Going to the Temple

No matter which affiliation or orientation or denomination, we all worship at this temple.

It is the Temple of the Tummy. The colloquial definition is a grocery. No matter what your age or occupation or income or creed or…. We all get hungry and go to the Temple of the Tummy.

We give praises to the pears; we sing tributes to the tomatoes; we give hallelujahs to the halibut; we sing carols to the carrots.

No matter the time of day or the lack of dress code, we walk up and down the aisles receiving our bounty from the abundance given by the Temple of the Tummy. When the selections seem bare, our ushers restock for our obsession with obesity. Oh for the greatness of gluttony.

The congregation fills their carts with every variation for any faith. Non-gluten, vegan, lactose intolerant are all welcomed and accommodated. Whether frozen or fresh or boxed or canned, precooked or raw or in some configuration in between, the Temple of the Tummy provides for our every need. The Temple of the Tummy can provide to cleanse your body, ease your sniffles, entertain your children, and change water into grape juice.

As the lines of tithing for our riches, each is tempted with sugar treats and heathen teachings of questionable journalism. Using paper or plastic, our gastric adventure into bloating, flatulence, constipation, diarrhea, and all sort of others malefactions continues. Even after all our trials and tribulations, we return to the Temple of the Tummy for we must to survive.

I attend the Temple of the Tummy according to the book of Kroger each and every day. I along with the grazers and the readers and the confused and the wanderers and the cookers and the micro-wavers and the couponers and the scooters and the old and the young and the families and the lost souls in the Temple of the Tummy have read the recipe book and have my list and check the ingredients to leave with substance to prolong my existence.

I praise the Temple of the Tummy for its ability to provide entertainment and provisions to maintain my wellbeing and fill my belly.

So why are you closed at Christmas?  Santa needs to eat.

How Are You In The Polls?

Every week there are polls of financial importance and political standings, but what if YOU had to be polled?

Could you stand up to the questioning and evaluations on obscure and maybe uncomfortable subjects? Where would you stand in the polls?

 Political figures and those who want to be are constantly asked questions and results published with comments for every reader or listener or viewer to form an opinion, so pollsters can survey the public’s thoughts.

What if YOU had to go through that scrutiny?

There are yearly job reviews at work, but suppose there was a weekly polling. What does your boss think about your production this week? What do your co-workers think of your attitude? Do the stockholders believe you should keep your job?

Does your family believe in you? Do your children?

Where do you stand in the polls with your wife? Did you take out the trash on time? Did you pick up your underwear or put away the laundry? Did you belch when her friends came over? Did you fart at the dinner table? Won’t even get into the bedroom because the numbers will surely drop there.

If everyone else, friends and foes, could access these numbers every week, what would be the results? The value of your personality and influence and compatibility could rise or drop with a few percentage points.

Your life could be controlled by the ratings of strangers and those around you. Your family and friends could change in a blink of a few numbers.

And evaluations of your friends and family who are also rated would eliminate marriage counselors and most religions. Just pull out the spreadsheet and see whom you would like today.

What Do You Need To Do To Be President?

The minimum constitutional requirements for someone to become president of the United States is:

1.    Be a natural born U.S. citizen. Someone may be born abroad, but only if both parents were citizens of the United States. The only exception to this was for those around at the time the Constitution was adopted. Their requirement was that they had to be a citizen when the Constitution was adopted.

2.    Be at least 35 years of age.

3.    Have lived in the United States for at least 14 years to be president. This does not have to be consecutive or even the 14 years leading up to becoming president.

There you have it. That is all the requirements from our founding fathers to become the president of the United States of America.

So why are we asking all these other questions? Getting all distracted by what the next possible CEO of this here America thinks about?

To run for the office of the President takes a bit of money. More every year it seems for the constant signage and robo-calls and Internet pop-ups and television ads and…. But what a minute, this is not the candidate’s money. This is money coming from corporations…er, foundations and non-profit organizations or super pacs that will pay for all that stuff so they can influence the candidate’s agenda.

