A man named Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night. His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap quietly sobbing.

Bobs wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer.

Little Barbara couldn't understand why her mommy could never come home. Barbara looked up into her dad's eyes and asked, "Why isn't Mommy just like everybody else's Mommy?" Bob's jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears.

Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the story of Bob's life. Life always had to be different for Bob.

Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in sports. He was often called names he'd rather not remember. From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit in. Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward during the Great Depression. Then he was blessed with his little girl. But it was all short-lived. Evelyn's bout with cancer stripped them of all their savings and now Bob and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment in he Chicago slums. Evelyn died just days before Christmas in 1938.

Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for whom he couldn't even afford to buy a Christmas gift. But if he couldn't buy a gift, he was determined a make one - a storybook! Bob had created a character in his own mind and told the animal's story to little Barbara to give her comfort and hope. Again and again Bob told the story, embellishing it more with each telling.

Who was the character? What was the story all about? The story Bob May created was his own autobiography in fable form. The character he created was a misfit outcast like he was. The name of the character? A little reindeer named Rudolph, with a big shiny nose.

Bob finished the book just in time to give it to his little girl on Christmas Day. But the story doesn't end there.

The general manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the rights to print the book. Wards went on to print,_ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_ and distribute it to children visiting Santa Claus in their stores. By 1946 Wards had printed and distributed more than six million copies of Rudolph. That same year, a major publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print an updated version of the book.

In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights back to Bob May. The book became a best seller. Many toy and marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to comfort his grieving daughter. But the story doesn't end there either.

Bob's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and ....Dinah.. ..Shore.... , it was recorded by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of "White Christmas."

The gift of love that Bob May created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning back to bless him again and again. And Bob May
learned the lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being different isn't so bad. In fact, being different can be a blessing.


*_MERRY CHRISTMAS 2009 _*

So you would think that by now I would have this “God” thing down to a fine art form, and allow myself time to dink around if I wanted too so a few centuries ago I came up with this novel idea that people call “Christmas” it has certainly evolved and changed dramatically since it first started but it did seem to catch on, every now and then I consider it one of my better idea’s, today I almost can’t think of a better way for humans to get so stressed out over things they can not control and it’s often fun to just sit back and observe.

What started out so simple has now turned into the shopping event of the year, people traipsing  about trying to out do themselves from the year before, hoping that they’ve found that perfect gift for someone, never knowing for sure, lots of folks going broke trying to pull it off. Me watching amusedly so, often wondering why no one senses that maybe you are the best gift for that special someone, thinking that life is special when will you realize that. It’s something magical and beautiful, but you never seem to get it!

Then to make things even more believable you invent a Jolly little fat man dressed in a red suit that delivers presents to all the good boys and girls, he has a sleigh that is pulled by reindeers and one night a year he loads it up with these presents and delivers them around the world in just one night, haven’t you ever wondered how this is done? After all there’s only so much room in a sleigh, even if it was the most fantastical sleigh ever there’s only so much a reindeer can pull and a sleigh can carry! And of course not enough time in the course of the night to land on a roof top go through the big bag of toys, get out and then try and go down a chimney, now mind you back in the industrial age that worked but most of the real chimneys are gone now, what if he magically opened your door and just walk in hoping not to get shot? Oh yeah there’s still that pesky thing about trying to get it all done in one night! Well it occurred to me the other night that as Katie and I were lying on the bed that maybe Santa was a Time traveling human or better yet that once a year God could be Santa which would certainly explain how all those gifts get delivered in the course of one night!

So to me the simple explanation of Santa and God works perfect, it also explains how reindeer can fly. And now I’m thinking that not one of you ever saw this Christmas story coming did you, HA HA HA Merry Christmas everyone.

Part 2…

It took me a little longer yesterday to get things done then I thought it would, but if I were a time traveling God I could have just snapped my fingers or twitched my nose or possibly just thought about it and made it so. Damn that would be cool wouldn’t it?

Her lunch companion also let it be known he has talked to God on occasion, I would think more then once or twice you might I would think have to have talked often just for the sake of asking who and what you were for the subject of a time traveling human to have even come up. I’m pretty sure that in you’re first meeting or so there’d be way more things just to listen too that you wouldn’t get to ask questions at all. If I could time travel where else would I need to go and what else would I have as job’s to do? How, many different planets do I look after, if I look after any at all? If I was a god why would I need something as restrictive as time anyway? I should be able to divide myself up into many things all at once shouldn’t I? Do all jobs I might have again with a snap of my fingers and then get to sit on my ass the rest of the time and possibly have someone peel grapes for me, maybe a fluffer maiden or two thrown in for my own amusement… after all I am the all knowing all seeing God shouldn’t I be allowed to on occasion dally with the mere mortals? I know I know those kinds of things shouldn’t be allowed but who’s to stop me?

