A Brief Update

Went to the emergency room on Sunday because I was starting to get paranoid about my injury. A few x-rays later and it turns on I didn't break a rib. I still might have a hair line fracture, but it's most likely that I just bruised it badly. Non the less I have appropriately altered my behavior. I have a few posts and things coming up soon. For the moment I wait...

Is psychiatry communist?

Shapes

Home Again

I could have used a few more strange and ominous dreams last night. Who wouldn't kill for 7 or so hours of restlessness and terror?

I've had a certain kind of recurring dream all of my life. The funny thing is that it's happened so often that when the dream begins I become aware of the fact that I'm dreaming. In the dream I'm laying in bed. Everything feels very real like I've just woke up. Suddenly something unseen will begin to try and pull away my covers. If I resist the thing will crawl up my bed, staying under the covers until it's resting on top of me. If I try and hold it back it will leap up onto me. Generally I just close my eyes and let the sensation pass, but this time the dream kept playing over and over again. Finally the last time I resisted the thing that sprang up was the band Guns and Roses. Even in the dream I said to myself in disbelief "Guns and Roses?" before shaking myself awake.



I suppose the only really funny part about that is that I could only make out the face of their guitar player Slash. The other members faces were covered in shadow. Does that sound like symbolism? I sat up and watched some TV to make sure I didn't slip back into the dream pattern, and pondered what this might have meant. The reason quickly occurred to me: I don't actually know what the other members look like.

Well I am back from vacation one bruised rib richer and a little more cash poor. We went and stayed in the city of Cutler Ridge which is only about 45 minutes from our house. We wanted to make a day of wandering around Metro Zoo, and since we had a nights worth of hotel points at the La Quinta we ordered a suite.



I've never been to Cutler Bay, but the place is strange. The whole town seems to exist in the year 1998. The sky was constantly overcast in the area we stayed in giving it this sort of haze like old memories. There was a mall across the street, and I walked over to see if they had a book store. It turned out there was no bookstore in town let alone the mall, but they did have a Things Remembered store. When was the last time you saw those or a Joe Ann's Crafts? Their radio shack sold shortwave radios and I toyed with investing 50 bucks on one with a digital tuner, but decided against it.

Earlier that day we went to a couple of state parks and took pictures. The weather was gorgeous if not just a little too warm. I saw a family of manatees floating on the waters surface, and cursed to myself at how expensive state park souvenirs are. It was a very quiet day, but my one big discovery came later that when I was using my shortwave.


Something blocking the lower bands for over an hour. Just across the bay is the nuclear power plant Turkey Point so I figured it might have had something to do with that. This was around the time you can usually pick up the V2 Numbers Station out of Cuba. I could pick up nothing, but a faint bit of music drifting across the band. I gave up and went hiking down a back road known to have crocodiles sunning on the shore. I didn't see any, and decided to check my shortwave again when I got back. What ever was jamming the upper bands was gone and I could clearly pick up the V2. You can read my entry By The Numbers if you're not sure what a numbers station is.

Now I've wondered for a while if the patterns of numbers change. If they don't then it probably means business as usual. If they do change then that means some one somewhere is definably receiving orders. Guess what? The message was different this time. In fact at one point a sequence of numbers (cero, quatro, cinco, uno or 0451) repeated with spaces in between each sequence. This means a 4 letter word was repeated 4 times for some reason. Think about that.


Later that night I decided to go to bed early so I started taking some shots and watched The Great American Song Book on PBS. I don't know what happened, but I woke up with a huge bruise on my side like some one had punched me, and no idea how I got it. I remember just going to bed when the program was over, but something must have happened.

The next day we went to the zoo, and walked around in the hot sun. I took my camera, but at some point I found myself taking pictures more of the interesting details in the scenery or shots that look more authentic than trying to just take pictures of animals. I guess there's something fairly pedestrian about just taking straight pictures of caged animals.


There's nothing all that interesting about going to the zoo so I'll share an odd bit of news before I sign off. Last Sunday I went down to Miami with a friend of mine. He wanted some one to keep him company while his wife and her friends shopped at Bay View. Later that day we sat down to dinner when one of the girls related a strange fact.

A friend of hers had just come back from serving in Afghanistan, and told her about this event that happens every Thursday that roughly translated to "Man Love Thursdays." He told her that on Thursday all the women stay in doors and the men of Afghanistan go out and have sex with each other. I listened politely and logged this tid bit in my head as being utter crap, but decided to look it up should I remember it. Well it turns out it's true.

