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I saw someone’s Facebook status today:

And I was immediately struck with anger.

At first, I wasn’t sure quite why. I get what they meant. It seems like Ebola’s everywhere! It’s constantly on the news, all over the internet, and everyone’s talking about it. It makes sense to be sick of hearing about it.  We’re bound to get sick of hearing about anything that much!

But still, I couldn’t shake the discomfort that rung in my head over that status. Ebola seems far away, after all, it’s only been diagnosed four times in the US. It’s easy to tuck it away in your mind as something distant that doesn’t affect you and forget why it’s a big deal.

It’s even become a hot topic for jokes on social media:

Because so many see this very real disease as a far away concept, we find safety in our distance and it’s easy to make light of it.

But guys….

4,877 deaths. 9,935 sufferers. That’s not funny. That’s not something to ask to “omg shut up.”

The idea of disease never really hit home for me until my little sister was diagnosed with cancer. Yes, Ebola and cancer are two very different things. But I know what it’s like to watch someone I love very dearly suffer. I know what it’s like to hold my sister’s hand while she cries because she can’t escape the pain or the fear that comes with her disease. I know what it’s like to cry myself to sleep begging God to take her illness away. And I can’t help but imagine a sister somewhere in Africa in a situation very similar to my own, watching her loved one suffer, hearing her cries, and begging for it to all be over- but without the blessings of medicine and technology that my sister has access to.

We are quick to throw on our pink gear for breast cancer awareness and dump ice on our head for ALS because that kind of awareness is fun and easy. I’m not trying to diminish those causes- they are great causes that deserve promotion. But I mean to make note of the fact that when another very real disease with very real consequences is brought to light and gains awareness, people groan that it’s in the news again and make jokes about it on the internet. Because Ebola doesn’t have the fun and cute promotional package, we complain and make light of it and its need for awareness and a solution.

People are suffering and dying from Ebola. Just because that suffering seems far away, doesn’t make it any less significant.

This is a guest post from my oldest daughter, Meredith. I begged her to let me post it. 

We here in the south love our college football. In fact, it would be easy to say that many worship college football. If a pittance of the devotion some give to their team were directed toward more worthy causes, there could be a substantial positive change in this world.

Don’t get me wrong, I love football. I love tailgating, fatty foods, friendly arguments, and the whole game day experience. But I don’t live or die with it. If my team loses, I am pretty much okay twenty minutes afterwards unlike some who can’t recover until a potential perfect season starts again the next year. Maybe that’s the benefit of your team never being very good, I don’t know.

I’ve noticed a disheartening trend among some fans. It happens when one of the players messes up and gets disciplined by the coach or school. All of the sudden, that kid is labelled “bad”… a ne’re-do-well. I have to say that upsets me more than the many losses my team racked up last year.

What many forget is that these are just kids put in a crazy situation that contains spotlights and cameras all pointed at them. When they do something stupid, everyone acts surprised and offended as if they have soiled the hallowed reputation of the university. Of course they are going to do something stupid! They are eighteen year-old boys. If all of my stupidity at that age was laid out on ESPN, I would have had a ton of labels thrown on me also. And my guess is that these superfans have skeletons, as well. Come on, if you are willing to paint your fat, nearly-naked body as an adult, what stupidity did you enter into as an adolescent?

Here is what we need to remember. There is Stupid and there is Wrong  – and they are two totally separate things. By stupid, I don’t mean unintelligent.

Portsong’s definition of Stupid – impulsive actions a young man undertakes with no forethought or consideration of consequence. Stupid.

“Hey, stop the car. You see those cows, let’s go cow-tipping?” – Stupid

“You bring your gun, let’s shoot that cow.” – Wrong

Need I list more examples?  They are boys! Don’t confuse stupid behavior with bad intent. Stupid and Wrong are totally separate things. You get your belt out for wrong. You take away a privilege for stupid.

There are plenty of gray areas. “You wanna smoke some of this,” blurs the line between stupid experimentation and wrong. But I think you get my point. Just because a kid does something that gets him disciplined by his team or coach, he isn’t a bad kid. He’s just exercising his prerogative to be his age – lights, cameras, and microphones or not. Fans have created this surreal college sports environment where they expect young men to live up to a ten-thousand page code of conduct that they themselves would have torn up and eaten on a dare at their frat party just a few years ago.

Putting expectations like that on an 18 year-old kid is both stupid and wrong.

I hate greeting cards. Oh sure, I’ve been touched by the sentimental commercials. Maybe I shed a tear, maybe not. But they didn’t inspire to me buy a card or like them.