Well there are those debates and interviews and constant questions so a candidate should be fairly resourceful. With all the photos and television coverage, a candidate should look something like a movie star on the red carpet. Knowing what to say to whom and when can get you elected…or not.

The candidate also needs an entourage that handles the details to make the campaign trail look professional and polished. Rounding up wholesome looking fresh faced American icons cheering the candidates’ name and covered in pins and holding posters for the photo-ops is essential for the five o’clock news.

The candidate should look ‘presidential’. A president must have the look of a person who can stand tall next to other world leaders. A president is a person who can board Air Force One and smile at the photographers. A president is a person who can stand behind a podium and make statements that will affect every citizen of every state in the nation.

A president should appear strong yet empathic to the human woe all the while offering a friendly positive impression that the government is in good hands.

For the candidate is applying for the top job in the government and we, the voters, are doing the job evaluations. We may speak different dialects and have different backgrounds and opinions and concerns, but in November, we will go to the ballot box with whatever information we have been able to conclude, flip a coin and choose a name. Then hope for the best?

Not like when you football team loses, there is no more next week’s game. This is the countries choice and we have to live with our selection for four years.

A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled. In the Commonwealth of Nations, the word government is also used more narrowly to refer to the collective group of people that exercises executive authority in a state. This usage is analogous to what is called an “administration”. The concepts of the state and the government may be used synonymously to refer to the person or group of people exercising authority over a politically organized territory. Government is a synonym for governance.

Government normally consists of legislators, administrators, and arbitrators. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state. A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political systems and institutions that make up the organization of a specific government.

Government of any kind currently affects every human activity. Political scientists argue that government should be studied along with anthropology, economics, environmentalism, history, philosophy, science, and sociology.

Political science’s goal is to create a typology or taxonomy of polities using comparative politics and international relations.

Identifying a form of government appears to be simple, as all governments have an official form. The United States is a federal republic, while the former Soviet Union was a socialist republic.

Identifying a form of government is also difficult because a large number of political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by specific parties naming themselves after those movements; all with competing political-ideologies.

Other complications include general non-consensus or deliberate “distortion or bias” of reasonable technical definitions to political ideologies and associated forms of governing, due to the nature of politics in the modern era.  Yet what Americans now call conservatism much have the world calls liberalism or neo-liberalism. Since the 1950s conservatism in the United States has been chiefly associated with the Republican Party. However, during the era of segregation many Southern Democrats were conservatives, and they played a key role in the Conservative Coalition that controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963.

 Is the United States not a true capitalist society, since the government actually provides social services for its citizens? Is the United States a plutocracy rather than a democracy since some may believe it is ruled by the wealthy?

Could get into political coups or military take-over’s or dictatorships but I’m talking about electing the President of the United States. What does it take and who is asking the questions?

With all the media attention and variations of fact/fiction, what do we need to ask these men and women who want the highest office of the land?

Do we need to know their shoe size? Do we need to know what his or her favorite food is? Do we need to know why a certain kind of car or refrigerator or lawn mower was purchased? Do we need to know if any sports were played or debate clubs joined? Do we need to know if he or she went to war or not? Do we need to know why he or she has so many children or not? Do we need to know what razors used? Do we need to know if the toilet paper change is agreeable with their significant other? Do we need to know…?

This person, no matter the other silliness, will be the one who is the head of state and commander in chief.

What does the President think about transgender? What will happen when the President’s 15-year-old daughter becomes pregnant? What church does the President go to and how often? How many times a week does the President have sex? How many times does the President poop? How many shoes does the President have? What does the President feel about Southern Heritage? What does the President feel about blue hair? What would the President do to get that smell out of his car?

Or do we want a President who can run a nation of 50 very independent states and a diverse population guaranteeing them protection and an economic future? A President who sees the big picture and is not pulled down by political agendas or monetary obligations?

It is your call. It is your vote.

Un=abandoned

Or living free

It is a strange thing how restricted our lives are. We must provide ourselves with shelter and food and all the normal life substances so we learn trades or skills and acquire occupations to accomplish the sums of cash to feed our needs and wants.

