Birthdays

Are funny ole things. It doesn't matter how old we get a birthday never goes away. You'd think its unimportant, irrelevant to today that even if we didn't know our date of birth we do all know our age, and what is age anyway but an arbitrary measure depending for its very existence on whichever calendar the tribe, race, species use.

And yet, and yet, each time a birthday comes around we either celebrate it or try to ignore it. I'm sixty eight years old today and I would very much like to forget today is my birthday. Strictly speaking I am not another year older none of us are, and yet, we cower from the very thought of another year older.

The religious, and there are far too many of them, would say we should celebrate and be thankful, they would insist that the older we get the more we should reflect upon our lives do the simple arithmetic of achievement versus failure and be thankful.

As if!

I would happily write the last ten years of my life off of every calendar, yearbook and history of my life. I went from one correctable mistake to eight years of burning, permanent scars. I would give so much never to have set foot in Ireland for anything other than holidays. And yet I had spent so long dreaming of living here and no one told me its a horrible place to live, part of me is annoyed that the Irish who escape never tell anyone they were delighted to get away and will never return for anything but holidays and maybe funerals.

Today is my birthday. I'm sixty eight years old and like all of us I'm still learning. I will tell you this though and it is a fact.

If you are going to make mistakes make them while you're young for the passing of each birthday means you have less time to correct the mistakes you make and live happily ever after.

Happy birthday to everyone who is sixty eight years old today. I hope your debts are paid, your house is your own and you have a nice strong pension to rely upon. I hope you ignored the law and got as much of your wealth as possible salted away in one of those lovely, warm and welcoming off shore bank accounts.

But in spite of it all I will tell you this I will grab tomorrow and every tomorrow with hands teeth, nails and spirit.

Tomorrow is a word full of hope and possibilities. Never let go of tomorrow 

Who Runs Blogging?

I've come to the conclusion that at its root, I was going to say heart but lets not be silly, are Europeans and some Indians. Indians don't invent things but they do tinker they are non stop tinkerers, very often they improve things but not always and not blogging sometimes they are actually dangerous because unlike most Europeans some Indians don't seem to have a stop mechanism.

There are four Indian types I know of who supposedly blog on Wordpress I say supposedly because I don't believe they do actual blogging, I don't believe they are obsessed with photography and I definitely don't believe any of them live in some idyllic rural community in India, well the open field plumbing has the potential to cause all sorts of problems starting with in most western countries the only thing to look out for on the streets is dog poo.

None of the Indian bloggers tell the truth and that's a fact.

Which leaves the Europeans and if anything they are worse, the odds on the European bloggers I've read telling the truth are minus and falling.

Who would move to a place like Glastonbury in order to be witchy? the whole of the British Isles are riddled with sacred stones, sacred trees and sacred caves, and none of them have been so thoroughly Americanized as Glastonbury not even Stonehenge. Its exactly the same as a twelve year old running off to London to meet the latest boy band because naturally she will no sooner get there than they will meet and the leader of the band will fall in love with her and they will live happily ever after, there is no adult sense to it, and that naturally confirms the suspicions of anyone who knows teachers.

It took me some time to realise that blogging attracts grifters, frauds, dreamers and the downright insane, and some of them are dangerous.

I like blogging but I really don't like or trust Wordpress. I use it for good and sufficient reason but I'm convinced it has some of the most criminal and perverted minds in the high tech world running it. I'm also convinced I'm effectively blocked from publishing blogs on Wordpress. Oh the buttons click and the blog says published but I don't think anything I post gets beyond a few corrupt conspirators and what's sad and pathetic is there's a hierarchy among the conspirators and not all of them will get the published post.

Blogger maybe less corrupt its harder for me to tell because whilst I know nothing I post is published I can't yet be sure who blocks the posts. For example this and almost everything I write is written on Blogger first - for safety and then copied and pasted onto Wordpress and I know that's necessary because one almost completed post was deleted just as I was about to publish and one post I wanted to republish was continually blocked.

A few minutes after I finally managed to publish the post the creature who was blocking it actually 'liked' my about me page in acknowledgement that A) I did it and B) he wanted me to know it wasn't a fluke he had been sat in front of his computer screen actively blocking every move I made.. Imagine the unthinking arrogance of that and then imagine how bored and even sick the blocker must have been to have nothing better to do than block me not just once but continuously for more than an hour

I am as they say coming out I want the owners of Wordpress hung from a tree. I want the truth about blogging known to everyone Gawker wasn't alone he was just caught by a richer man than anyone on Wordpress or Gawker.

Time after time we read of lunatic bloggers being forced to retract, to apologise and sometimes to pay compensation, but none of that exposes the real criminals who run Wordpress

I'm coming out, if Mick Fealty, Eamonn Mallie, Alex Kane and David Vance think its worth suing go ahead, they were the start of it all, they formed the gang that got me 'trending' on Twitter. As for Aedicula and the ex New Hampshire professor, well Aedi can't decide if he worships a suicidal boy, indigenous American Indian religion or one of the Japanese religions He pleads poverty all the time and the New Hampshire prof has his nice fat pension. All are complicit, but none quite beat the ole prof when it comes to being in your fifties and boasting about your fiance...How many fiances is that in fifty plus years?

