Respect Your Elders

Well, last week I get a phone call from my mother, and she is talking about whatever, the weather, or shopping, something not all too important or I would likely remember it now. Then at about where the end of the phone call would be, she does this:

"Oh, you heard about Grandma right?"

"No, what's up?"

"She's up in the hospital, she has breast cancer"

At this point I was a little annoyed with my mother, seeing how she stated it as though she were going to say "Hey, Grandma bought a car" or "Grandma is going on a tropical cruise", rather than it being bad news. I was really stunned.

My grandmother is the hardest working person I have ever known. From pretty much the day she was married till she was around 70 years old, she was in the dairy barn, milking cows, morning and night, years and years, hardly ever taking a day off. While growing up I helped out a lot, and if there were a time where I would fall down, hit my knee, slam my hand, she would send me to the house, tell me to take a break, she would continue to do it on her own, I could take my time.

But if she ever got hurt, it didn't matter how badly, she would not leave that barn. I swear sometimes if her legs would have gotten cut off she would have just stayed there, working diligently, that's just the type of person she was. I don't know if she felt no pain, or just learned to deal with it, but like I said, she's the hardest working person that I have ever known.

I went yesterday to see her at the hospital, and when I got there she was the only one in the room, my cousin had been to see her earlier in the day, and my sister was going to be coming up to pick her up later on. She was sitting on the edge of the bed looking contemplative, no television was on, no magazines opened to read. When she saw me come in she smiled, "Oh my, I didn't expect to see you?" Of course I had to ask her what that was supposed to mean, because there is no way that I would NOT come to see her if she were sick or injured, to which she replied "Ah, I'm doing just fine, I'm all ready to go home."

I sat down and we started to talk, it's always funny how my grandmother brings up the weather, and how hot/cold/stormy/windy/rainy/dry it's going to be. She tends to be a pessimist about such things, but then, with the weather being what it is in Nebraska, she has good reason to be. But in all things related to the farm and family, she is always supportive. She asked how belly is doing, and wondered about her great grandchild on the way. I think she's excited about the opportunity of having one that she can actually see more than once maybe every 3 years or so, that's one of the big reasons I want to live closer to home, because your family is important.

I think one of the more interesting aspects about my grandmother is that she never cares to focus on her own situation, instead she wants to know how you are, and if there is anything she can do to help. She has been that way her whole life, she sacrifices anything personal for the good of those she loves. I think about some of the foolish things I have done in my life, and how I would get a stern look and maybe a sentence or two about responsibility, but it was always followed by a cold glass of milk, some cookies, and discussion about happier events.

After about an hour or so the nurses said they needed to prepare my grandmother to get ready to go home. She joked with them about how she would see them again tomorrow, for chemotherapy. They had to go so far as to remove her lymph nodes but were hopeful with the chemo that they could eradicate the rest of the cancer without too much of a problem. I was amazed that she was able to make jokes about something like that, but then that's how Grandma is, never one to focus on the bad in a situation too much, always wanting to move on to better topics.

She'll have to go up every day for chemotherapy, not sure how many days she'll have to do it. Probably until they decide that they've gotten the rest of the disease. I certainly hope we find a cure for cancer soon. You have people around the world screaming about HIV/AIDS but with all due respect to the seriousness of that particular disease, it IS preventable with simple measures. Cancer is not, and cancer affects far and away more people than HIV, I get irritated with the amount of money politicians talk about throwing at HIV, and it's not that it's a bad thing, but I believe that money could be spent better finding a cure for cancer. Supposedly we are close, and that's good.

I guess I get frustrated by a variety of things when I think about how our society deals with their elders. Is it any wonder why senior citizens fight to keep their licenses long beyond the safe point for many of them to be driving? Most of the middle aged and younger Americans have no desire to care for them, they act as though it's such a burden to give their parents a ride to the doctor, to take them shopping for food, or to even go over and visit them, just to see how they are doing. And if that's not bad enough, it's utterly appalling just how poorly the government legislates care for seniors, it's as though they feel it's just a bunch of people who should be put someone and then wait for them to die. Of course seniors want independence, who else is going to take care of them?

This is something I strongly believe in, not only because of what I see, but lets face it, we all have a very personal stake in this particular topic. You are either going to die young, or you are going to get old someday and have to deal with the very problems I've mentioned above. Even putting money away for yourself so that you have a nice nest egg doesn't always help, there are greedy children who declare their parent(s) incompetent for no other reason than to keep them from spending their hard earned money, just so they can get ahold of an inheritance when 'mom and dad finally kick the bucket'.

