Well, my 1:00 appointment found an excuse not to show up. Since I moved offices to the opposite side of the campus (and am now rooming with my boss - sigh!), I've had difficulty having these guys show up. However, this has given me some free time to spend with other floors and patients, or to surf the web, which is nice.
Today I found some very interesting events going on in the world of religion, starting with the 400+ children and adults taken from the Fundamentalist LDS compound in West Texas.
In case you didn't catch this, the raid started when authorities received a call from a 16-year-old woman who claimed to be the wife of a 40-year-old man. She gave birth to his child when she was 15. As if that weren't bad enough, according to the article (use the link above to get to it), it looks like it will take years of intensive therapy for these young women to approach anything resembling normalcy in their lives. Think about it - these girls were basically kept in a controlled environment, unable to make decisions for themselves, and forced to accept whatever their leaders decided. Not only that, but they were also instructed to be afraid of the outside world and told that "non-believers" (everyone who is not a part of their very small cult) would be sure to do far worse to them than what they were experiencing inside to compound. I only can hope and pray that this is the end of that group, considering that their leader, Warren Jeffs, is incarcerated after being found guilty of being an accomplice to rape when he arranged the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old man.
Maybe now that the compound has been raided and Jeffs is locked away, that will be the end of that. Not likely, though, since the hold that cult leaders have on their followers tends to be very strong indeed.
Moving along from the scary / serious to the scary / silly, Religion Clause reports that a copy of the Scientology "Bible" has been leaked to the internet. Yep, all 612 pages of The Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology can be yours without having to go through all the E-Meter readings and spending your children's college fund! Want to see what's got Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and the guy who did the voice of Chef on South Park (Isaac Hayes) all excited? Then run over to Wikileaks and check it out before the Scientology lawyers earn their pay. Oops, too late.
Well, I've seen the text, and although I only took a quick gander, I have to say that as far as esoteric texts go, it's not much. You can find better stuff here or here.
More later, as life gets interesting. For now, though, I need to get back to pretending to work.
Peace out.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Weirdness in the World of Religion
Everyone Needs a Hobby, I Guess
In the Japanese city of Iga, this past week was the International Ninja Festival. I found this article about it while reading the online newspapers this morning. People from all over dress as ninjas, search for hidden life sized ninja dummies, watch martial arts demonstrations, and go to the local ninja museum. Even the dogs get into it!
Hmm, this dog looks a bit like my Barney. I've noticed that Barney spends a lot of time around our shed in the backyard. I'll have to check and make sure he doesn't have a stash of weapons back there.
For the record, though, pirates are still way cooler than ninjas!
Monday, April 7, 2008
Weekend in Review
Well, we survived. Friday One Ring and I trudged down to Huntsville, AL in order to attend a UCC meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to see about getting the denomination to endorse my application to be a full time "real" chaplain at the VA. Mostly it's a formality, and didn't involve a whole lot of stress, but I still wouldn't mind having the 6 hours it consumed back!
The bottom line is that they streamlined to process for me - now I just send one application to them instead of three copies all over the country. So that was unexpectedly good. The bad news is that I realized that the application demands an absurd level of work. Seriously - essay questions? photos? It's needless, in my mind. I'd much rather focus my efforts on getting the application for the VA done rather than having to work on this.
Got word on the car Friday afternoon. Apparently there's a cheap bolt that Hyundai used in the 2000 models to connect a linkage system from the outside of the transmission to the inside. This bolt apparently sheared off and went flying down the transmission, bouncing around and causing havoc. So we're going to be out around $1500 or more after all is said and done. Yesterday I phoned my family to tell them that we would not be coming out this summer as we had hoped. And my trip out in August for my 20th class reunion is equally in jeopardy. Hopefully, we will have recovered by October, when we are planning a trip to Disney World with Tigger, Pooh, and Boo (it's her first birthday, and Tigger and Pooh are insane enough to want to spend it at WDW. Works for me!). But only time will tell.
I also finally saw Sweeney Todd on DVD. Loved it, and will comment on the film in a later post. Right now I've got emails to send out as I beg and plead for I mean, calmly request letters of recommendation for my applications.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Well, At Least It's Quiet Here
Ten 'til five. Normally, I would have been gone 30 to 45 minutes ago. Sadly, though, One Ring won't be able to pick me up until 7ish. So I'm here at the hospital, trying to gather enough energy to work on my application for the next couple of hours.
I have to admit, this place gets creepy when there's no one around. Like most hospitals / schools / office buildings, the level of eerie-ness is in direct inverse proportion to the number of people roaming the hallways. So, now that it's after quitting time, and 99% of the day shift is gone, this complex has gone all quiet. Which would be nice, I suppose, had I not just been reading a bunch of online horror short stories and web blogs to pass the time!
I have to admit, I have a love / hate relationship with horror. I love the genre, in that I like to feel creeped out by a really well done scene (such as the ball bouncing down the stairs towards George C. Scott in The Changeling or hearing Gary Oldman laughing at Keanu Reeves's suffering in Bram Stoker's Dracula - and who doesn't take pleasure at Keanu Reeves suffering?). There were several scenes in The Sixth Sense that floored me. I actually couldn't sleep for a week after that one, and found myself actually wanting to investigate haunted places! And I don't even believe in ghosts!
But, alas, the trouble with the horror genre is that for every great movie, there are hundreds - maybe thousands - of knock offs, stinkers, and cliches. Pablo Francisco has this great sketch that I'm going to find on Youtube and post here about it. He talks about how every slasher movie is pretty much the same. Guy walks up to a creepy house, just as news of an escaped psychopath hits the radio, and goes in.
"Hello? Anyone here?" (Ch, ch, ch, ch, ah, ah, ah, ah)
"Billy?" (Ch, ch, ch, ch, ah, ah ,ah, ah)
"I'm going to get naked and jump in the shower!"
And the killing begins.
But that's the problem. You can't feel scared when you can't relate to the characters. If cliche character #1 (say, the jock) gets mutilated, folded, spindled, stapled, or whatever, and all he's done for the last twenty minutes is be a jerk and say horrible lines, who cares? Unfortunately, too much attention is placed on the special effects, and not enough on the plot, acting, and direction. To be honest, I found the frozen in time, blood splattered students in the music video for Pearl Jam's Jeremy far more disturbing and eerie than most of the horror movies I've seen recently. Psycho is consistantly ranked as one of the scariest movies ever, and at no point is there any gore whatsoever. It's chocolate syrup going down a drain. That's it. Yet that one scene has kept people out of showers for over a generation!
But I digress. It's quiet here. It's creepy. And I work with psych patients. Yeah, it's going to be a long couple of hours until One Ring picks me up! : )
Okay, back to the application. Oh, I heard the other day that the odds are even longer than the massive climb I was already attempting. More people applying, and they're getting really nit-picky, it sounds. Sigh.
Doom Buggy Update
Just got a call from the garage. The car's transmission is having some internal troubles, and so I'm having it shipped off to a transmission specialist closer to my house. So it's not looking good. At least tomorrow is payday, though considering that most of that check was spoken for in terms of other bills, this is the last thing we needed!
One Ring is going to pick me up at work today, but given her class schedule and traffic, she won't get here until 7. Which means that I'll be at work three hours longer than I planned when I left this morning. Sigh. Oh, well. At least this way I can work on my application nightmare while I'm alone here.
Speaking of alone in the office, I'm not. Did I mention that I'm now sharing an office with my boss? Yeah. Awkward as hell. Reminds me of my college dorm, as the office is just about the same size, the walls are covered with his stuff, and my desk is the furthest from the door. The only thing missing, I told him, are bunk beds. Of course, if I had a comfortable place to sleep, I'd never get any work done around here! This should be an interesting few months; they're telling me it will be at least June before I can get my old office back. Of course, we're talking contractors here, so I may never see my office again.
I'll post more later, when things are a tad more relaxed.
Doom Buggy Down!
I'm sure by now you had a good chuckle over my car ending up in the ditch. I know I did, especially when it ran great after being dragged out by a tow truck operator who didn't want to get any closer to the VA than he had to for fear of being sued by the government for potential damage to property (I'm not lying!). All the damage, if any, was to the A-frame, and not to anything important, he swore. So what have we learned, class? Yep. Never listen to tow truck operators!
So this morning I was driving along to work, once again happy that my baby was not showing the slightest bit of trouble following her ditch diving. However, when I pulled up to a stoplight and went to shift into first gear, the gear shift went all over the place. No resistance, no sign that I was in anything but neutral. So I'm stuck, in rush hour morning commute traffic, with a car that doesn't want to go.
Two hours of comedy of errors craziness (cell phone dying, trying to get another tow truck - not with the same company, mind you - getting preached to by the tow truck operator, and wondering if I was ever going to make it to the garage alive) I finally made it to work. Now I am awaiting word from the mechanics on how much the repairs are going to cost. Meanwhile, One Ring and I are preparing for a trip down to a meeting with the denomination high mucky-mucks to get some paperwork settled so I can apply for the VA jobs.
So I send the following to the Divine Head Office: Attention, God. Hi. Remember me? Hope so. Anyway, I'm having a time of it between the job stress, job hunting stress, and denomination stress. Now the car that I desperately need is down for the count. Any chance I can get some help and avoid financial and emotional ruin? Thanks. I'll try to be a better pirate chaplain, too. As always, if there's anything you need me to do, let me know. We don't have many bushes that'll burn around here (flame retardant bushes are government regulation, you know), but I'm sure you can figure out a way to drop me a line.
Sincerely, humbly, grovellingly, I am. etc. etc.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
"I'm Going Slightly Mad . . ."
Which is a great song by Queen, by the way. Yeah, the day's gone off the rails. Started with my receiving a report of - and I was still in the parking lot when someone told me this - a male patient placing a *ahem* object used for sexual pleaure (usually by women) on his roommate's bed. Chaos ensued. I meet with that patient today at 4. I am filled with anticipation (insert sarcasm here).
But wait. There's more!
Once I got to my office, my phone rang. It was a minister with whom I need to meet to get my paperwork in order so I can apply for the VA jobs. Yesterday he offered me meetings in June (way too late to help me), then April (still too late, but doable). Today he offered 12 noon on Friday. In Huntsville, Alabama. So I'm taking Friday off so One Ring and I can drive down to Huntsville and attend a very exciting church meeting in order to get all our ducks in a row.
In other news, I'm moving my office to another building. My boss's building, to be precise. And into my boss's office, to be even more precise. As in, I have the desk right next to his! Yikes. No more afternoon naps or running off campus when no one is looking, I guess. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted.
As an aside, the canteen on campus here is selling - I kid you not - fishtanks that hang on the wall. I'm getting sea monkeys, man! : ) In my boss's office, no less. Maybe. We'll see. Lord knows it was warm enough in there today to keep fish alive. My old office (where I'm typing this now) is hotter than the fourth circle of hell today, so I'm feeling very happy to get out. Never mind the smell of whatever chemicals they're using to clean and remodel the place. Majoy evil stench here.
Okay, I've got a ton of paperwork to do, and a case study to prepare. More later, perhaps.