The only cards that resonate with me are blank cards. In this day and age, if someone takes the time to write their own thoughts out and mail it – that is a treasure.

What greeting cards really say in their flourishing font is: “I’m lazy!”

Write this in your card: “I was too lazy to set a few minutes aside to put my own thoughts into words, so here are some prepackaged, canned, inauthentic thoughts that a wanna-be romance writer who hasn’t shaved in weeks and smokes big cigars in Spokane thought were relevant just for you, my sweetest. Please say ‘Awwwww’ and kiss me.”

Frankly, greeting cards are disingenuous at best.

When I was a kid, they were just speed bumps to the present. Oh sure, I would pretend to read them on my way to disemboweling the wrapping paper that stood between me and the gift. I liked the ones Aunt Eunice would underline so I could skip most of the words – kind of a cliff notes version. Later in life, she began underlining every word, including the price and printing information – which made it less helpful. Of course, by then she was wrapping up ten year-old toasters and place mats for presents, so haste was less of a concern.

Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you

-Henry Kissinger

Greeting cards and I have a turbulent history. Since I am negatively disposed against them, they do their best to shame me at every turn. Instead of bowing to their convenience and paying the price, I try to take the time to write personal notes, especially to my lovely wife. But there are instances when I run out of time and am forced to rush into the store and get one. When this happens, I treat it like a commando raid – rush in, select the victim, and get out before anyone gets hurt. I choose based on color and frill, often neglecting  to check the sentiment inside – time is what I lack, anyway. With that method, it is pretty easy to stay away from sympathy and get-well cards, but sometimes (okay, most of the time), the sentiment of my selection doesn’t match the occasion or is age inappropriate. That is where The Hallmark Conspiracy comes in.

Take this week. This week marked her birthday. I had a great present in advance, but completely forgot the stupid card until the day of. So I put on my camo, blacked my eyes and descended upon the grocery store. Although every fiber of my cheap being steered me to the 99¢ rack, I’ve been warned about those and went all out – $3.99! I found the birthday section, saw one with a cute little boy and girl on it and dashed out of the store.

Here is what I got:

Hastily altered in the driveway – think she noticed?

Mis-shelved! The card was mis-shelved! I swear I was in the birthday section!

Swine greeting cards!!!!!!

Someday society will truly be paperless and I won’t have to deal with these verbose phonies. Until then, I’ll shred a few in effigy and steer clear of the aisle altogether.

Whatever happened to quality? Back in my day, companies used to stand behind what they made. Things just lasted longer. There were warranties and repair shops for TV’s and appliances instead of everything being disposable. Nowadays, we just buy things and no matter how much we pay, we expect to have to replace them in five to seven years. It’s downright sad.

Shoddy workmanship coupled with new appliance styles and colors released every few years means none of us will ever be able to keep up. In my adult life they started as white, went to black, and now one is considered below the poverty line unless they have stainless steel. They’ve got this scam perfected. When your microwave goes out, instead of getting it repaired you have to replace it. And since it will no longer match your other kitchen appliances, the broken microwave ends up costing you $4000 for upgrading the entire kitchen.

Forget that mess, I have a white microwave with a broken handle, a black oven, and stainless dishwasher and refrigerator.  I figure my cheapness gives me a wider spectrum of color in my kitchen and possibly a disappointed wife, but I refuse to give in to their madness.

I really didn’t start this rant to vent about kitchen appliances, we took a detour there. I’m angry about specs and tolerances. If packaging says the wire I am purchasing has a tensile strength of 1200 MPa, I figure I should easily be able to get 1250-1300 MPa out of it before it breaks. Or if my pneumatic nail gun recommends a range of 90-120 PSI, I think 130 PSI will make sure the sucker holds.

So it speaks to shoddy quality that a towel bar designed to hold 4 pounds of wet towel wouldn’t be able to keep a flailing, 210-pound man upright. It stands to reason that this should have been well within the tolerance of a reasonably made product, don’t you think?

I discovered this defect after our bathroom was rearranged for our new cat’s needs. The bath mat was not returned to its proper place and my wet foot slid out from under me upon exiting the shower. I desperately grabbed the towel bar only to find what inspector number seven did not. It wouldn’t hold when tested and tumbled down onto the cold wet tile alongside of me.

What is this world coming to when manufacturers don’t care about quality anymore? I tell you what it’s coming to:  bruised bums and holes in the wall, THAT’s what this world is coming to.

