Mea Non Culpa.

When I am wrong I quickly admit it.  Thankfully I am more often right than wrong.  The reason is before I put myself in a situation where I could be wrong I usually check my facts very carefully before I state them.

A lot of times I admit my errors before anyone has a chance to detect them or call me to task on them, because besides checking before the fact, I also check myself after the fact.  I don’t like to be wrong.  It does things to my ego.  And if I admit my errors before someone else can point them out then it takes the wind of their sails.  It makes me look exactly like what I am–someone honestly seeking the truth and trying to do the right thing.

BUT

If I am not the one responsible for the error and someone tries to lay it at my door, I quickly and emphaticall state, “Me NON culpa, non maxima culpa.”  I get the moral and ethical grounds for this by being the first to admit to the failings that are mine.

It cuts both ways.

ooooo, ahhhh

The Fedex man (baby-face boy actually) just delivered my new laptop.  It’s a Dell Studio.  It’s my first personally owned computer in 3 years.

This is exactly what it looks like.  (except it doesn’t levitate.)

ooooo, ahhhhh . . .

oops!  I think I tinkled a little. 

Gryphon

UPDATE:

Well I plugged it in and did the set up.  It’s pretty cool, even for an old man like me.  Now I have to transfer some files via thumbdrive.  I wish I knew how to transfer all my files via cable from the computer I’ve been using.  It’s either learn how to do that or get an external hard drive.  Then I have the horror of learning how to get the new computer to accept my ipod that is registered to my friend’s computer.

Any suggestions?

OH!  It turns out that it DOES levitate after all.  It’s just that it wasn’t in the specs and I didn’t know where the command function was.  Scared the shit out of the cat.

g.

Stick Collection

I have a stick collection.  So far I have two.  I’m just getting started.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, 2009!

Happy New Year, 2009!

I wish you all a happy and productive new year.  The last year was very very good to me.  It marked the first full calendar year in which I drank NO alcohol.  It was the first full calendar year that this has happened to me since the first time I had a drink–40 years!  19 consecutive months total.

This is a milestone for me (obviously) as it was alcohol that very nearly killed me back in ‘07, but I am concentrating not on how long I have been abstinent, but on what lies ahead of me in all the blessings for the present.  It was a good year for me in so many other ways and the best I have in decades.

I wish for all of you all the goodness and joy that I has been mine this past year.  I wish for all of you love and peace.  I wish for you a very Happy New Year!

c.e.s.

Trying Too Hard

Trying Too Hard

 

I’ve been trying real hard to think of something humorous to post, but am coming up dry.

Maybe I should go look at the news.  That might help. Or it just may get me mad.  Either way I might get a post out of it.  *shrug*

 

c.e.s.

 

 

P.S. Women are really great, don’t you think?

Closeup

All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.
 

Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), Sunset Blvd. 1950.

A Straight Back

And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Memphis,TN., April 3, 1968.  I’ve Been to the Mountaintop. )

My back is straight.  I am going somewhere.  I stand upright in front of God and Man.  I do what is right whenever I can.

I do have my sins and I take them before my judge.  They are my responsibility and I humbly ask for their forgiveness, but as I am still in the flesh they are inescapable.  Does the fact that I am in the flesh absolve me of them.  No, absolutely not.  It is still my responsibility to correct them and, for that strength, I do pray.  Regardless, I stand upright–for the first time in many years.

I am upright in my service to God in my daily work.  I am upright in my service to man and principalities.  I conscientiously love my neighbor as myself.  I conscientiously try to do to others as I would have them do to me.

My greatest sins are to others and to the temple of my body.  Resentment (anger) toward others and tobacco use are the chief of these.  I am pleased to say that through diligent prayer and meditation anger toward others is nearly gone.

Residual anger is now absent.  I am still angered at times by persons who currently misuse and mistreat me and my loved ones.  I think that is only a natural emotion that results from the offensive acts when they occur.  But, when they occur I take them to my judge and ask him to forgive those who commit them and to help me to forgive them as well.  When I do so I am blessed to discover that those who have angered me are no less than I am and that, in truth, it is not the person who I resent but their words and actions.  Hate the sin, not the sinner.

As for the poisoning of my body through use of tobacco, that is a sin for which I am most culpable.  I do not do nearly enough to cease this deadly addiction.  It is destructive not only to my body but is a constant barrier between me and God.

My service to God through service to his children fills me with peace.  I long to do even greater things in his name.  Some day, if God is willing, I will.

I’m going somewhere.  My back is straight.  No man may ride thereon.

Praise God.

The Medium Is The Message

I don’t care for the position in which I find myself.

Blogging about blogging.

“The Medium is the Message” according to Marshall McLuhan.  That may very well be so.  Art not only imitates life and vice versa but it should be well known by now that art also imitates art.  I will try my best not to write about blogging here.  But as that is now an integral part of my tool box, it will probably present occasions for occasional comment.

More’s the pity.  But really?  Why shouldn’t we discuss the medium?  That presents more food for thought than I am willing to chew up, swallow, and digest for the moment.

Marshall McLuhan