Not the final entry
While I don't know with absolute certainty that this will not be the final entry in my blog, unless I should pass away before I find time to sit at the computer again, it almost certainly won't be. I mention this because I was thinking about the blog of Martin Manley today. In case you've forgotten, he is the 60 year old who took his own life on his birthday this past August. He also wrote extensively about his plan to do so, the reasons why and why not, and a whole lot more. He wrote about the U.S. financial mess and about how horrible the odds are against anyone really winning any money from the various lotteries that are going on. He had a detailed list of rules for his weekly poker game and played a variety of different (silly) versions of the game. I did not see a list of his medical maladies but considering I've only scratched the surface of his writings, that doesn't surprise me.
I have a bad heart. It is enlarged, I suffer from congestive heart failure (CHF), I have a slight blockage in one artery and my heart's ejection fraction is below 30% (considered presumptive evidence of 100% disability). I have asthma, COPD and arthritis in both knees. I have a torn medial meniscus in one knee. I have Type II diabetes. I'm in pain every single day to some degree. Plantar fasciitis in one foot. Back pain. Knee pain. Breathing is a struggle on any walk of more than 100 yards.
Like Martin Manley, I have no children who would mourn my passing. Were I to go die, I'd be quickly forgotten. But I can't begin to understand or contemplate the choice to give up on life. I don't have a lot of crap to deal with compared to so many others. There is clean water to drink and bathe in. There's a roof over my head. Competent, caring and compassionate medical personnel to treat my wide variety and quantity of illnesses and conditions. I can't work as many hours as I like but my work is rewarding (even if trying at times). I teach others and I know I'm positively impacting their lives.
Yes, I read Martin Manley's blog. But he made the wrong choice. The world is a poorer place without him in it. It would be the same without me. He chose to leave. I'm staying every possible moment I can here on this planet. I choose life. Even on a day like today, where I'm so tired and frustrated I'd be screaming aloud if I could muster the energy to take a deep enough breath.
* * *
So the big news from Washington, D.C. is that the 535 morons are close to a deal that does nothing but postpone the discussion/problem until February. The fact that the Federal Reserve can print unlimited amounts of dollar bills doesn't mean that the Congress has unlimited borrowing power. Somewhere the public debt reaches critical mass and suddenly we'll be just another third-world country in terms of meeting our financial obligations. We will default. Maybe Cedric the Entertainer was right on the money back in the year 2000: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEj0R15q8bw
* * *
Random Ponderings on October 15th:
I happened to notice that a client who called to book an appointment today for three p.m. had also made other appointments earlier in the day at other offices in the area. I guess he's planning to get them done wherever and whenever he finally gets his stuff together.
Should we be surprised that during the shutdown, the IRS can and will process payments they receive today (the extension filing deadline) but refunds will not be processed until the shutdown is over? No, we shouldn't be surprised by this We want ours now, you'll get yours when we get around to it is business as usual for them.
The St. Louis Cardinals are poor losers.
So the latest study showing that chewing popcorn disrupts the impact of commercials shown before movies in theaters is a good reason to keep buying popcorn, right?
A big thumbs up to the man who suffers from Muscular Dystrophy who finished the Chicago Marathon in 16 hours and 46 minutes. An outstanding achievement!
To the woman who got stuck on the Florida Drawbridge while trying to cross it; the sign that says not for pedestrians isn't there just to collect bird feces.
Amazing how different the interpretation of one song can be when done by different artists. Check these out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrMg3pY7hw (Chuck Berry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4-16zxVMw0 (The Beatles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxXl4oS9wss (ELO)
* * *
October 16th In History:
456 – Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.
1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.
1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d'Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.
1780 – Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War.
1781 – George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.
1793 – Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
1793 – The Battle of Wattignies ends in a French victory.
1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.
1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London burns to the ground.
1841 – Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
1846 – William T. G. Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.
1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".
1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women.
1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.
1906 – The Captain of Köpenick fools the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.
1916 – In Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States.
1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.
1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.
1939 – World War II: First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe.
1940 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
1944 – Wally Walrus, Woody Woodpecker's first steady foil, was debuted at the The Beach Nut, a Walter Lantz's cartoon.
1945 – The Food and Agriculture Organization is founded in Quebec City, Canada.
1946 – Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
1949 – Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.
1949 – The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic are established.
1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.
1962 – The Cuban missile crisis between the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union begins when US President John F. Kennedy is shown photographs of missile sites in Cuba.
1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
1964 – Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively and the collective leadership is established.
1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the US team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.
1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
1970 – In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act.
1973 – Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1975 – The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.