I don't mean to condemn everyone with broad statements, because I like to believe that the majority of Americans do care for their elders, it's just that our government is doing very little to make the quality of life for the older generations anything that you could call respectful. Our lawmakers in Washington are going to be older someday, I guess though that when you have thousands of dollars a month coming to you as part of a self promoted pension plan, then you don't have many of the same concerns that Joe Smith the life long auto worker, or Jane Williams the career waitress have to worry about. For people like them, social security doesn't really do everything it should and they live month to month hoping to have enough to survive, especially if they have no help from relatives to get them by.

Other countries do a lot more to support their elderly. I'm not even saying that we have to have our parents live with us at an older age, but there is no reason anyone over the age of 65 should have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or how they are going to pay for their medication, who will take them to their doctor's appointments, or even if they can afford their own funeral. I certainly hope this situation changes at some point. We need to have more respect for our elders, it's likely going to be you and I having the same problems someday if something doesn't change.

Reflections On California

It’s interesting that I can think of only a few places in the United States where I would absolutely NOT want to live. New York City comes to mind, Boston is another, but in terms of entire states, I was always opposed to living in California. I don’t know if it was because it seems like every person I had ever met from there has been shallow and self centered, or the idea of being in earthquake/forest fire/mud slide central, or even if it were something else about California that bothered me. So how interesting it was when belly and I found out a year and a half ago that she would not be stationed at Yuma, Arizona, but would in fact be at Camp Pendleton, in good old California.

So from the middle of November 2005 to now belly has lived in Oceanside, right next to San Diego. As for myself, I was there from November of 2006 till middle of January 2007. All together, I spent roughly 105 days in California, including the two weeks back in May when I was home on leave. As belly finishes up her time in the USMC, I’m back in Nebraska getting things ready for our return to the Husker state. Being here allows me to look back at my time in California and reflect a bit.

I’d say the first impression I got out of California was people, everywhere. There are just SO many people. I think you can be on any stretch of road or interstate at any time of day or night and there will always be other cars out there with you. If you want to get out and really “drive”, good luck. Better do it in the middle of the night because between 6 am and 10 pm, the interstates are far too crowded, and people of foreign persuasion have absolutely NO concept as to WHY the left lane is called the “passing lane”. To them it’s just another lane to drive 5 mph slower than the speed limit. Yes Hispanic and Asian drivers, I’m talking to you.

There were a lot of other SRT4 drivers out there, oddly enough I rarely ever saw one while just out driving around, but I went to a couple of meets and also to the California Speedway at Fontana to race a couple of times down the track, and they were all over there. There is quite a community online to work with in that area and that was nice. To put it into perspective, in Nebraska I have seen only one other SRT4, on base a few days after I got back. And in the regional sections on the srtforums, there is basically nothing going on in the Nebraska area, where as the California sections had a good amount of information and feedback, and events going on. I guess that’s just the difference when you have some 10 or 15 million people in an area that in Nebraska holds about 1 million.

I guess maybe coming from Nebraska I was a little unprepared for the volume of humanity you find in California. We experienced the worst of this on a Saturday in December when we went to Disneyland. It was a lot of fun early in the day, and even at about 3 pm it wasn’t too bad, but for some reason, after 5 or 6 pm people just started flooding the gates, it was like ants marching or something. We really thought that going to Disneyland in December on a Saturday would mean we’d get a lot more freedom to move around and wouldn’t have to wait in line very long for rides or food, etc. We couldn’t have been more wrong. I don’t know that I have ever seen that many people in one place at one time. It was really crazy.

Of course, with all these people, you need a way to feed everyone, and places for everyone to shop. Can’t say I have too much to complain about in that department. It seemed like you could see the golden arches of the next McDonalds from any McDonalds you went to in California, they were everywhere. There were also around 10 Walmarts within about 10 miles of our place. It was interesting sometimes how belly and I couldn’t decide what to eat, we’d just drive around and there were just too many places, how do you choose? It also made it hard to stay at home and eat, and that can be a bad thing, both on your waist and your wallet. But for all he different places shop and eat, there was very little open after 11 at night. Omaha has several 24 hour Walmarts, all of them around Oceanside closed at 11. Same with most of the places to eat, which in all reality is just like Omaha. That surprised me.

The weather was amazing. On January 1st, I went outside at about 1 in the afternoon and it was 81 degrees. That is just unreal. The weather tends to stay between 50 and 80 for the most part year round. There are a few exceptions, I don’t know about the hotter times, I wasn’t there at all during the summer, but there were a few days when it approached freezing while I was there. That seemed quite cold at the time. But I’m looking out the window now in Nebraska, at 6 inches of snow on the ground and a constant 5 degree temperature, and somehow 35 degrees actually sounds kind of nice.

I took the weather for granted while I was there. My car was always clean and sparkling, the interior still looked and smelled new. Now my car is covered in salty grime, the interior has little dirt swipes along the bottom of the doors, there is sand and grime all over in the floor mats, it’s not a disaster area, but it just doesn’t look brand new anymore. But even for how crummy the weather is now, I prefer having the seasons, both because it gives you a change of scenery, and activities, and you also have something to look forward to, if you don’t care for the weather, wait a couple months, it’s going to change.

One thing that didn’t surprise me about California, the people can be very rude. They will cut in line at the store, they will steal your parking spot right in front of you, they will talk over you if you are asking someone a question, just so they can get help before you, it’s really surprising to see just what they feel is acceptable. That’s not to say you always see this, but it is really prevalent. Certainly this isn’t just in California, whenever you throw millions of people into one area you will have this. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy it regardless of where it happens. I was appalled at what I saw from time to time.

Another surprise about California: I seriously thought that I would have to contend with hoards of Hondas and other low rate foreign cars trying to race me all the time. This never happened. In fact, the people driving those cars were reasonable to be around, rarely ever revving the engine at red lights or driving stupid. It was morons in pickup trucks that did all of that. I swear, I’ve never seen so many idiots driving pickups, always trying to race. Time and time again I’d be at an intersection waiting for a light to turn green, sitting next to a lane that would end just after the intersection, and some dumb ass in a pickup would pull up into that lane and inch out ahead as though to get ahead of me. Time and time again I’d leave the morons way behind, as he drives his oversized phallic symbol of a truck as hard as reckless as he can, failing by far to get ahead. It probably has something to do with having several large military facilities nearby, along with having the sand dunes within a couple of hours to the west. But still it was a surprise to see that the idiots aren’t driving little sports cars, they are driving 4X4 pickup trucks.

I will admit though, California wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. The scenery was beautiful, the weather was amazing like I said. We really didn’t take advantage of being that close to the ocean like we should have, and I should have been out running every day, but I wasn’t. With so much fast food all around, and because I spent 15 months never cooking for myself, I got too used to hopping into my car and heading down the road to Jack in the Box, Carl Jr, McDonalds, etc, to get a burger and fries, many times with a milkshake. It certainly didn’t help that I loved driving my car around too.

But for all the little nice things about California, there are just too many people around for my liking. I am not claustrophobic by any means, but I like to be able to get away from human contact from time to time, to just go outside and get away from people, but out there, so many people. It’s nice in Nebraska to just go fishing or hiking somewhere and not see anyone for an entire day. I suppose had we lived a little further away from the coast in Cali it might have been different. Who knows, maybe we’ll be out there again someday. I know we’ll visit. Not sure if we’ll live there though. Three months is likely enough.

The (White) Crap Show

I don't think anyone can really say that reality television has come 'a long way' as a positive thought, more that reality TV has gone a long way to become a complete and total joke, especially over the last couple of years. With the Total Makeover and Bachelor/Bachelorette shows, and even worse the Surreal Life, the entire genre is truly circling the toilet bowl.

So today I'm hanging out up at Alfonzo's studio and I happen to catch a little bit of a couple of episodes of a new show on VH1, "Ego Trip's White Rapper Show". Now the premise of the show doesn't sound too bad. Ten contestants from across America will live in a run-down South Bronx tenement, and will be put through challenges that will test their knowledge of Hip-Hop culture, as well as their ideas about race.

So, could be interesting, a show that could highlight the rap culture that many young white Americans have embraced, showcasing their talent, right? WRONG!!! In no way, shape, or form did VH1 go for talent in this particular show, they went for the most screwed up, idiotic, totally half assed morons you could think of. Oh they have attitude and they are loud, but they are not talented at all. I guess they must think that the obnoxious arguing and fights are what bring in the ratings?

That's not to say that there wouldn't be obnoxious arguing and fighting among really decent rappers, but at least they would have talent. I looked over at Alfonzo and he had this "What in the FXXX??" look on his face when three of the guys on the show were 'freestyling', which is basically doing lyrics without any background music and without paper, it's all out of your mind. I told Al that the white guys I've seen rap in the studio right here are better than this. He said he had NO idea that this show was THAT bad, and yah, there are a thousand other white guys doing rap that are without a doubt better than that.

I seriously think VH1 wants everyone to have a good laugh at the expense of the white community. I mean honestly, what would happen if you took 10 blacks and put them on a show looking for the next great black country music star, but you picked 10 people who, in terms of music, had about zero talent, instead focusing on character defects and obnoxious personalities to sell your show? I can tell you right now, there would be a monstrous amount of uproar about the show being racist. But hey, these are just stupid white people trying to rap, right? Oh, I guess that makes it all okay???

I will not be watching this show again, even if I do happen to surf past it. There isn't anything even fun to watch, it's just bad. I'd be hard pressed to think 10 random white people couldn't do a better job at rapping than these morons are doing. Thanks VH1 for making white people look even less 'hip' than we already are, appreciate that immensely, because it's not like me going out there and dancing is going to fix that!