Apparently not only does homosexual sex take place, but child prostitution as well. Not a lot is known about this even in the Western world, but apparently the men of Afghanistan have a similar view of homosexuality as did the Greeks. In fact it is a common practice of men in power to take a young boy for a lover. Don't believe me? Well there's always Google.

Why not?

An Affirmation Via Futility

I haven't written much lately because I've been busy and didn't want to apply the effort. So really it's because I'm lazy. This last two or so has been a mixture of blessings, revelations, and semi misery. Things at home had been a little rough, but after talking to a friend I've realized that my attitude, or more so the way I respond, to that persons behavior, as unacceptable as it may be, is as much a part of the problem as anything else. The Bible tells us to honor our father and mother. Not just to honor them if they're right. So I changed my approach and attempted to communicate with them with as much love and understanding, and not assigning blame, and things have gotten much better. I've began to reconnect with a person who I had began to utterly loath.

With me as with all people when a person hurts us we lash out. We feel worthless so we want to let that person know that they hurt us, and how they hurt us which is in a way a sort of narcissism. I suppose the best way to change a person is to be loving with them and set the best example you can. We cannot always change peoples minds. In fact you cannot change a person who isn't willing to arrive at that conclusion on their own no matter you say, and no matter how strong your argument is. Some people will always remain willfully ignorant, but regardless the true test to yourself is whether or not you can forgive them, even if they never recognize it, and continue to love them.

Now that I've said that I've also come into some money. My tax return ended up being 800 instead of 300. I didn't get any more than the hundred that was promised to me, but it allowed us to catch up on our bills, and that's not even mentioning what we can afford to contribute my sister's wedding.

But before that an unexpected surprise came up. I was chatting with the same friend I mentioned earlier when he said that was looking to buy a Yamaha bass guitar. I asked him why and he said he's like Yamaha's ever since the one he would play back when we were in a band together. I mentioned I still owned it and he offered me 200 bucks for it. I thought that was a little too much so I gave it to him for 175. I gave a hundred to my parents then bought booze and video games.

Tomorrow I will be going to Metro Zoo which is of course a zoo and staying in a hotel down in Miami. Should be fun to revisit hotel living once more. So I'll be bringing my awesome new back pack, my shortwave radio, and a fist full of gumption.

Even I'm not sure what's going on here.

Songs From The Woods

The journey begins...

For some time now I have been attempting to find a backpack. I often go out to state parks to take photos, read, and use my shortwave so there's a few items I usually take with me. The thing is backpacks that aren't made for children cost big money. You would think that thrift stores would have tons of these things laying around, but it took me a month to find one that suited my needs.


It may not look like much from the photo, but it's one serious backpack. It's the kind you take mounting climbing or on a walking tour of Western Europe or a mystical island that travels through time. Its got all kinds of pockets and spaces, a separate compartment for my books, and even a waist strap should I need to traverse vertical surfaces. So now I was ready.


The journey continues...

Today we went to Virginia Key. We walked down the beach to a more secluded area by the jetties, and I took pictures, and then sat down to read. The place was beautiful and there were these strange native American looking symbols painted onto some of the rocks in the surrounding are.The weather was about as nice as its ever been. It was windy, but not too cold; so I could finally wear shorts again.


I sat down at a bench that was shaded by a couple of intertwining fir trees, and whipped out my shortwave, but the only thing interesting that I picked up in my native tongue was Voice of America out of Washington D.C. I sat and listened to news updates about Baghdad for a while, and eventually my parents walked further down the beach and I began to study 1st Samuel. Then it happened....


The battle begins...

I'm up to chapter 4 when suddenly I get a flash of something out of the corner of my eye. A very odd looking, mostly blond, raccoon has climbed up on the picnic table with my parents stuff, and is attempting to abscond with their lunch box. I walk over figuring that he'll just beat it, but the bold little son of a B attempts to make for the woods.


I follow after him and start stomping and barking, but by that point he's dragging the box off into a bush. I wasn't about to try and grab the raccoon. After all I got a good look at his fangs when he bit the lunch box, and they're a lot larger than you would think. Finally after several attempts at anti-raccoon posturing I grabbed the handle and tugged the thing away from him, but that's not where it ended...


