Thank God! I was wondering what it would take to get it through to you.”

While she’s lecturing me, her oldest is the same age as my youngest. My four year old is reading and doing basic addition and subtraction in her head. Her four year old can barely speak an intelligible sentence. Her three year old is worse. His speech sounds like my daughters at 18 months, though I recently learned that he has a hearing impairment. Little excuse, when you consider that it was probably her fault. Chain smoking, drinking and pot are not good for fetal development.

You’re lecturing ME?!?!

My wife’s parents were way ahead of their time. In 1972 they finally realized their dream of adopting a child, since they were unable to have one naturally. Incapable of normal human love, they continued to lavish themselves, and her, with luxuries like a nanny and all the toys money could buy. Of course her mother never took a day off work when they finally got her, even though she was only 7 days old. The child wasn’t the point. Mommy had a job to do to make sure she could keep making the money for the piano lessons and dance classes she had planned for her little baby to make her proud.

Besides, “that nigger” (Mommy’s words — heard ‘em myself) Lula Mae was there to take care of the baby, on the cheap. I had the opportunity to meet Lula Mae before she died. One of the finest and most humble women I’d ever met. While working for peanuts raising someone else’s spoiled kid, she raised about 10 of her own. Most of them are doctors and lawyers now. I look forward to talking with her when I get to heaven.

My wife had every material thing she could ever want… with strings. And she never had the one thing she really wanted – unconditional love. Until she met me. She ran from it because she doesn’t know what to do with it.

I’m determined that my daughters will understand my unconditional love no matter what it takes. I wish I could tell their grandparents that children are not pets. I will not allow my daughters to be defiled that way anymore than I would let them live with child molesters.

If you’re a married mother that’s working while your children are in government schools, I’m talking about you and your pathetic excuse for a husband.

“The uh, the uh, I think there were some jelly beans thrown. The teacher got the rest of the kids out of the classroom for safety’s sake.”

Vox is usually right and he certainly is about government schools. If you love your kids, you’ll never let them near a government building, especially if it’s a school. If your kids are in government schools it’s because you’re ignorant or lazy. I hope it’s the former. If so, maybe I can help.

The lead into this post was a quote from a reporter covering a story about a 5 year old girl that was arrested… Did you get that? She was ARRESTED! As in: she was handcuffed and carried away in a cruiser for… throwing jelly beans.

FIVE YEARS OLD!

HANDCUFFED!

Thank God the teacher was on top of things and got all the other children to “safety” before they got hit with a jelly bean.

I got your “socialization” right here. Your primary argument against home education is my primary reason for doing it. I don’t want my kids exposed to this kind of “socialization.” It’s the blind leading the blind. Or, perhaps, it’s the evil leading the evil. Either way, my kids deserve better no matter what it costs me.

They deserve an education, too, and they won’t get it there.

What I should’ve included in that last Tombstone post is this…

Just prior to where I began quoting previously, Wyatt says, “How are we feeling today, Doc?”

Doc: “I’m dying. How are you?”

Wyatt: “Pretty much the same.”

Doc: “So now we can add ’self-pity’ to your list of frailties.”

There’s a lot of wisdom in that last line I quoted of Doc’s. Self-pity is not a “frailty,” as he put it. It’s a very dangerous flaw that will kill you if you indulge it. It’s a weapon in a spiritual war. It opens all kinds of doors to your enemy that are hard to close. Don’t EVER feel sorry for yourself. Not for a second. Not ever. Not for any reason. It’s a trap.

A trap that seems to lay in wait for me, freshly baited, every day.

Once again, I’m preaching to me. I hope y’all get something helpful from listening in on my thoughts.