His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved. "I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life."
"No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.
"Is that your son?" the nobleman asked.
"Yes," the farmer replied proudly.
"I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of." And that he did.
Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools, and in time, he graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. He then went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.
Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.
What saved his life this time? Penicillin.
The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.
His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like nobody's listening. Live like it's Heaven on Earth. Be true to yourself. You will be remembered for what you were and the actions you did.
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, October 12, 2007
Prelude to My Life
I will start posting a very long and in-depth piece today. It is way too long to put into one post. I will divvy it up in many small posts. I said at the start of this blog that at some point I would discuss my growing years. Well, that time is here. You will likely lose respect for me by reading this, but hey, did I really have anyone’s respect anyways? I will say that I left a lot as innuendo, just alluding to many facts because some things are so intense or foul that I didn’t want to repeat them in-depth. But you will get the gist early on that I was a very depressed and self-destructive person growing up. That I was a kid that you would dread seeing hanging-out with your child. You will see that even though I was shit most often, I did still have good heart occasionally. And the positive is how I got away from my early troubled existence to where I am currently at in my life and how well my family is doing despite how I was raised. If you ever have any questions because I failed to elaborate enough on any topic, do feel free to ask. No question will hurt me. I actually have found during the writing of my upbringing that it has proved therapeutic; some things, I really didn’t know had lived in the dark corners of my mind all these years. This post started out with me trying to understand how I had lost God in my life, but as I began to write, I came to realize it was much deeper than I had originally thought. It turned into telling my whole life story.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
I Haven't Had Much Sleep the Last Two Nights Because a Raccoon Keeps Jumping on My Head
My friend found a litter of baby raccoons whose mother got hit by a car. They were all sent out to relatives or friends to raise until they could be let go and they would survive on their own. Well, he just bought a new puppy and doesn’t think he has time to take care of both. I asked me to take it and I said OK. It is past the bottle stage luckily or I would have told him to deal with it. Na, I probably would have taken it anyways. Having or doing something weird or out of the norm sticks with you and you always remember those times. I think this will be a good memory for the kids, plus it is so cool. She (my wife says it is a she) doesn’t have front paws, they are little hands, and it grabs everything in sight. It sticks its hands in every nook-and-cranny and feels around looking for hidden treasure. They do that on riverbanks and between rocks and pebbles in the water searching for food. It is an inherent trait of its species and doesn’t have to be learnt. It is a real dork. It runs and hides and then jumps out. It was really afraid of our dos at first, but now it plays with them. It only took one day to lose its fear of our small dogs. Hopefully it doesn’t totally lose its fear of dogs, because in the wild the canines are friendly playful companions. I’ve been told that it is illegal to have her, because she is indigenous wildlife. I don’t know if that is the reason, but I don’t think I am allowed to have it. My friend once saw a fawn on the side of the road with the doe dead, having been run over by a car. He went to the DNR and they told him that he just had to let nature take its course and that he could be fined if a wild animal was ever found in his possession, and that it didn’t matter what the reason was. Compassion means nothing apparently, you are supposed to just let it die, that is natural selection, and you have to just deal with it, he was told. My friend didn’t care and risked helping the little coon and so will I. I will be honest with you, if it becomes attached to us and is nice and learns to use a little box, I will probably keep it. But I have been told, by people that they have heard that they never become domesticated and will become mean at adulthood. If that becomes the case I will release it to the wild, if I don’t anyways for some other reason, and just be happy that it survived because we took it in. What are your thoughts? Seriously.
OK, back to the sleeping issue. We put it in a cage the first night down at the end of the bed on the floor. It screamed for hrs off and on wanting to be free of the cage. Finally it shut-up for good and I was able to get more than an hr of sleep at a time. We found out why it stopped crying the next morning. It was dead.
I’m just joking. Ha, ha, funny or ha, ha, you sick asshole? Anyways, Bandit (oh yea forgot to tell ya, we named it Bandit, get it? OK, your aren’t that slow - the next one will be harder) had figured out how to get out of the cage. It is a mess cage with a pvc-plastic framework surrounded by a zippered mess screen. Remember I said it had hands, well it knows how to use them. It un-zipped the cage and got out. I found it in the morning curled up sleeping in my bedside nightstand. It loves take one shelf in my nightstand and anytime you are in the bedroom with it goes in there. That is its spot. You can take it and put it on the bed and it will leave as soon as it feels like it and goes right back in there. If you leave and go to another room it follows after you. It doesn’t like to be alone.
So last night we tried putting it in a different cage with a few books on top of the lid. It wouldn’t shout the hell up and finally it started screaming so we turned on the light. It somehow forced the lid up and made it half out, but the books proved too much for it and it became stuck. I was so tired that I just said piss on it and let it out. It shut-up and went right in the nightstand. Well, letting it out proved to be a mistake last night, because I forgot that raccoons are nocturnal creatures. Bandit would stay in the stand for an hr and then decide to get on the bed and run around. It would get on our pillows and play with our ears and hair. (OK, let me rephrase that – my wife’s hair and my head. I shave the little that still actually grows.) It sounds cute, but when you have to work in the morning and for some reason the Seroquel isn’t putting you to sleep as soon, so you are already going to be sleepy, it gets old. So I killed it. Just joking again. I would push it and tell it to get and it would go back to the stand for an hr or so. It did this 3 times. I won’t have to worry about it tonight because this is my last day of work, so I’ll be up all night playing, what else, but poker. I’m going back to work on night shift so I’ll be staying up all night for the next 4 days anyways, so I won’t have to deal with it till late in the week. But even then I will be sleeping during the day so it will be running around with the family in the rest of the house.
Maybe I’ll post a few pics. It loves fake fighting with my Pomeranian. They roll around like dorks biting at each other’s feet. It makes me happy and that is good.
Until next time, later, Ash out…
OK, back to the sleeping issue. We put it in a cage the first night down at the end of the bed on the floor. It screamed for hrs off and on wanting to be free of the cage. Finally it shut-up for good and I was able to get more than an hr of sleep at a time. We found out why it stopped crying the next morning. It was dead.
I’m just joking. Ha, ha, funny or ha, ha, you sick asshole? Anyways, Bandit (oh yea forgot to tell ya, we named it Bandit, get it? OK, your aren’t that slow - the next one will be harder) had figured out how to get out of the cage. It is a mess cage with a pvc-plastic framework surrounded by a zippered mess screen. Remember I said it had hands, well it knows how to use them. It un-zipped the cage and got out. I found it in the morning curled up sleeping in my bedside nightstand. It loves take one shelf in my nightstand and anytime you are in the bedroom with it goes in there. That is its spot. You can take it and put it on the bed and it will leave as soon as it feels like it and goes right back in there. If you leave and go to another room it follows after you. It doesn’t like to be alone.
So last night we tried putting it in a different cage with a few books on top of the lid. It wouldn’t shout the hell up and finally it started screaming so we turned on the light. It somehow forced the lid up and made it half out, but the books proved too much for it and it became stuck. I was so tired that I just said piss on it and let it out. It shut-up and went right in the nightstand. Well, letting it out proved to be a mistake last night, because I forgot that raccoons are nocturnal creatures. Bandit would stay in the stand for an hr and then decide to get on the bed and run around. It would get on our pillows and play with our ears and hair. (OK, let me rephrase that – my wife’s hair and my head. I shave the little that still actually grows.) It sounds cute, but when you have to work in the morning and for some reason the Seroquel isn’t putting you to sleep as soon, so you are already going to be sleepy, it gets old. So I killed it. Just joking again. I would push it and tell it to get and it would go back to the stand for an hr or so. It did this 3 times. I won’t have to worry about it tonight because this is my last day of work, so I’ll be up all night playing, what else, but poker. I’m going back to work on night shift so I’ll be staying up all night for the next 4 days anyways, so I won’t have to deal with it till late in the week. But even then I will be sleeping during the day so it will be running around with the family in the rest of the house.
Maybe I’ll post a few pics. It loves fake fighting with my Pomeranian. They roll around like dorks biting at each other’s feet. It makes me happy and that is good.
Until next time, later, Ash out…
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Cool Story
Excerpt: Second Person, Present Tense – Daryl Gregory
When I want to freak out, “I” think about “me” thinking about having an “I.” The only thing stupider than puppets talking to puppets is a puppet talking to itself.
Dr. S says that nobody knows what the mind is, or how the brain generates it, and nobody really knows about consciousness. We talked almost every day that I was in the hospital, and after he saw that I was interested in this stuff – how could I not be? – he gave me books and we talked about brains and how they cook up thoughts and make decisions.
“How do I explain this?” he always starts. And then he tries out the metaphors that he’s working on for his book. My favorite the Parliament, the Page, and the Queen.
“The brain isn’t one thing of course,” he told me. “It’s millions of firing cells, and those resolve into hundreds of active sites, and so it is with the mind. There are dozens of nodes in the mind, each one trying to out shout the others. For any decision, the erupts with noise, and that triggers…how do I explain this…Have you ever seen the British Parliament on C-SPAN?” Of course I had: in a hospital, TV is a constant companion. “These members of the mind’s Parliament, they’re all shouting in chemicals and electric charges, until enough of the voices are shouting in unison. Ding! That’s a ‘thought,’ a ‘decision.’ The Parliament immediately sends a signal to the body to act on that decision, and at the same time it tells the Page to take the news- “
“Wait who’s the Page?”
Dr. S explains that the Page isn’t one thing, but a cascade of neural events in the temporal area of the limbic system that meshes the neural map of the new thought with the existing neural map – but by then I know that “neural map” is just another metaphor for another deeply complex thing or process, and that I’ll never get to the bottom of this. Dr. S said not to worry about it, that nobody gets to the bottom of it. “The Page takes the news of the decision to the Queen.”
“All right then, who’s the Queen? Conscience?”
“Exactly right! The self itself.”