The battle continues...

My parents arrived at the scene and laughed at the struggle. Thinking I had won I turned my head to see if maybe there was something on the table I could give to the little fellow, when he darted out of the bush and sunk his teeth into the lunch box in an attempt to snatch it from me! The audacity.


I clamped both hands down on the handle and spun the lunch box around thinking he would let go, but he didn't. I lifted him off the ground and spun him around in a circle (gently). I made it a full 360 degrees before he finally let go and ran off into the woods... to plan his next move no doubt.

So let it be written:

On this day Matthew son of Mark rose forth from the word, and reclaimed the box of lunch from that which is known as raccoon.

The rest of the day was not as eventful. I had a very pleasant and mostly quiet afternoon. I took lots of pictures, ran into some chick doing a modeling session out by the cliffs, and had a nice tuna salad. I'll post some pics sooner or later... maybe.

Many songs shall be sung of this day!

Off to the woods.

Updates coming soon. P.S. Don't watch Antichrist.

Conversations I've Actually Had: Metaphysics

Actual post below this.

Come on Japan!

What a world. I'm listening to a news program on radio Japan when a story comes up about Japan's general economic free fall. Apparently they have the highest public debt of any industrialized nation in the free world. This has lead to an increase in suicides and as the business year comes to a close they expect a rash of further suicides as their economic situation is expected to get more serious. Their government is currently trying to drum up interest by offering bonds to foreign countries, but the amount of interest in them depend on whether or not the Japanese government can convince foreign investors that they will be the key to solving Japan's economic crisis.

The report also claimed that last year there was something around 36,000 suicides (don't hold me to that. I believe it's what they said) which is up from around 33,000 in 2008. I looked it up and last year America reported around 33,000 suicides. Consider that their population is less than half the size of ours and you get the general idea of how serious the problem is. Currently their government is running an add campaign that includes TV spots and billboards to help stem the expected tide of fresh suicides. Kind of shocking.

So I opened on a downer and now I'll segue into this. I praise God for helping our family out right on time and just how we needed it. First off my uncle is doing much better. He will probably be in the hospital for another week, but he is in much less pain and will be back to eating solid food soon enough.

Then the Lord blessed us financially. We did not know how we were going to pay this month's rent as we were several hundred dollars shorts. On top of that unemployment had some sort of processing error with my payments and I was unable to receive a dime of benefits for nearly two months so things have been more tight than usual. Well today just before our rent came due nearly eight hundred dollars was deposited into my account giving us what we needed to pay out rent. As if that isn't enough I am getting nearly 400 dollars back on my tax return and will get to keep a hundred dollars of it so drinks are on me when the money comes in.

Now all I need is a place that will actually hire me.

As those that follow me on Facebook might have caught I'm thinking that learning Morse code is kind of like having some one stab you in the brain with a stick. Without the radio to sort of filter out most of the harshness of beeping it can get on your nerves to sit down for 10 minutes at a time listening to random beeps. Well more to come. Just thought I would share my good news with ya'll.

My 5 year old niece wrote and directed this with my help.

My sorrow, when she's here with me

Oh how I hate Robert Frost.

It's been an interesting week of ups and down. To begin with my uncle nearly died. His appendix ruptured and infection spread through out his entire intestinal area. He was held over night before being operated on and is very lucky to still be alive. We went to visit him in the hospital and it was a heartbreaking thing to witness. My uncle is mentally ill and didn't seem to have a real grasp on what was going on. It was sad to see him there with tubes running all around his body, but he did keep calling the nurses "waitress" so I suppose there's a little humor to be found in everything. He'll be there for a week for two depending on how well he recovers.

Most of the last week was spent outside of the house and in the southern tip of Florida. We went to Holiday Park which is an RV park where you can watch alligator wrestling and camp over night. A herd of peacocks lives in the park and you can see them wandering around the tourists or perched on the railings above the picnic tables crowing at each other. Hearing the sound of a peacock's cry when you're walking through the reeds and swamp ground can be oddly unnerving.