1975 – Rahima Banu, a two-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, is the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.
1975 – The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, vote to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government's annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.
1978 – Karol Wojtyla is elected Pope John Paul II after the October 1978 Papal conclave, the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523.
1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1984 – The Bill debuted on ITV, eventually becoming the longest-running police procedural in British television history.
1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1986 – Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.
1991 – Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
1993 – Anti-Nazism riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.
1995 – The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C.
1995 – The Skye Bridge is opened.
1996 – 84 people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
1998 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.
Famous Folk Born On October 16th:
Morgan Lewis
Noah Webster
Paul Hamilton
William Burton
Kuroda Kiyotaka
Austen Chamberlain
David Ben-Gurion
Olivia Coolidge
Angela Lansbury
Charles Colson
Nico
Barry Corbin
Tim McCarver
Dave DeBusschere
Suzanne Somers (did you buy a thighmaster?)
David Zucker
Christopher Cox
Cordell Mosson
Ron Taylor
Lorenzo Carcaterra
Tim Robbins
Flea
Manute Bol
Gary Kemp
Wendy Wilson
Kordell Stewart
Kellie Martin
John Mayer
Jeremy Jackson
Pippa Black
Movie Quotes today come from "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" because Tim Robbins is in it as the President:
Vanessa Kensington: Do you smoke after sex?
Austin: I don't know, baby, I never looked.
#2
The President: Jiminy Jumpin' Jesus, I can't believe we're gonna pay that madman. I got nukes out the ying-yang. Just let me launch one, for God's sake.
Commander Gilmour: Sir. Are you suggesting that we blow up the moon?
The President: Would you miss it?
[looks around the table]
The President: Would you miss it?
#3
Dr. Evil: Any ways, the key to this plan is the giant laser. It was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist Dr. Parsons. Therefore, we shall call it the Alan Parsons Project.
Scott: Oh, my God.
Dr. Evil: What now?
Scott: The Alan Parsons Project is a progressive rock band in 1982. Why don't you just name it 'Operation Wang-Chung'? Ass.
Dr. Evil: I'm sorry, i don't...
Scott: Oh nothing. I'm sure 'Operation Bananarama' will be huge.
#4
Dr. Evil: As you know, every diabolical scheme I've hatched has been thwarted by Austin Powers. And why is that, ladies and gentlemen?
Scott: Because you never kill him when you get the chance, and you're a big dope?
#5
Ivana: My name is Ivana, Ivana Humpalot.
Austin: Come again?
Ivana: Ivana Humpalot.
Austin: Well I vana toilet made out of solid gold, but it's just not in the cards now is it?
I have a bad heart. It is enlarged, I suffer from congestive heart failure (CHF), I have a slight blockage in one artery and my heart's ejection fraction is below 30% (considered presumptive evidence of 100% disability). I have asthma, COPD and arthritis in both knees. I have a torn medial meniscus in one knee. I have Type II diabetes. I'm in pain every single day to some degree. Plantar fasciitis in one foot. Back pain. Knee pain. Breathing is a struggle on any walk of more than 100 yards.
Like Martin Manley, I have no children who would mourn my passing. Were I to go die, I'd be quickly forgotten. But I can't begin to understand or contemplate the choice to give up on life. I don't have a lot of crap to deal with compared to so many others. There is clean water to drink and bathe in. There's a roof over my head. Competent, caring and compassionate medical personnel to treat my wide variety and quantity of illnesses and conditions. I can't work as many hours as I like but my work is rewarding (even if trying at times). I teach others and I know I'm positively impacting their lives.
Yes, I read Martin Manley's blog. But he made the wrong choice. The world is a poorer place without him in it. It would be the same without me. He chose to leave. I'm staying every possible moment I can here on this planet. I choose life. Even on a day like today, where I'm so tired and frustrated I'd be screaming aloud if I could muster the energy to take a deep enough breath.
* * *
So the big news from Washington, D.C. is that the 535 morons are close to a deal that does nothing but postpone the discussion/problem until February. The fact that the Federal Reserve can print unlimited amounts of dollar bills doesn't mean that the Congress has unlimited borrowing power. Somewhere the public debt reaches critical mass and suddenly we'll be just another third-world country in terms of meeting our financial obligations. We will default. Maybe Cedric the Entertainer was right on the money back in the year 2000: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEj0R15q8bw
* * *
Random Ponderings on October 15th:
I happened to notice that a client who called to book an appointment today for three p.m. had also made other appointments earlier in the day at other offices in the area. I guess he's planning to get them done wherever and whenever he finally gets his stuff together.