“The Page,” he said, “delivers its message to Her Majesty, telling what the Parliament has decided. The Queen doesn’t need to know about all the arguments that went on, all the other possibilities that were thrown out. She simply needs to know what to announce to her subjects. The Queen tells the parts to act on the decision.”
“Wait I thought the Parliament had already sent out the signal. You said before that you can see the brain warming up before the self even knows about it.”
“That’s the joke. The Queen announces the decision, and she thinks that her subjects are obeying her commands, but in reality, they have already been told what to do. They’re already reaching for their glasses of water.”
Read the last three paragraphs closely and tell me that isn’t impulse anger and BP outbursts summed up and neatly and succinctly put.
Later, Ash out…
When I want to freak out, “I” think about “me” thinking about having an “I.” The only thing stupider than puppets talking to puppets is a puppet talking to itself.
Dr. S says that nobody knows what the mind is, or how the brain generates it, and nobody really knows about consciousness. We talked almost every day that I was in the hospital, and after he saw that I was interested in this stuff – how could I not be? – he gave me books and we talked about brains and how they cook up thoughts and make decisions.
“How do I explain this?” he always starts. And then he tries out the metaphors that he’s working on for his book. My favorite the Parliament, the Page, and the Queen.
“The brain isn’t one thing of course,” he told me. “It’s millions of firing cells, and those resolve into hundreds of active sites, and so it is with the mind. There are dozens of nodes in the mind, each one trying to out shout the others. For any decision, the erupts with noise, and that triggers…how do I explain this…Have you ever seen the British Parliament on C-SPAN?” Of course I had: in a hospital, TV is a constant companion. “These members of the mind’s Parliament, they’re all shouting in chemicals and electric charges, until enough of the voices are shouting in unison. Ding! That’s a ‘thought,’ a ‘decision.’ The Parliament immediately sends a signal to the body to act on that decision, and at the same time it tells the Page to take the news- “
“Wait who’s the Page?”
Dr. S explains that the Page isn’t one thing, but a cascade of neural events in the temporal area of the limbic system that meshes the neural map of the new thought with the existing neural map – but by then I know that “neural map” is just another metaphor for another deeply complex thing or process, and that I’ll never get to the bottom of this. Dr. S said not to worry about it, that nobody gets to the bottom of it. “The Page takes the news of the decision to the Queen.”
“All right then, who’s the Queen? Conscience?”
“Exactly right! The self itself.”
“The Page,” he said, “delivers its message to Her Majesty, telling what the Parliament has decided. The Queen doesn’t need to know about all the arguments that went on, all the other possibilities that were thrown out. She simply needs to know what to announce to her subjects. The Queen tells the parts to act on the decision.”
“Wait I thought the Parliament had already sent out the signal. You said before that you can see the brain warming up before the self even knows about it.”
“That’s the joke. The Queen announces the decision, and she thinks that her subjects are obeying her commands, but in reality, they have already been told what to do. They’re already reaching for their glasses of water.”
Read the last three paragraphs closely and tell me that isn’t impulse anger and BP outbursts summed up and neatly and succinctly put.
Later, Ash out…
Saturday, May 12, 2007
The Bad Dream
My wife came in got me up because my mom was coming over. She said that Ash-daughter had scared her horribly that morning. She said that Ash-girl told her about a bad dream that she had the previous night. Ash-wife was really worked up as she began telling the story. It was obvious that it had really affected her, so I forced the sleep from the corners of my eyes and paid attention.
Ash-daughter's dream
I bug got into my head, in my brain. It traveled to my tummy and I got sick. You took me to the Dr and he said it was cancer. He said that I had 3 days to live.
Day 1 grandma came to visit and started crying. She said that see couldn’t take this again. First her daughter had cancer and now her granddaughter.
Day 2 Ash-boy came and said he was sorry for being mean to me. He said that he was sorry for all the times that he called me names and picked on me.
Day 3 you were laying on me crying bad and hugging me momma. Then I died. I was looking down at you holding me and screaming.
That certainly must have been a pretty fucked up dream to hear from your 8 year old. Ash-wife was truly distraught about the whole thing. She said that she didn’t ever want to think about it again. I have to admit that it was a pretty unnerving because of all the details and just mentioning the C-word is dreadful.
Ash-daughter's dream
I bug got into my head, in my brain. It traveled to my tummy and I got sick. You took me to the Dr and he said it was cancer. He said that I had 3 days to live.
Day 1 grandma came to visit and started crying. She said that see couldn’t take this again. First her daughter had cancer and now her granddaughter.
Day 2 Ash-boy came and said he was sorry for being mean to me. He said that he was sorry for all the times that he called me names and picked on me.
Day 3 you were laying on me crying bad and hugging me momma. Then I died. I was looking down at you holding me and screaming.
That certainly must have been a pretty fucked up dream to hear from your 8 year old. Ash-wife was truly distraught about the whole thing. She said that she didn’t ever want to think about it again. I have to admit that it was a pretty unnerving because of all the details and just mentioning the C-word is dreadful.
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