Twice we went to Everglades National Park which is one of the large national parks like Yosemite or Yellow Stone. The place is massive and can take hours to drive around. I liked this place the most out of all the destination's I've visited recently. There's all kind of paths and detours that seem somehow separate from each other. There's Flamingo Key where you can sit by the docks and watch Crocodiles sunbath. You could take a tour down an elevated walkway that cuts through a half mile of swamp land filled with alligators. I saw dozens and dozens of them laying asleep on the shore. Tourists from around the world come here. I heard English, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Australian accents to name a few. But then in the midst of all that you can drive down an empty dirt road tucked away in a side path, and end up by a small lake that casts a blue tint on the canopy above and nothing moves. Even the wind seems to hang in the air. A place like that makes you feel like you're the only person left in the world.

We went Friday and then back again on Sunday because we missed the tour of the Nike Missile Silo. It's a decommissioned nuclear launch sight that was build during the Cold War should we have needed to launch missiles at Cuba. We were informed by the guide that the missiles formerly housed there were of the 40 kiloton variety. That figure may sound abstract, but consider that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only 15 kilotons and you get the idea. The nature of sin is a funny thing. You have this tiny island that gets taken over by greedy men with silly ideas and decades later this tiny little island threatens to cause a nuclear war. Had we had to bomb them most of the southern tip of Florida would have had to be evacuated due to the fall out drifting back towards us, and most of the animal life in the glades could have been killed. All in the name of socialism.


After we took the tour my parents went back to the alligator pit and I went off by myself down the Gumbo Limbo nature trail. The whole mile long or so stretch runs under a canopy of fern trees and thick strands of hanging moss. I was mostly alone there, passing only a few older couples going in the opposite direction. The place was sort of incredible. It was strangely cool there. Not the dull sort of cold that of everywhere else, but an unusual cold that seemed to have a tinge if warmth hidden it, and there was no breeze so the woods remained still and silent. It was kind of like walking through some enchanted forest in a movie. It was all very haunting in a sort of way.

Speaking of haunting I was going through some emails last night when some kind of suggestion thing popped up on the right hand side along with a name. In my owned buzzed sense of interest I went over to Facebook, popped in the name, and there was that pair of equally haunting eyes. That marked my second sentimental intrusion involving a woman that day. I sat for a long while and just looked into her eyes and traced her features with mine. She never seemed to like the way she looked, but I always thought she was stunning. If or when she reads this she'll probably be angry. I've always found that despite women's constant attempts to intrude into a man's emotional center they always seem to find sentimentality in a man repulsive. At least my every attempt at the emotion has always been treated with a certain contempt as if the act of thought was intentionally perverse. I toyed with the idea of sending a friend request, but everything I just wrote slowly began to occur to me, and I decided not to. That person decided to stop speaking to me, and I may never know exactly why, but then maybe she doesn't either. It's just funny how something as simple as a pop up in your email box can lead to a rush of conflicting emotions. Still I wonder at times when I'm alone and I get just a little sad. I'm not sure how this sounds to any one else, but it's a compliment in a way. A person makes a certain kind of impression on you, a very unique one in fact, and sometimes things just linger in the back of your mind. Like those eyes.



Beyond this I seem to be sort of between hobbies. I've been doing a lot of reading lately, playing games sporadically here and there, working on music and movie reviews, and using my shortwave radio. I brought the radio with me out to the park where there would be little interference. I had a little luck the first time, but on the second trip I pulled it out by a small lake and got signals from all around the world. Parts of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Canada, and I even found an English language station coming out of India. I go home and bookmark these sights after I find them. Many of the international stations have live streaming as well as audio on demand. It's fascinating how something I spent ten dollars on has opened up my world so much. I've learned about famous Ukrainian citizens, heard aboriginal Cuban music, listened to readings of Italian short stories, and of course it's always interesting to hear a foreign perspective on American news. For instance no one in Germany seems to understand why Barack Obama hasn't been able to accomplish most of his pre election agenda or why he hasn't started walking on water yet.

It goes to show you that even though things in the United States seem fairly silly at times the rest of the world is just as, if not more so, silly. Try looking up the Chinese peoples concern over the red envelopes children receive during the spring festival. As funny news items go apparently thanks to the recession Florida has seen a decrease in annual shark attacks. Less money means less people at the beach and less people at the beach means less people to be attacked by sharks. I suppose it makes sense.


On a different note as far as my new movie reviews are concerned I should have a half dozen up by the end of the day. Like I mentioned I've decided to write something like short hand reviews so none of them will be more than two paragraphs for the most park. I'm also trying to teach myself Morse Code! I downloaded a program for it. Who would have thought? Now if only we can survive this month.

Lets remain sentimental together.