We complain about our ordinary lives yet we know we must continue to struggle for our lives continue to change with more demands of children and schools and community and larger houses and more cars and insurance and yet we continue to struggle.

While we numb ourselves with plastic entertainment we view a few and wonder. How do they remain free?

Those who build houses out of sticks or live in rock caves or wander the globe without a care. How do they do that?

Are they just freaks of nature and should be avoided at every chance for they are the wanderers and the adventures that don’t listen to the norms the rest of us follow.

Some may call them street people or homeless or vagabonds or hobos, but these few are living free.

These are the spirits we read about and wonder. These are those explorers that we wish we could follow but there is a nine o’clock meeting in the morning.

Our libraries are filled with recounts of visits with those who do not conform. They are our Don Quixote or Luke Skywalker or Beowulf or Ulysses. They are our dreams that keep our dull and boring life require. 

The adventure down the rabbit hole or the flight to the second star on the right were all conjured up by our minds to entertain the hope we could, even for a brief moment, live that fantasy.

So as we scoff at a person who is begging or a street musician or just the random vagabonds walking by or deciding to live free just try to remember. They may be living the life that will be read about for centuries to come with our envy and regard.

Why?

Just makes you wonder

I am fully aware that I’m not the most educated man and am not the most intellectual to discuss or analysis all the events of the world, but I do try to stay up-to-date with the news as presented through the media. I, like you, will listen and watch and try to learn while applying my own background information on the subject.

In today’s instant information age, what is unknown or somewhat confusing can be researched by a single click of the mouse, but is the information factual?

Yonder days back, whatever information you got was the truth. Whether it came from church or your parents or friends or newspapers, it was all you had to base your knowledge on.

Today with 24-hour news services and the constant chatter on the Internet, our brains are overwhelmed with what might be fact or what might just be opinions or just stilted agendas.

My question is why do we still listen to these clowns?

We all hear and watch and must decide whether to believe what is consumed or not. Yet, with enough bombardment of even the worst bombastic falsehoods, we will tend to believe.

With all our biases and opinions based on what has been presented to us and endorsed by our friends and family and clergy, we form our beliefs. If we only listen to those who promote our beliefs, we have confirmed our truth by repetition.

If presented by a charismatic talking head, like Hitler, Walter Cronkite or Jesus, we can become persuaded or evenfall under the spell of words changing meanings of our biases. If peer pressure or worst condemn any other alternative thought, we become prejudice and intolerant to any other idea.

I won’t pick on any particular talking head or ‘informational’ source but there are too many to question their opinions with their credentials. If a fact can be twisted to meet an agenda, is it still a fact?

While the flood of noise and irrational comments overwhelm us everyday, I take a few with a grain of salt, for tomorrow there will be a new trend and we will all follow like lemmings.

Let's Take A Walk

You would be surprised

Here is your challenge. Turn off the television. Shut down the computer. Turn off your phone. Put away all your musical devices. Stand up. Walk out the door and keep walking.

Walking is only falling forward and catching yourself and repeat. It is not difficult and is as natural as breathing. We’ve been doing it for years.

Walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Walk to the refrigerator during commercial breaks. Walk the dog and pick up the newspaper and mail. Walk on the ice and sometimes fall.

Walking is a simple art we have practiced since we left the water. Walking gets us from place to place and though it may be slow, it is constant.

One of the first things we learn is to walk. We walk when we still poop in our pants. Once we learn the motion of one foot in front of another, off we good with our parents chasing us.

We then invented many machines and vehicles to get us from one point to another faster and easier and more comfortable than the plodding of footsteps. We have become so independent on this mobile machines we pave paradise and rape the earth to provide these machines a path for our convenience while constantly refueling their every want.

So my simple challenge is to step out of your normal world and take a walk. You can even take along a friend.

You don’t have to have any particular place to go, just wander. Think of it as exploring new places. It may be the same path traveled but I guarantee you will see new things.

Rather than speeding by, there is time to observe the details that are normally just blurs.