I forgot to mention John Mooney of Keeping an Eye on whatsit fame. I can't leave him out not when he traveled all the way from the north of Ireland to county Mayo just to stand outside my garden gate with his afro haired friend to point, laugh and gawk at my house...

I haven't named Aedicula and the professor because it seems a shame to identify so many at once, but I'm sure Aedi is well known and thoroughly disliked in the Seattle area. He has an unusual attachment to his childhood home, ordinarily I would dismiss it as nothing but I suspect something he hates manifested itself when he was in his teens. It changed his life which means his adult life may not be as he once dreamed it would. The prof is not much more than an overgrown schoolboy and probably very well known for being just that they both really should have stayed away from Ireland it corrupts the weak.

A Boss, A Friend, A lover

Is it possible to think of a lover or a friend as also being a boss? Of course relationships of all kind happen but if Joe Bloggs becomes your friend or your lover do you think of him as your boss?

Its seems a simple question but I think its really quite deep and in its depths are the answers not just to the relationship but to the individuals involved. In some industries the exchange of occasional invitations to dinner at the boss or workers home is a regular occurrence but what does it mean? There are obvious dinner party conventions but they are whilst not exactly formal usually friendly but not friends affairs. In both cases one part of the party is trying to impress the other part Hard then to simply be yourself.

I have some previous when it comes to both lovers and friendly and when it comes to friendly I have made one or two horrendous mistakes but that's the thing isn't it what you or I might assume is the norm may not in fact be so to someone else

We each think in different ways, make different assumptions, form impressions even beliefs that may be far removed from what others see as reality. I was going to say truth but in such cases truth is very much in the mind of the beholder, and its so easy for us all to mistake, misunderstand the views of others if we base them as surely most of us do on our own belief, opinion or reaction.

Experience is a funny old thing we use our own experiences to make decisions about ourselves which is natural but also about others and it seems to me that suggests over confidence. The older we get the more we rely on our experiences but surely that is a very one sided and potentially not just erroneous but disastrous thing to do.

I have been friendly with all my bosses, some became very good friends and I don't know how that happened I don't even know if my own behaviour changed very much as a result. Part of me doesn't see how it could because surely it was me being me and they being they that made the friendship possible?

Ah well, its three in the morning and never was there a better time to while away an hour on imponderables 

Mums and Dads

All of us should think first of the welfare and protection of children they are our joy and they are our responsibility. It seems today some people regard a child almost in the same light as they regard a promotion at work or designer clothes and handbags. A kindof piece of extra and disposable luggage, and that is something everyone should reject with the utmost vehemence.

Every baby is entitled to the best both parents can give. In fact in a world full of entitlements a baby maybe the only one who is rightfully fully entitled to the best the parents and family can provide. So it bothers me when I read about people, both men and women who have children almost as a kind of accessory.

There was a case in the United States of a woman who with her partner decided to have a child, I think with medical help she actually had two when she was in her sixties. So there she was in the real world with two children and she couldn't cope. The children were taken into care and honestly I don't know who I feel more sorry for, her, her partner or the children, but I know who angers me in my opinion both parents want locking up!

Some trans people have been known to put off having the full female to male transition until after they have had a baby and what kind of parent a person like that will be is mind boggling but one thing is certain such parents can't possibly be described as ideal.

So why do some people seem to think the suitability of the parents and the best possible upbringing of the child is irrelevant?

A carefully ignored aspect of elderly parentage is the fitness to play with and teach a baby, then a toddler and then a child. Its not all reading nice books and pointing at the local wild life. Its football, tennis, chess and a million other activities that require speed, agility, intelligence and physical fitness.

Those who become parents in their sixties will be in their seventies when their child is ten years old think of the sheer selfishness of that, and that is even before you start to think of the disabilities that tend to effect older people they can be anything from arthritis, heart disease and back problems to dementia and all before their child has entered their teens, and that's not the worst.

There's autism that's worse than anything that can happen to parents. If you look at the research it says autism maybe a factor in a child born to aging parents, hopefully that is a very rare occurrence but it is true autism has grown enormously over the latter half of the twentieth century and its also true that no one knows why so whilst I am to say the least sceptical I also have to say every possible cause of autism should be carefully looked into and eliminated.

Personally I think the pharmaceutical industry, and it is an industry it exists to make money saving lives just happens to be a happy coincidence, may bear much of the responsibility due not only to the modern preponderance of drugs for children but also to the insistence that all children have the myriad inoculations pharmacists and doctors insist parents must subject their child to, they do this knowing there are serious unanswered questions hanging in the balance and that the affect of an unsuitable inoculation on a child can be life altering and dangerous.

No adult should have a child without carefully considering every possible situation no child is a disposable accessory they are the future, all our futures