The Great Port-a-Potty Caper of 1974

Once upon a time, in February 1974, there was a bored 11 year old named Bobby Ray...

Okay, it took talking to my cousin Donna tonight to bring this memory back, but once it resurfaced, it all came back to me. To those out there who've always wondered how long I've had my sense of humor, well, I think it was innate.
You see, my maternal grandparents, Elmer and Grace Cox, decided it might be fun to take me to the Daytona 500. I admit that I come from a family of speed freaks. Ask any cop who patrolled the streets of the Brookview area of Jacksonville back in the 1970's, and they'd have said that the Coxes and their kin were a bunch of high speed demons. And they were right.
Except me; I was always "special". Yes, I loved race cars, but not NASCAR. For me, it was Formula 1. I also liked faster things, like jet aircraft, rockets and the starship Enterprise. NASCAR just looked like a bunch of street cars painted all pretty. After a day of being down there for the speed trials, I grew b-o-r-e-d.
Early on, after my grandparents had selected their parking spot. I noticed that there were signs pointing to the restrooms located in roughly a grid-like pattern. As I was strolling through the campgrounds, I decided to try and lift one of the signs. It didn't even take that much effort; it came right up out of the ground. That's when I had a brainstorm.
Let's do the math here for a moment. You have the following elements in this formula -
1 eleven year old with a high IQ
1 bored eleven year old with a high IQ
1 bored eleven year old with a brainstorm and a high IQ
= a lot of trouble.
The signs were arranged roughly in a grid and all pointed towards the restrooms. Hmmm...
It took around an hour, but soon folks who were in desperate need of the Port-a-Potties soon found themselves wandering in circles. Well, that wasn't the original plan. I was busted while working on the culmination of my dastardly deed, and took off like a shot. My plan was for the poor, befuddled, beer ladened denizens of the campground to slowly spiral inwards. Alas, 'twas not to be.
Still, thanks to my cousin Donna, I remember sitting in the back of that RV and hearing the cursing and complaining as many poor souls looked in vain for that blue booth of relief. Ah, the wondrous days of my youth.

Do You Ubuntu?

I thought I'd never post about an operating system in any of my blogs, but I have to do this. I've discovered an operating system that not only runs smoothly, but that completely reflects my personal philosophy. It is called Ubuntu, and it is a Debian Linux distribution (for all of my friends and family who do not know, nor care, what that is, to be honest it really isn't that important. But read on...). Unlike Windows, or my beloved Macintosh OS X, it is free. As in no charge. As in it costs you nothing. You can download it or contact them and they will send you a copy. Free. And it is complete. Everything you need to use your computer. You can run it from the CD directly or install it. They make different versions for different tasks. It is also a very easy operating system to learn and use.
So far, though, I've waxed rhapsodic over some of the technical issues. Let's talk about the philosophy behind it and why it matters to me. As I mentioned before, it is free. The developers do all of this knowing that the software will be free. It is a community, and is partially funded by Mark Shuttleworth, who, incidentally, was the second "space tourist". The word ubuntu is an old sub-Saharan Bantu African word that means "I am because we are". What a beautiful concept! Ubuntu is an ideology that is part of their culture, and compares wonderfully to early Christianity. Bishop Desmond Tutu defines it as this -
"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
I'm not saying that the Ubuntu OS will change your life, but it might be the tip of something bigger. More and more, there is emphasis on what is good for the community, and an OS that aims to be not only easy to use but espousing those philosophies seems a grand idea.
So, I Ubuntu. Not just the operating system, but the philosophy. What a great world we could live in if we all did.

Thoughts While Listening To Paul Schwartz's "Miserere"

My spirituality is in flux again. Recent events have me reevaluating my beliefs and their meaning. This isn't a case of what I believe as much as how that belief impacts my day-to-day life. So many of my family and friends are firmly implanted in their dogmas, their religions. I'm not saying that is wrong; far from it. This is what works for them. For a long time, it worked for me as well.
The problem I have of late is one of balancing what I believe, what I understand and how the world operates. Many Christians (and members of other religions) tend to gravitate towards a literalists view of religion, that what is written and the manner in which it was written, is to be taken as literal (dare I say gospel?) truth.
That seems to me to be the wrong path to go down.
Much of what is written in the Bible has to be taken internally and evaluated from a deeply personal perspective. Many of the values that are written down in those hallowed pages hold as much truth today as they did the many centuries since they were first put to parchment. There are other aspects, though, that can be more problematic. Still, the value system is steady in its core principles.
One thing I take issue with are people who pick and choose passages to suit their purposes. Doing this you can justify anything. That is a dangerous course to take, yet it is one that many follow.
I also have difficulties with people who seem to lose their spirituality once they are away from their organized religions. Either you are spiritual or you aren't, it's that simple. And there is a difference between being religious and spiritual, a big difference in fact. Being spiritual is a deeply inner experience, yet one that has the potential to manifest itself in what we say and what we do. It is in how we act, how we behave towards ourselves, others and the world in general (Scientists tend to be dismissive, saying that this is just a trick of the brain and its complex chemistry. Perhaps the Spirit talks to us this way, after all, if there is a God that could have created an entire universe on a whim, then surely He could talk to us in anyway He chooses, even if it means the firing between synapses and neurons and brain chemistry itself. Surely, He has the ability to manifest himself in anyway He sees fit). Being religious, to me, is simply following the doctrine and the words of the hierarchy and not truly feeling them, to be simply followers.
And this is the main point that I am trying to get across in this essay. Spirituality is not something that can be taught but something that has to be experienced. It is that soft, quiet voice you hear that tells you if you're right or wrong. It's those little coincidences you experience that push you one way or another. It's looking around and seeing the works of a Creator or an Architect or a Designer in the world around us. It isn't dogma or doctrine or religion. It is an inner experience. It defies explanation to many. It seeks no explanation or asks much of us, except perhaps to simply believe and have faith and trust.
That is the point that I've arrived at. With this move, I have the opportunity to explore this more in surroundings that are both old and familiar to me, and yet new. This move brings clarity and, perhaps, some more resolution to my life. I know what I believe, deep in my heart and soul. What I need to do is to bring that again into my daily life.
Still, it manifests itself, in subtle ways, and sometimes, not so subtle. The Spirit chooses when and where and how. I simply have to pay more attention.

The Other Women In My Life - The Singer/Songwriters

(Written while listening to Natalie Merchant)
I have a very odd tendency in my musical taste. For some reason, I tend to listen to a lot of female performers. Okay, you say, not a big deal. I guess, for me, it is; I should be a stereotypical hillbilly redneck, considering my upbringing (though you'd never guess that from my accent, which sounds decidedly northern in tone. Most people guess New England to Wisconsin). I should like Lynard Skynard, 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, country rock and hair bands, long, rock ballads sung by men who are pouring their hearts out as sincerely as they can. In fact, I don't like those sort of songs at all. Don't get me wrong, there are a few songs by those bands that I do like, but not as a rule.
I guess the reason I like female singer/songwriters is that they are sincere and honest. For some reason, most male singer/songwriters aren't. They mask their feelings beneath layers of machismo, singing about the power of their love but not the depth of it. They sing about the surface but not what lies beneath. Men, as a rule, prefer to hide.
It was my upbringing that no doubt made me what I am. Up to the time I was 13, I was pretty much following the same path as the other males I knew. Then, unbeknownst to even me, I started to grow sensitive. There was a period, between the ages of 16 and 18 that I used that gift to my advantage, since I could relate to girls very well. I never wanted for dates for a long stretch. Eventually, I realized that was wrong. As a teenager, my favorite female performers were Heart (I love you, Ann...), Carol King and Carly Simon. Too many of the other female performers of the period simply seemed to be following in the stereotypical path laid out before them by the record company executives. This was the disco era. Of course, Deborah Harry saved the day for me, as well as Pat Benatar (though at times I felt that the songs, again, were being aimed at my demographic specifically).
Over the years, the artist in me kicked in. The sensitivity grew, and the voices of these women seemed to make more sense to me than the songs of their male counterparts. I wanted and really desired sincerity, not just in my music but in my life. I still do, in fact. There are male performers out there who write sincere music as well, but too often they get muffled by the high powered, high profile sounds that the recording industry thinks we really want to listen to. Perhaps they are just catering to what the public really wants to hear. I think, though, that if you play some more of this music, that perhaps it might sell. Of course, it seems that these days the typical American male is too busy trying to prove how much testosterone he has coursing through his blood. Witness the proliferation of tough guys out there, dew rags in place and riding rough on the backs of their hogs...
No. That's not me. It never could be. I went through that stage but very briefly. It seems insincere, much as the high-decibel noise that they call music. No, I listen to music to be inspired. I listen often to just relax. These profound, siren songs from the likes of Cheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette and Natalie Merchant are far more suited to my tastes these days. You can never have enough beauty in your life. Or honesty and sincerity.