Walking means you are all alone with the elements. No matter where you go for how long, you are on your own. If it starts to get cold, you put your hands in your pockets and turn up your collar. If it rains, you get wet until you find shelter.

No matter where you walk or how far, remember you have to turn around to go back.

So why would anyone want to walk?

There is a pace to walking. Not jogging or running, but a simple step-by-step walking. The length of the legs creates the pendulum of the gait that is comfortable for each of us.

Our hearts create our pace and off we go.

Side note: I do recommend comfortable sturdy walking shoes.

There is no need to hike unless you want to mix the natural adventure with rugged territory. Most towns have a path set up for pedestrians and in a rural setting, just take a stroll down a back road.

So what is walking good for?

Well it gets you from place to place at no cost. It may take more time but the upside is you can enjoy the walk. In the winter you can bundle up in scarves and mittens and see your breath as you talk. In the summer you can feel the sweat running down your back and know you are actually exercising.

You can walk to unknown places and stop in a local establishment for a cup of coffee and meet unknown strangers who become friends. You can stop and stand still and learn a new appreciation of the sights and sounds that go on around you everyday. You may, if you are paying attention, be surprised by all the activities of your furry and feathered neighbors. Who knew?

If you take a friend, the conversation between you will be like no other. Without interruptions brings a chance for confessionals. If the journey is long enough unusual subjects like “If there is water on Mars, can you surf?” or “Should I marry her if she is having your baby?” may override the mundane discussions.

You can walk in the morning or walk at night. There are no restrictions on how far you can walk. You can take a break during your walk and rest.

So let’s take a walk.

Let Us Have Some Fun!

Remember when you were a kid? From the time you hopped out of bed in your footie pajamas to the time your parents dropped your exhausted body back between the sheets you had fun.

Kids have fun. They are supposed to have fun. It is the time in your life where all the worries of the world are held aside by your parents so you can just play.

You get to play with neat toys and get together with friends to play sports and games. You can pretend to be a princess or a cowboy and scream at the top of your lungs.

Everyone from parents and grandparents to complete strangers accept that little people running around wildly and exploring the world are having fun. How long can this fun last?

When does fun end?

Well discipline can end the fun. That sucks. Being told you can’t do this or you can’t do that when you are just playing bums the fun.

Responsibility is a fun downer too. Suddenly you can run around with your friends because you have to cut the grass or that video game you want to play will have to wait until the dishes are put away.

School homework and work and family all get in the way of fun. And soon fun turns into work and we all know there is NO FUN at work.

Why not?

All during the growing up period of life, you are molded and directed and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You might decide on a doctor or lawyer or governmental bureaucrat because that sounds like fun. Well boys and girls any of those jobs takes a lot of schooling and long hours and it is work. Unfortunately many of you and me will whine up with mundane or even revolting jobs like garbage collector or security guard or football stadium ticket taker. That’s no fun.

So all of our problems and our family problems and our children’s problems are that we don’t know how to have fun anymore. Sure you couldn’t grow up to be a princess or a cowboy, but when you pretended a stick was a horse or a ring of flowers was a crown, it was fun.

We have become accustomed to having electronic media or expensive travel locations or outlandish sports to replace our pretend with what we associate to fun. We drag out families to short vacations to walk on concrete and sit in scary rides and eat miserable over-priced food and tell everyone we are having fun.

The rest of the time we routinely walk through the motions of the day-to-day effort to earn a paycheck then go home to wash it all away only to repeat tomorrow. Why does it need to be that way?

No matter what kind of job or career or occupation you provide, it can be fun. You can make it fun. Maybe not as outrageous as a little kid screaming, but taking the monotony out of the daily grind can be easy.

Little things that will make you smile during the day can make work fun. If you can get along with others, whether in a cubicle or a road crew, can make the day go by with a better mood.

We work and take orders and obey discipline and rules, but it is our own attitude to enjoy the task or complain about it.

Tomorrow there will be a cowboy accountant and a princess waitress and an astronaut CEO. Enjoy your imitation like you did as a kid.

Have fun.