THE HOLY BOOK OF UNIVERSAL TRUTHS,
K. U. P.

(Kimball's Unauthorized Perversion)

• Entitlement as a Way of Thinking
• Land of the Free (to Lay Blame)
• Bill Gates on Education
• Only in America
• What half a Century can Teach You About Life
• Twenty-one Ways to Deal with a Dead Horse
• Your Daily Moment of Zen
• Strange Thoughts for the Day
• For Those Who Have Gotten This Far and Still Take Life Too Seriously
• Still More Eternal Truths
• At Ground Zero in Florida's Year of Storms
• The Second Greatest Generation?
• By the Grace of God and a Female Cardinal
• "For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
• A Packrat Nation

Entitlement is what I have been seeing in American corporations: people not really contributing, but still expecting to get their regular raise, their scheduled promotion . . . Entitlement destroys motivation. It lowers productivity. In the long run it crushes self-esteem . . . it is an epidemic in this country.

We are more likely to sustain Entitlement in people when . . . we see [them] as victim[s].

Here it is again: excuses in the making. When people think in "victim" terms, they believe they are freed from having to take responsibility. They are entitled to whatever simply because it is owed to them, not because they've earned it. And once things are owed to them, excuses must follow. There is no other possibility. It goes with the territory. "I shouldn't have to do this or that in order to get what I want. I am entitled to it."

Entitlement thinking is a logic in itself. It swims in the same stream of logic with reactive thinking, victimization, and excuses, excuses, excuses. It is too often the American corporate logic. It's what Dr. Bardwick calls in her subtitle "the habit that's killing American business."

Where there are excuses, there will be undesirable results! The habit of excuse-making is the habit that is breeding entitlement thinking. It is the same habit that is killing American business!

(excerpt from Let's Get Results, Not Excuses!
by James M. Bleech and Dr. David G. Mutchler)

Let's see if I understand the state of personal responsibility in the America of the 1990s & 2000s.

• If a woman burns her thighs on the hot coffee she was holding in her lap while driving, she blames the restaurant.
• If your teenage son kills himself, you blame the rock 'n' roll musician he liked.
• If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family blames the Tobacco Company.
• If your daughter gets pregnant by the football captain, you blame the school for poor sex education.
• If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, you blame the bartender.
• If your cousin gets AIDS because the needle he used to shoot heroin was dirty, you blame the government for not providing clean ones.
• If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you blame television.
• And, if your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you blame the gun manufacturer.

• Rule 1: Life is not fair -- get used to it.
• Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
• Rule 3: You will not make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.
• Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
• Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.
• Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
• Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
• Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
• Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
• Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
• Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one!

• Only in America...do we use the word "politics" to describe the process so well: "Poli" in Latin meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "blood-sucking creatures".
• Only in America...can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
• Only in America...are there handicapped parking places in front of a skating rink.
• Only in America...do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
• Only in America...do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and leave useless things and junk in boxes locked in the garage.
• Only in America...do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.
• Only in America...do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
• Only in America...do we award someone $3,000,000 for spilling hot coffee in their own lap.
• Only in America...do we have labels on baby strollers to remind people to remove the baby before folding up the stroller.
• Only in America...do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions.
• Only in America...do people order double cheese burgers, large fries--and a diet coke.
• Only in America do they have drive-through ATM machines with Braille lettering!
  ===========
• Only in America do we create lists like this...

1. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.
2. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill with a laxative before going to bed.
3. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe "Daylight Saving Time."
4. People who feel the need to tell you that they have an excellent sense of humor are telling you that they have no sense of humor.
5. The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.
6. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
7. A penny saved is worthless.
8. They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will be bitter enemies.
9. The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.
10. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.
11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.
12. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
13. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
14. There apparently exists, somewhere in Los Angeles, a computer that generates concepts for television sitcoms. When TV executives need a new concept, they turn on this computer; after sorting through millions of possible plot premises, it spits out "THREE QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT," and the executives turn this concept into a show. The next time they need an idea, the computer spits out "SIX QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT". Then the next time, it spits out "FOUR QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT". And so on. We need to locate this computer and destroy it with hammers.
15. Nobody is normal.
16. At least once per year, some group of scientists will become very excited and announce:
    -the universe is even bigger than they thought!
    -there are even more subatomic particles than they thought!
    -whatever they announced last year about global warming is wrong.
17. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
18. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.
19. The value of advertising is that it tells you the exact opposite of what the advertiser actually thinks. For example:
    -If Coke and Pepsi spend billions of dollars to convince you that there are significant differences between these two products, both companies realize that Pepsi and Coke are virtually identical;
    -If the advertisement strongly suggests that Nike shoes enable athletes to perform amazing feats, Nike wants you to disregard the fact that shoe brand is unrelated to athletic ability;
    -If Budweiser runs an elaborate advertising campaign stressing the critical importance of a beer's "born-on" date, Budweiser knows this factor has virtually nothing to do with how good a beer tastes.
    And so on. On those rare occasions when advertising dares to poke fun at the product - as in the classic Volkswagen Beetle campaign - it's because the advertiser actually thinks the product is pretty good. If a politician ever ran for president under a slogan such as "Harlan Frubert: Basically, He Wants Attention", I would quit my job to work for his campaign.
20. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.
21. You should not confuse your career with your life.
22. Never lick a steak knife.
23. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
24. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
25. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
26. Your friends love you anyway.
27. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "no horse is too dead to beat."
14. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.
15. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
16. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
17. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
18. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
19. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
20. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

I wonder which strategy this fellow tried?

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either; just leave me the heck alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
3. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.
4. Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.
5. Don't be irreplaceable; if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
6. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
7. Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.
8. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
9. It may be that your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.
10. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
11. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
12. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away -- and you have their shoes.
13. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
14. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat & drink beer all day.
15. If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
16. Don't squat with your spurs on.
17. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
18. Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.
19. Don't worry, it only seems kinky the first time.
20. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
21. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
22. Timing has an awful lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
23. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
24. Duct tape is like the Force; it has a light side & a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
25. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
26. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your mouth is moving.
27. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
28. We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.
29. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Of course, so does falling down a flight of stairs.
30. You can do anything if you want it bad enough. That is why we see so many people who can fly.
31. Never say die. I've tried, and it doesn't actually make people die.
32. Never under-estimate your ability to over-estimate your ability.
33. Laughter is the best medicine, but in certain situations the Heimlich maneuver may be more appropriate.
34. While others complain that their glasses are half empty, find joy in the fact that yours is half full. Just make sure it's twice as big as everyone else's glass.
35. It takes a village to raise a child to hate all of the people in the next village.
36. Dare to dream the impossible. I mean, why not? Dreaming doesn't take any effort.
37. The key to someone's heart is never lost; it's just that the locks were changed because you're some sort of psycho.
38. You have to learn to crawl before you can grovel.
39. Each dawn brings us a fresh start, because we never learn, do we?
40. You've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the prince. But he probably isn't going to be interested in a frog-kisser.
41. Every failure is a step to success, up a ladder that will eventually collapse under the weight of all those failures.
42. True beauty is on the inside, where no one will ever see it.
43. One person can make a difference, if that person is, like, Bill Gates or whatzisname, the speaker of the House of Representatives.
44. Every dog has his day. Of course, his day consists of smelling other dogs' butts.
45. You can run but you can't hide, except apparently along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

1. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
2. Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
3. I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and I think, "Well, that's not going to happen."
4. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
5. The other night I ate at a real family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.
6. Have you noticed that since everyone got a camcorder, no one talks about seeing UFOs like they use to?
7. According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about a woman is their eyes, and women say the first thing they notice about men is they're a bunch of liars.
8. Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
9. All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
10. Have you noticed that a slight tax increase costs you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?
11. In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
12. Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
13. There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
14. How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
15. You read about all these terrorists--most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10-15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster: you're two days late with a video and those people are all over you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge of immigration.

1. Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
2. A day without sunshine is like night.
3. I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
4. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
5. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges?
6. Honk if you love peace and quiet.
7. Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how popular it remains?
8. Nothing is fool-proof to a talented fool.
9. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
10. I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
11. My mind is like a steel trap - rusty and illegal in most states and territories.
12. Quantum mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of.
13. The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
14. Support bacteria -- they're the only culture some people have.
15. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
16. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
17. Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
18. Success always occurs in private and failure in full view.
19. The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
20. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.
21. To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
22. Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
23. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
24. The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
25. Get a new car for your spouse -- it'll be a great trade!
26. Plan to be spontaneous -- tomorrow.
27. Always try to be modest and be proud of it!
28. Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener.

1. When life hands you lemons, ask for a bottle of tequila and salt.
2. Once over the hill, you pick up speed.
3. I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
4. If it weren't for STRESS I'd have no energy at all.
5. Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
6. Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.
7. I know God won't give me more than I can handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much.
8. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
9. If the shoe fits, buy it in every color.
10. If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.
11. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
12. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
13. Some days are a total waste of makeup.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
16. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
17. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
18. Junk is something you keep for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
19. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
20. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
21. Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
22. If you see a sign advertising a yard sale, pass it up. Usually they only have one yard for sale, and it's covered with used junk.
23. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, and if you look in the other end, cowboys will make fun of you.
24. The person who said, "two heads are better than one," was not an ultrasound technician!
25. I used to complain because I had no shoes, until I met a man with no feet. Now I complain because he gets the good parking spots.
26. Are gansta rappers really that tough? My grandfather cusses and wears pants three sizes too large, too.
27. Jesse Jackson, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggert have written an impressive new book. It's called "Ministers Do More Than Lay People."
28. Transvestite: A guy who likes to eat, drink and be Mary.
29. The difference between the Pope and your boss....the Pope only expects you to kiss his ring.
30. My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
31. The only time the world beats a path to your door is if you're in the bathroom.
32. I hate sex in the movies. Tried it once. The seat folded up, the drink spilled and that ice, well, it really chilled the mood.
33. It used to be only death and taxes were inevitable. Now, of course, there's shipping and handling, too.
34. My next house will have no kitchen -- just vending machines and a large trash can.
35. I'm so depressed because my doctor refused to write me a prescription for Viagra. He said it would be like putting a new flagpole on a condemned building.
36. As we slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.

Mind you, people think Floridians are used to cyclonic storms like these. We are--to little ones. I understand that the last killer storm to hit my neighborhood was Donna, in 1960. In 38 years of living here, the storms I experienced were no worse than category 1. The main reason for this is the fact that the nearest beach is fifty miles away; hurricanes get their strength from warm water, so they've been tamed by the time they arrive here. As a result, a typical storm would knock down some trees, we'd miss a day of work, and then life would return to normal pretty quickly.

The first band of rain and wind reached us at 2:40 PM, on August 13. I saw a big disk-shaped cloud rapidly come in from the southwest, reminding me of the flying saucer that covered the sky in the movie "Independence Day." The second band arrived at 4 PM; both were no worse than a bad summertime thunderstorm. Then at 7:45 PM the storm began in earnest, when the heart of it arrived. The peak was between 9 and 10 PM, as the eye passed through Orange and Seminole counties. In our area the winds were a steady 65-70 MPH, with gusts of up to 105 reported at Orlando International Airport. During the worst hour, when I looked out the window, I saw lightning that was turned aqua or cyan in color, because there was so much moisture in the air. However, I didn't hear any thunder--either the lightning was too far away or the sound was drowned out by the wind.