It’s a darn shame…

I think April 15th would be the worst birthday to have. There are two kinds of people as it relates to taxes – those who get a check and those who have to send a check. If you have to send a check (like me), you grudgingly hold onto it until the last minute and mail it on April 14th, leaving you broke and unable to buy a present for your friend with a birthday the following day. If you get a check, you filed in early February. Since you considered the return a sudden windfall, you blew it on something frivolous like a snowcone maker, leaving you no residual to buy a present for your friend with the worst birthday of the year.

Conversely, there would be something extremely cool about being a leap baby and having February 29th as your birthday.

That tidbit is irrelevant today since I just had to write a check to the United States Treasury! Oh, I understand that it costs to provide government services. I know it has to come from the citizens. I just hate filling that out on the check – and then they want me to Fed X it or pay extra for a return confirmation. I’m sorry, but aren’t I paying for the postal service to be sufficient to deliver your money to you? If you have any doubts whether the man in blue who just took my envelop can discharge his duty properly, shouldn’t you institute a better employee screening process instead of charging me another $4.50?

I’m not bitter, though. Not at all.

But while I’m on the subject, I remember when I took my first baby home from the hospital in mid-December. When I did my taxes, I felt like I had cheated the world since I got a deduction for the entire year and she only cost me for two weeks. That was eighteen years ago. So this year I lost the tax credit for her because she turned eighteen. I love her dearly, but like most children, she is complete financial dead weight – all cost, little contribution. And let me tell you Mr. United States Treasury, she costs considerably more now at eighteen than she did at one. I’d trade diapers and formula for cell phones, clothes, gas and car insurance any day.

I’m not bitter, though. Not at all.

I could go on, about paying into a social security system that I am assured will not exist when I am of age to need it. That’s why I had four kids, they are a kind of a retirement plan for me. I figure I can rotate a week a month at each of their houses and mooch off them just to pay them back. I’ll refuse to wear pants, make odd noises and smells, and sit on the front porch complaining about the government all day.

I’m not bitter, though. Not at all…

♦

Photo credit: Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views

Artwork: The Taxes by Orlov

Remember in the 70′s when some white-haired old men in polyester suits said that if you spun your evil rock & roll records backwards, you could hear embedded devil lyrics that would worm their way deep inside the unsuspecting soul. Backwards masking! Subliminal hellfire! My friends and I spent hours pulling at our turntables hoping to find something through all of the garbled, warped noise. In the end, the buffoons probably boosted record sales more than anything else.

But why are we fascinated? Why do we spend time, energy, and emotion looking for bad?

Abe Lincoln once said, “If you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will.”

Yeah, you don’t have to look hard to find bad. It’s everywhere. So, when you stumble upon it, as you inevitably will, what do you do with it? Shout at it? I can’t find where Jesus said we were to shout at the darkness. What good does that do? “Hey darkness, uh… you’re dark!” I do see the Sermon of the Mount where Jesus said we were to shine a light in the darkness. There is quite a difference between the two.

^Matthew5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Shouting only makes noise, while shining a light shows direction.

Shouting creates confusion, light dispels fear.

Shouting is angry, sharing light is love defined.

♦

My oldest daughter told me about a “preacher” out west who has decided that the Disney movie Frozen is going to make us all gay with its hidden agenda. Before I address him, I want to give you my review of the movie. I really liked it. It was like Up - I had few expectations going in but I walked away loving it. Olaf cracked me up, the story was compelling, and the music was beautiful. Now that the Bluray has come out, I’ve seen it again and I still like it. (oh no, I said ‘come out’, what’s happening to me?) It’s a very sweet story and I think anyone finding an agenda simply has one of their own. They are searching for substance out of shadows.

I had originally quoted some of what the shouter said here, but I don’t want to give air to such blather, especially since he admits he has not seen the movie. I will give one quote for the sole purpose of mocking it:

“If I was the Devil, what would I do to really foul up an entire social system and do something really, really, really evil to 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds in Christian families around America?…If I was the Devil, I would buy Disney in 1984, that’s what I would have done.”

I read The Screwtape Letters. I know C.S. Lewis, and you, sir, are no C.S. Lewis.

But maybe.  Just maybe… if I were the devil, I’d sit back in an ivory tower and in the name of religion spew ridiculous insinuations that make the church of Jesus Christ seem like a bunch of backwards, unloving idiots that no one in their right mind would want to be a part of. Yeah, that’s what I’d do.

Look around, Rev. Shouterson, this tactic seems to be working.

This post is a bit out of the norm for me. I typed it while ticked off and debated whether to trash it. I even made a new (hopefully seldom-used) category called ‘Don’t Blog Angry’ for it when I decided to push publish. Uh, enjoy – I guess?

Photo Credit: Fyrsten (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons