"So long, farewell,

auf Wiedersehen, adieu..."

This week I attended the funeral of one of my dearest friend's father. I was struck by the sizeable impact that one life can have on so many people. He wasn't famous, he wasn't rich, he wasn't particularly ambitious -- but he was a man that had good values and loved with all his heart.

Funerals, being the somber beast that they are, also offer the opportunity to reflect. They give us a glimpse into that person, and by doing so, may illuminate something about ourselves. All of a sudden we find ourselves thinking about our lives, our views, our values, our family, our future, our legacy, our losses - and by turning inward, we find all that was good and noble and enviable about the person we are there to honor. By seeing the good in them, we renew our faith in ourselves.

That's what good people do - they make us see the potential we have in ourselves. They let us see, by their example, how to live a decent life. They make us happy that we got the chance to know them and leave us better people for having known them.

So long Butch. Thanks for being you.

strategy

I'm changing my middle name to HUSSEIN (yes, it must be in all CAPS) until the presidential election is over. No offense to my given middle name, but I think HUSSEIN serves a better purpose for now.

Think about it. If everyone that supports Obama changed their middle name to his -- it could effectively diffuse the oddity of it and nullify the Republican attacks. Really, if millions of people all have the middle name HUSSEIN, then it can't be that bad - or foreign - or scary.

Switch yours out and see if it works for you. Ooh, mine even rhymes.

you know you do it too --

text speak.

Somewhere along the way, we've become either too busy, too lazy, too A.D.D. or to cool to physically type out the words we want to convey. How/when did this happen? As a lover of words with an English degree (yes, Shakespeare my friends, is doing flips in his grave), I find it apalling that this lackadaisical attitude has taken over...me.

It seems I can't help myself. I reluctantly added text messaging to my cell package because all of my friends kept texting instead of calling. Wtf? After figuring out how to read said messages, I then was faced with how to decipher them. What were they saying? For a while, I just ignored whatever it was that I didn't get, but then I started to get curious. What was this strange hybrid of conversation and how is it that I didn't know it?

I completely blame my extended period of unemployment. Resigned to long walks by the lake and bad daytime tv, I was missing out on what was up in cyber-text-trendy land. I was reluctant to join what I was sure was a bad fad, but now I find myself happily(?) SMS-ing every day. How r u? What r u do n 2nite? On bus. It really is very functional.

Most used:
LOL
OMG
BTW
WTF
LMAO
POTUS
and, my personal fav, STFU!

For those of you that don't want to appear stupid and ask someone (uh, what does that mean? - like I do about every other day), there is help. Yes, there is actually a website that will translate the texty-goobledegook for you.

www.transl8it.com.

Now who's lazy?

As Tigger would say, TTFN!

Fav quote of the day

We are in a precious moment where caution must yield to courage. It is
better to fail at the quest for greatness than to accept our planet's
future as only a reliving of the past.

Tom Hayden - The Nation
(Jan. 29, 2008)

obscure quote of the day

Meaning escapes through spaces in between letters.
~unknown

Whoa.