By the time the lightning appeared, we were listening by battery-powered radio; the power went out at 8:57. We went to bed around 11, now that it was no longer prime-time. When I woke up again around 2 AM, it was all over.

Fortunately damage was minimal for us: one shingle missing from the roof, a branch through a screen window in the back, and the gate in the backyard is separated from the fence. Nothing that the insurance won't cover, and the neighbors had it worse; a block away, a big pine tree landed on two houses! My parents live in a neighborhood that's almost an old-growth forest, and they had several big trees come down on their property, including one that flattened a 1970 station wagon and blocked the driveway. The worst part in this house was going for 48 hours without electricity, and for five days without work, but even in that we are blessed; some neighborhoods lost power for as much as two weeks. I'll tell you one thing--there was celebration in our neighborhood when the lights came back on. Somebody even set off fireworks!

One member of our family wasn't affected much by the whole business--our cockatiel Chico. In the worst of the storm, he just sat on the perch in the dark and ground his beak, which I am told is a sign of contentment in birds. It was probably because we were all nearby, and we weren't acting overly panicked. For him the only hardship was that he couldn't watch any TV for the next two days (he seems to like PBS kiddie shows like Sesame Street, Boobah and Teletubbies, and any commercial with bird noises in the background; he also tries to imitate the test pattern from the Emergency Broadcast System).

Charley didn't kill anyone in my area, thank goodness; all the deaths occurred on the southwest coast where it came ashore. We were still picking up the pieces from Charley when Frances came our way. This time we had a week's warning, and took it seriously. We had similar notice when Hurricane Ivan came a week later. I can still remember going to the store before both storms to stock up on emergency supplies, mostly food that didn't require either refrigeration or cooking (chips, cans of tuna and soup, jello for the kid, etc.). In one store a wide-screen TV was showing the movie "Twister." As if we didn't have a real-life storm like that coming our way! When I went to stock up for Ivan, I saw how some folks passed the time without power; one guy pushed an empty shopping cart to the drink section, and proceeded to fill the whole thing with beer. When I asked him, "And what if Ivan doesn't come here?", he cheerfully answered, "I can still drink it!"

Fortunately Frances wasn't as bad as Charley; the eye missed my neighborhood by sixty miles. The difference was that Frances was much larger (the size of Texas in satellite pictures) and a much slower-moving storm, taking two whole days to pass us--most of the Labor Day weekend. In fact, Frances almost stopped around the Tampa area. Winds were about the same, and damage to the house was in roughly the same places: four more shingles gone, and part of the gutter coming loose.

Click here for an animation of Hurricane Frances passing through central Florida, as it appeared on the doppler radar of Wunderground.com at roughly six-hour intervals.
(550.7 KB, this will take a while to load!)

This time I experienced the storm alone, except for the pets. My wife couldn't come home from work because of a curfew on the streets, and my daughter evacuated with her grandmother. How did that go? Not too good! They went to a hotel in Gainesville, which should have been far enough north to escape the storm, but instead Frances turned in their general direction. As a result, they were stuck without power for two days, while I was only without power for half an hour. Go figure!

I did mention the pets. Chocolate the rabbit endured Charley in the backyard, with a bunch of blankets covering her cage to keep the wind and water out. For Frances I didn't want to take any chances, so Chocolate spent two and a half days in a shower stall, amusing herself by tearing up the newspaper I put on the floor, and pushing around the empty pie pan after eating the food I put in it. Chico the cockatiel was moved to the central hall, which I figured was the safest place for him if anything fell on the house. The hall was narrow and dark, and I never saw Chico as mad as he was there; every time I passed by, he would hiss or give an angry squawk. Finally, late in our second "blustery day," I moved his cage back to the living room; though he could see the wind playing with the trees outside, and the TV was showing weather reports instead of the shows he likes, he cheered up right away!

Initially, Ivan missed us completely, though it returned four days later as a tropical depression and dropped some rain on us. It came ashore between Pensacola and Mobile, hitting the part of the state that had not been drenched by Charley and Frances. Then at the end of September, one more storm, Jeanne, came our way, after having drowned 1,100 in Haiti. For us, Jeanne turned out to be a repeat of Frances; it also struck during the weekend, and this time the main difference was that no relatives got out of town. Jeanne did the least amount of damage to us, too; I think Charley and Frances had already taken care of everything that was going to be destroyed. Too bad I can't say the same for the east coast; there was so much erosion on the beaches, for example, that I think we ought to rename Daytona Beach "Daytona Cliffs."

Here are the paths the four storms took through Florida. Those of Frances and Jeanne are not shown separately, as they were never more than ten miles apart.

(Update, June 2005: We're now beginning a new hurricane season, but ten months after Charley, broken signs and blue tarp-covered roofs are still a common sight.)

At the college where I teach, several teaching days were canceled on account of the weather; worst hit was my Saturday class, which I only met with twice during the first month of the semester! Between Frances and Ivan, the dean sent an e-mail announcing that if anyone feels too stressed out, meditation classes are being offered in a little building down the road that calls itself "Hindu University of Central Florida." A sense of humor also made it a lot easier to keep your head. Here's an e-mail I received entitled "What I Learned About Hurricanes in Florida in 2004"; we can all relate to everything listed here:

Some things I learned in Florida this past month:

1. Coffee and frozen pizzas can be made on a BBQ grill.
2. No matter how many times you flick the switch, lights don't work without electricity.
3. Kids can survive 4 plus days without a video game controller in their hands.
4. Cats are really irritating without power.
5. He who has the biggest generator wins.
6. Women can actually survive without doing their hair--you just wish they weren't around you.
7. A new method of non-lethal torture - showers without hot water. This is for the lucky ones on city water. If you have a well and no generator, it's time to bathe in the pool!
8. TV is an addiction and the withdrawal symptoms are painful.
9. A 7-pound bag of ice will chill a six-pack of beer to a drinkable temperature in 11 minutes, and still keep a 14-pound turkey frozen for 8 more hours.
10. There are a lot of trees around here.
11. Flood plan drawings on some mortgage documents were seriously wrong.
12. Contrary to most Florida natives' beliefs, the speed limit on roads without traffic lights does not increase.
13. Aluminum siding, while aesthetically pleasing, is definitely not required to keep your house standing, and during wind surges becomes flying weapons.
14. Just because you're over 21 doesn't mean you can stay out as late as you want. At least that's what the cops told me during a curfew stop.
15. Crickets can increase their volume to overcome the sound of 14 generators.
16. People will get into a line that has already formed without having any idea what the line is for.
17. When required, most any vehicle will float--doesn't steer well, but floats just the same.
18. Hurricanes do keep the mailman from his appointed rounds.
19. Telemarketers function no matter what the weather is doing.
20. Cell phones sometimes work when land lines are down, but only as long as the battery remains charged.
21. Twenty-seven of your neighbors are fed from a different transformer than you, and they are quick to point that out!
22. Laundry hampers were not made to contain such a volume.
23. If I had a store that sold only ice, chainsaws, gas, and generators . . . I'd be rich.
24. The price of a bag of ice rises 200% after a hurricane.
25. Your water front property can quickly become someone else's fishing hole.
26. Tree service companies are under appreciated.
27. Hurricane Math: 30 days in a month, minus 6 days without power, equals a 30% higher electric bill ?????
28. Drywall is a compound word, take away the "dry" part and it's worthless.
29. Florida will not see a baby boom in 9 months. Things are already too hot and sticky. Why add to the mess!

1 Charley
2 Frances
3 Ivan
4 Sale

And this may be why hurricanes are attracted to Florida:

Survived a 60s or 70s Childhood? Congratulations!

You lived as a child in the '60s or the '70s. Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have managed to live as long as we have. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention hitchhiking to town as a young kid!) We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.

Remember accidents? We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were seldom overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this. We did not have any video games at all, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cellular phones, personal computers, Internet chat rooms - we had friends next door.

We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it? How did we survive? We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade - Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was practically unheard of.

They actually sided with the law, imagine that! The generation of people who were kids during the '60s and '70s has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to. And you're one of them, so congratulations!

Unquote: To that I would add that we had dangerous toys, like pocket knives, slingshots, BB guns, fireworks and lawn darts, and still we managed to grow up all right. Maybe that's also why we turned out smart; those toys were a form of natural selection, to remove dumb kids from the gene pool before they got old enough to reproduce!

I left Carol with the "Bird Lady," told her to keep an eye out for any cockatiels she might get (to replace Chico), and wrote a check because she lives off the donations of those who bring her birds. I thought that was the end of the matter, and I would never hear from Carol again, whether or not she got better. Well, in the middle of March I got a call from the Bird Lady, announcing that Carol had made a complete recovery and was ready to be released. The wing had healed after three weeks, but Carol was then kept for another month, to make sure she regained enough strength to fly. She was eager to go, all right; wild birds have definite temperaments when in captivity. According to the Bird Lady, a male bird will eventually calm down, once he realizes you're not going to kill him, but a female bird only has one thing on her mind--escape! I had to take my daughter out of town that day, so instead of waiting for me to come back, the Bird Lady sent Carol back to my neighborhood with some friends, to be released as close as possible to the place where I found her, because she might have left a mate behind.

On two occasions after that I saw a female cardinal outside my Florida house. I learned later that they don't migrate, and tend to spend their whole lives within a mile of where they hatched, so for all I know it could have been Carol. The first time was around the end of April, and the second time was on August 12--the day of my daughter's wedding.

By the way, the Bird Lady did receive a cockatiel after Carol recovered, a very dark grey male that the previous owner no longer wanted to care for. He seemed a nice enough bird when I went over to meet him, but he wasn't particularly interested in me; he chirped at everything and everybody. He ended up going home with a lady he was more interested in. That lady was looking for a companion to keep her African grey parrot company when she was at work, so I hope the 'tiel did all right. African greys are so intelligent that I heard they mentally abuse other pets when they learn to talk, driving them crazy by imitating the owner's voice!

It may be just as well I didn't take the cockatiel home. Right after that I got a job offer from Kentucky that was better than any job I ever had in Florida, and it would have been hard to transport a pet up there in my car, or take care of him while I'm living alone in an apartment. Anyway, I read up a bit on Kentucky before moving, and found out that the cardinal is the state bird. Was Carol an omen, a sign of what the future might bring? There also were a pair of cardinals living in a tree right behind my first apartment in Kentucky. Finally, I could mention that the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series while I was composing this essay--but that's taking coincidences a little too far!

I have been thinking of writing this since June 2, 2007, when I became one of the first visitors to the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Less than a week after I posted my pictures of that trip in my blog, a group of evolutionists saw them, and began to make comments, about how my pictures and commentary confirmed their suspicion that creationists are ignorant louts.

I thought that my use of the Internet to promote my ideas would be seen as a sign that here's a member of the "Religious Right" who isn't afraid to investigate new inventions and new ideas. Popular literature (books, movies, etc.) often depicts men of science and men of religion as opposed to what each other is doing, but this has not always been the case. I prefer to take the attitude that was common in the two centuries between Galileo and Darwin, when science was seen as a way for us to learn about God's handiwork. Scientists like Newton and Leibnitz were not atheists, and believed the universe had been made by an intelligent creator. In fact, what isn't commonly known is that Newton wrote more books about theology than he did about astronomy, mathematics and physics; most of them were published posthumously. Recently a manuscript of his was discovered, written in 1704, where he predicted that the end times described in the Book of Revelation would begin 1,260 years after the crowning of Charlemagne, or 2060 A.D., and that the Jews would return to Israel before that happens. You don't expect to hear from Christian Zionists before the twentieth century, so when I read that, I thought, "Sir Isaac Newton was one of us!" All things considered, if Newton lived today, even with all his discoveries, his faith would cause people to regard him as a poor scientist.

Other religions besides Christianity have had periods where they got along well with science. For Judaism it appears to be the norm, judging from all the Jewish scientists and doctors that have come along over the years. You can't go to a modern college campus without running into Indian professors, especially in the departments of mathematics and computer science, so I think it's safe to say that Hinduism doesn't have a problem with scientific research. As for Buddhism, in another paper on this site I told about the Dalai Lama attending MIT's "Investigating the Mind" conference in 2003. This project used high-tech equipment like electroencephalograms to monitor the brain waves of meditating monks, in the hopes that someday it may be possible for machines to give us the same good feelings (satori) that meditative techniques have worked on achieving for centuries. Did His Holiness fear that such tests would disprove Buddhism, or replace it? Not at all; in fact, he approved of the experiment and has said that if he hadn't become the Dalai Lama, he would have liked to have been an engineer. Confucianism and Taoism don't seem to have much interest in learning new things, but that doesn't stop the Chinese from keeping up to date with the latest technology. And while the fundamentalist Islam of today is against progress, there were times in the past, like during the Abbasid Caliphate, when Moslems were more open-minded.

"There is no contradiction between true science properly researched and the Bible properly interpreted, except in the minds of people who don't understand either."--Moishe Rosen

It is also time to discard the notion that intolerance only exists among religious folks. Once upon a time people felt motivated by God to wage wars, or kings used their religion as an excuse to oppress their subjects, but over the past two or three centuries, more injustice, violence and suffering has been inflicted in the name of non-religion. We look at the Crusades and the Inquisition as nasty experiences, but the people responsible for those atrocities were beginners, compared with secular tyrants like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong or Pol Pot. Recently the Center for Religious Freedom produced a report entitled "Religious Freedom in the World 2007," rating 102 countries on religious liberty. Of those 102, only four got a perfect score, and all of them were countries with a Christian heritage: the United States, Estonia, Hungary and Ireland. Let the record show that it is better to be an atheist in a Christian nation, than to be a Christian in an atheist one.

Finally, have you noticed that here in the West, secular organizations like the ACLU pick on conservative Christians and Jews all the time, trying to suppress any attempt by them to express their beliefs in public, while followers of eastern religions, neopagans, Wiccans and even Moslems are left alone? We had the case recently where a school board in California taught students about Islam by having them dress up like Moslems and use Moslem names for three weeks, while these days you can't have a Christmas tree on public property or say "Merry Christmas" without running the risk of offending someone. It was bad enough when our secular culture kicked Christ out of Christmas; now it apparently wants to get rid of Santa, too! For the record, I don't have a problem with non-Christians celebrating Hanukkah, Divali, Solstice, Saturnalia or whatever, if they prefer that over Christmas. Now who are the less tolerant folks here?

Most of all, while we may hear about the virtues of living like an ascetic, hardly any of us practice that lifestyle. When was the last time you saw someone trying to get by with as few possessions as possible, like Diogenes or Mahatma Gandhi? Jesus did it -- all He had to His name was the homespun woolen robe that He wore all the time -- but aside from monks and nuns, have you ever seen any of His followers do likewise? It may not even be possible in a secular society; that's why so many monasteries and convents are built in remote locations, so that their residents can "get away from it all."