Should we be surprised that during the shutdown, the IRS can and will process payments they receive today (the extension filing deadline) but refunds will not be processed until the shutdown is over? No, we shouldn't be surprised by this We want ours now, you'll get yours when we get around to it is business as usual for them.
The St. Louis Cardinals are poor losers.
So the latest study showing that chewing popcorn disrupts the impact of commercials shown before movies in theaters is a good reason to keep buying popcorn, right?
A big thumbs up to the man who suffers from Muscular Dystrophy who finished the Chicago Marathon in 16 hours and 46 minutes. An outstanding achievement!
To the woman who got stuck on the Florida Drawbridge while trying to cross it; the sign that says not for pedestrians isn't there just to collect bird feces.
Amazing how different the interpretation of one song can be when done by different artists. Check these out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrMg3pY7hw (Chuck Berry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4-16zxVMw0 (The Beatles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxXl4oS9wss (ELO)
* * *
October 16th In History:
456 – Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.
1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.
1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d'Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.
1780 – Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War.
1781 – George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.
1793 – Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
1793 – The Battle of Wattignies ends in a French victory.
1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.
1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London burns to the ground.
1841 – Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
1846 – William T. G. Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.
1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".
1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women.
1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.
1906 – The Captain of Köpenick fools the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.
1916 – In Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States.
1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.
1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.
1939 – World War II: First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe.
1940 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
1944 – Wally Walrus, Woody Woodpecker's first steady foil, was debuted at the The Beach Nut, a Walter Lantz's cartoon.
1945 – The Food and Agriculture Organization is founded in Quebec City, Canada.
1946 – Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
1949 – Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.
1949 – The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic are established.
1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.
1962 – The Cuban missile crisis between the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union begins when US President John F. Kennedy is shown photographs of missile sites in Cuba.
1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
1964 – Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively and the collective leadership is established.
1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the US team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.
1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
1970 – In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act.
1973 – Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1975 – The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.
1975 – Rahima Banu, a two-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, is the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.
1975 – The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, vote to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government's annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.
1978 – Karol Wojtyla is elected Pope John Paul II after the October 1978 Papal conclave, the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523.
1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1984 – The Bill debuted on ITV, eventually becoming the longest-running police procedural in British television history.
1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1986 – Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.
1991 – Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
1993 – Anti-Nazism riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.
1995 – The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C.
1995 – The Skye Bridge is opened.
1996 – 84 people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
1998 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.
Famous Folk Born On October 16th:
Morgan Lewis
Noah Webster
Paul Hamilton
William Burton
Kuroda Kiyotaka
Austen Chamberlain
David Ben-Gurion
Olivia Coolidge
Angela Lansbury
Charles Colson
Nico
Barry Corbin
Tim McCarver
Dave DeBusschere
Suzanne Somers (did you buy a thighmaster?)
David Zucker
Christopher Cox
Cordell Mosson
Ron Taylor
Lorenzo Carcaterra
Tim Robbins
Flea
Manute Bol
Gary Kemp
Wendy Wilson
Kordell Stewart
Kellie Martin
John Mayer
Jeremy Jackson
Pippa Black
Movie Quotes today come from "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" because Tim Robbins is in it as the President:
Vanessa Kensington: Do you smoke after sex?
Austin: I don't know, baby, I never looked.
#2
The President: Jiminy Jumpin' Jesus, I can't believe we're gonna pay that madman. I got nukes out the ying-yang. Just let me launch one, for God's sake.
Commander Gilmour: Sir. Are you suggesting that we blow up the moon?
The President: Would you miss it?
[looks around the table]
The President: Would you miss it?
#3
Dr. Evil: Any ways, the key to this plan is the giant laser. It was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist Dr. Parsons. Therefore, we shall call it the Alan Parsons Project.
Scott: Oh, my God.
Dr. Evil: What now?
Scott: The Alan Parsons Project is a progressive rock band in 1982. Why don't you just name it 'Operation Wang-Chung'? Ass.
Dr. Evil: I'm sorry, i don't...
Scott: Oh nothing. I'm sure 'Operation Bananarama' will be huge.
#4
Dr. Evil: As you know, every diabolical scheme I've hatched has been thwarted by Austin Powers. And why is that, ladies and gentlemen?
Scott: Because you never kill him when you get the chance, and you're a big dope?
#5
Ivana: My name is Ivana, Ivana Humpalot.
Austin: Come again?
Ivana: Ivana Humpalot.
Austin: Well I vana toilet made out of solid gold, but it's just not in the cards now is it?
posted by me at 2:43 PM
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