Musings in Search of a Muse

I suppose that if one goes by the dictionary, any story based on religion is mythology and therefore can be put into the literary bin marked "Fantasy," but this strikes me as going a bit far. The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins doesn't strike me as the usual Fantasy fare, however. A lot of the story stretched credulity, but not the religious aspects. It was very firmly grounded there.

It heartens me, at least, that iTunes categorizes A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner as a Mystery along with Ian Fleming's James Bond books and Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang.

As it seems that I left my copy of Frank E. Peretti's Prophet in Maine I started to reread James BeauSeigneur's Acts of God and a passage struck me as rather important for some reason. Two men are discussing the Rapture and one is questioning why the Lord would take the righteous just when they are most needed. The other, a fundamentalist, replies:

"I admit that I did not know many Christians before the Rapture, but from all the division that existed among them, I suspect that if God had left them here, many of them would be too busy arguing over church rules and trivial doctrines to have been of any use in reaching the lost."

The Christian church is experiencing changes of late, though I don't suppose that I need to point that out. The strengthening of fundamentalist Christianity mirroring the weakening and appearance of schisms in some sects may be a telltale. While no one knows God's timetable for the End Times I can't help but get the feeling that it is coming upon us. Rather like that feeling one gets that someone is staring at you. It is an awareness without any apparent cause.

My sulking about not getting a jet pack when the 21^st Century dawned is getting old but I won't stop. This hasn't prevented me from continuing my quest for tech toys. Yup. I just ordered a TiVo (pictured at left) to replace my dead-for-a-month-now VCR. There it sits with a strangled tape hanging out of its maw, cold and lifeless. :::sigh:::

It was difficult convincing myself to not get the cheapest model but realizing that my nearly 10-year old TV couldn't handle having a TiVo and a DVD player connected simultaneously convinced me to drop a few more dollars. It is also kind of cool that I can listen to my iTunes through my home theater without getting a dock. This will hold me until I earn a Bose iPod SoundDock through my employer's incentive rewards program (if I can wait another month, that is).

And I gave up on the hope that iTunes would sell episodes of ABC TV network's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Its great that Battlestar Galactica is now available (I bought 2 episodes) and that other shows are becoming available. This could be the future of television. I just need to have my TV last long enough to make the digital broadcast deadline in 2009 (now there's a date that always seems to be changing).

I have a really cool new signature graphic (at left) for my company e-mail. That's just some of the good news from work.

My third day back at work today and I spent half of it talking to customers. I've managed to avoid 2½ days of productivity but the honeymoon is over. I guess the job isn't all that hard, I suppose, but I still don't like it.

Part of what I don't like is that it is now a condition of my employment at Cingular that I give 1.3% of my paycheck to the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union. In other words, even if I don't belong to the union, they get part of my paycheck. A union rep distributing the deduction authorization form told me that if I didn't like it I didn't have to work there. Oddly, she doesn't work there.

Here's another part of my job I don't like. Customer A cancels 4 lines of service because it "sucks" and they will "take out a full page ad in the local paper to tell everyone!" Customer B calls later that day and sings the praises of the exact same service in the exact same area. Some 90% of the time the problem lies in a cruddy phone (everyone wants the free phone without thinking "You get what you pay for!"), misuse ("So I have to turn it off once in a while? How do you turn it off?), location (common window glass can cut signal by 2%), or just plain not thinnking ("Why isn't it perfect all the time?"). I could be more detailed, but FLSA rules mean I can't think about work unless I'm clocked in. The union plans on enforcing this.

The best present I got for Christmas was Mom's miracle: a "90-95% for sure its cancer ... we're taking the lung" diagnosis turning out to be a benign growth, one of the best presents I got for Christmas was a $50 iTunes Gift Card.

And to think I 'hated' the idea of Gift Cards.

I also got some great comic strip books, gloves, decorative bears of various types and sizes, shoes, shirts, fruit, ham, cereal, assorted cookies, a Lego set, and some zippy toys. Of course, any trip back from Mom's means that I also picked up a few other goodies. In this case some scarves, cooking spices and gadgets, and things best described as "stuff."

Well, mom is back on her feet now and is back on acetaminophen for pain relief. Man, that Oxycontin-stuff is scary! Delusions, hallucinations, loss of memory ... not sure it was worth it. The Darvocet didn't have those side-effects but did nothing for the pain. Of course, anything was worth finding out that she didn't have cancer, just a tumor.

Speaking of pain ... I've been trying to cancel my temporary AOL account for going on 10 minutes now. It still says "Web site found. Waiting for reply ..." Sheesh!

Okay, this is the third time I've used AOL to go online while I'm away and I'm getting tired of the ZoneAlarm notification window. How on Earth are the pingers finding me so fast?

Cripes! My trip to Maine to help my mom after surgery is taking longer than I thought so I broke down and got an AOL disk to access the 'Net from the road. I needed to do some banking and things. But, Jimminy Crickets! The app wants to dominate my computer, it crashed on first use, and it's dial up!! My 'puter "sees" a wireless network within 300 feet but I don't have the password and I don't know which neighbor it is. After all that I still couldn't access the bank. :::sigh:::

The good news? No cancer. Only 5% of her lung was taken, and she is finally off the high-power pain killers that cause hallucinations. I'll be back home before New Year's Eve.

I'll write again soon.