Now even if you consider yourself poor, chances are you've got "stuff," and you've been accumulating it all your life. My wife came to America with all her belongings in three or four suitcases, and when we moved around in central Florida, a few trips with a station wagon allowed us to transport all of her stuff and mine. After that, however, we accumulated enough furniture, books and other possessions that we couldn't have moved out of the Orlando area without a moving van. It's no coincidence that we stayed there until I was hired by a company that was willing to pay my moving expenses. I traveled to Kentucky first, loading my car with everything I could carry. Because I managed to bring all of the stuff I used the most, I think I did all right, but compared with my co-workers and friends, I was living like a monk. In fact, when my pastor saw how bare my apartment was, he took pity on me and donated an old TV set, an easy chair and a patio table. Then when the moving van arrived, we had to move into the house we liked right away, though we would not be ready to buy it for another three months, all because of our stuff (we had to rent it in the meantime). One of these days I'll have to ask my wife how she managed to get by during the week between the day when the moving van left Florida, and the day when she followed. In the process of packing she got rid of a lot of things we no longer needed, due to a weight limit on the moving van. One thing I know for sure--if we move again it will be a bigger challenge than it was before, because we bought most of our current furniture after arriving in Kentucky.

If you're about my age, chances are your life went like this: You didn't have too much stuff when you moved out of your parents' home, either to go to college or to get a dwelling place of your own. When you got married, your spouse's possessions were added to your own (Ever hear the joke about the divorced Barbie doll? She comes with Ken's things!). As you accumulate "stuff" over the years, you become creative at finding ways to store it. When the closet is full, you shove it under the bed. Or you may stack it on the porch (when I did that, I found out the hard way that videocassettes are sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity). Next, you will fill up the garage. Like I said earlier on this page, only in America do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway, and leave useless things and junk in boxes locked in the garage. If your house has a basement or an attic, you will use them for storage, until you run out of space there. Then you get an outdoor shed and fill it, until it takes hours to get something from the back of the shed, or from the bottom of a pile in one.

You can say you've reached a critical point when you have friends or relatives storing some of your things, or you end up renting storage space somewhere. Only in the USA, do we have successful businesses just for the purpose of storing other people's stuff. No doubt about it, our packrat mentality has turned us into a packrat nation. In the end, most of it will get disposed of in an estate sale, when we're no longer around to have a say in what happens to it. That is why some worldly wag once said, "The one who dies with the most toys wins." Yeah, right, like it's going to do you any good if you can't take with you.

Of course, the story doesn't have to end this way. You may give away or throw out things you don't need, or sell some of them at garage sales. You may also sell some things on websites like eBay and Craig's List. Unfortunately, most of us don't have the discpline to do that often enough. No wonder we admire those who can handle the ascetic lifestyle! It is especially a challenge if we once lived in poverty, like those old enough to remember the Great Depression. My parents are an example. We visited their house four times in 2008, and Leive devoted several days to clean out excess books, tapes, papers, clothing, etc., so that we don't have to run an obstacle course, just to get from one room to another.

I've learned from that experience to be careful not to let belongings get out of hand. I don't want the day to come when a stack of my papers is cleared away, and somebody discovers a couch underneath (that really happened to someone I know)! These days I hardly ever buy a book or music album, if I can download the electronic version, so that the only clutter is on my hard drive. For the same reason, I switched from book to CD-ROM encyclopedias as soon as I got a computer that could handle them; one CD sure beat having thirty volumes around, each one big enough to choke a mule.

Finally, while what we have may not be worth much in dollars, euros, or whatever, it should teach us to count our blessings. Here in the developed world, even the poor among us have a supermarket nearby, that offers a tremendous variety of food at any time of the year; if it's out of season, they'll ship it from the other side of the world. We have instantaneous communication with most of the world, and our transportation is fast enough to get us almost anywhere in a day and a half. Electricity gives us heat in the winter, cool air in the summer, and provides virtually unlimited entertainment, without the need to keep musicians, actors or jesters handy. And our health care gives us a lifespan decades longer than what the average person had for most of history. Sure, there are folks in the Third World that will risk everything for a chance at a lifestyle like that, but I'll venture to say that if they could, even some of the god-kings or the ancient world might be willing to trade places with us. What do you think?

© Copyright 2007 Charles Kimball