Maybe go to a nice sandy beach on ....Hawaii.... on the Sabbath for my day off, I assume I get a day off I read somewhere that on the Sabbath he rested I wonder what for? Did Mrs. God come home from a hard week at the office and tell me she was tired and it was my turn to watch the kid God’s? Damn maybe this being a time shifting human god is actually tougher then I thought.

Ahh Fluffer maidens lined up in a circle around me peeling grapes and fanning me with palm fronds whilst I lay in my cabana on the beach resting and wishing my day off would go slower, wait I’m the one and only God because it say’s so right there in that book you read and I’m a time traveler so all I have to do is again snap my fingers and I can slow time down to suit my own needs. Damn I am good, you should all love me a lot! OHH but wait If indeed I were a God I know what you’re thinking, why would I need fluffer maiden’s at all? Well it’s like this even a God gets bored as hell at times so why not diddle dally with your down time, wait there’s that word time again, always getting in the way maybe I should have done away with it eons ago, but you must admit for our own purposes it works remarkable well!

So is god married? Well now that certainly would complicate thing a lot wouldn’t it? I’d have to find a God priest or minister, maybe pray to a higher god, but who could be higher then me? Would I indeed have to answer to a Mrs. God, like don’t be late I’m making spaghetti for dinner, because the economy is so bad would she have a job because I was always off doing my God like things? Or fucking the dog as she likes too call it? I certainly would think so because I can tell you right now it’s lonely at the top, no one to talk to all these man made problems to deal with all the time! No one too bounce idea’s off of so, one of my first act’s as god would have been to create lesser god’s none with all the powers that I have but just enough to keep them interested for all millennium. You know some baby God’s so on my day off I could say watch over those pesky humans today while I have some down time…

The end of part 2

Remember a few years back when 3^rd Rock from the sun was on? They had a phrase for the big giant head or something to that effect, any way on Tuesday of this week Katie got to have lunch with the “Giant Big Head” needless to say I was very jealous indeed.

It’s not often that one gets to meet someone of that Stature and not even know it or realize it until after the fact.

When she came home from work that night I still don’t think she realized just how big of a life changing of a moment she had had and maybe only now is it actually starting to sink in! She claims not because she’s known that person most of her life, and says that some things just don’t change.

Anyway while they were having lunch the threesome at the next table became somewhat annoying to her lunch guest who then told her that the only time people should get married is to have kids. Though Katie has been married twice before she did find this rather disquieting, but did manage to keep it to herself damn she’s good at masking the truth. I suspect the thought of gouging eyes out with razor blades might have lurked somewhere in the back of her mind or possibly worse.

During the course of lunch she was informed that “God was a time traveling human”

When she first told me of this I thought what a wonderful adventure for a blog, the realm of possibilities was almost endless and poor me being a hunt and pecker of the keyboard, but as Chief Dan George once said “I shall endeavor to persevere”

It took me a minute or twelve for all this information to settle in, but once I could get my tiny little mind wrapped around things I decided I must write about this!

1^st off how could god be human? Does he bleed like us?

Before I go on I feel I must tell you that her lunch guest was 100% serious about this statement…

If you are god and you cut your arm off does another grow back at a beckon whim? I find it rather hard to fathom that this god who is human is all seeing all powerful, because if that’s the case I don’t think you could be human! Maybe he’s like the “Highlander and if you cut his head off he dies? That wouldn’t allow for him to be a god in our sense of the word then would it? On the other hand it would certainly go along way towards explaining all the death and carnage associated with God in the different religious texts from around the globe wouldn’t it.

I will tell you all right now that while we were lying in bed last night it did come to me who God really is but I’ll save that for a little later, but I did tell Katie last night I did have the perfect ending or maybe it was the beginning to this story, and that I would write about it today.

 Ok so time traveling human? Well let’s see time at this point in our history is only relevant to us. Does time exist anywhere else in the universe? I would think only if you had something to compare it too. Surely it does exist but to whom and how do they measure it compared to us?

As you made the universe wouldn’t you always be fucking with it? Going back to change something you might have forgotten the first time or what ever time? No that can’t be true because God knows and see’s all at the same time, Damn he’s good isn’t he? Now me because I’m a mere mortal I’d have to go back or forward to fix all of my fuck ups on a constant basis, this must be where part of the time travel thing comes in, rather handy I’d say. I can’t get that lump of dirt to move like I’d intended, I know I’ll travel forward in time figure out how I fixed it and go back and make it so! “God is Great!” I know, I know if you were god you’d do it right the first time wouldn’t you but hey there has to be some kind of learning curve I would think. I mean after all lets cut the guy a little or a lot of slack shall we?

 I will I promise write more later today but I have things I need to get done right now, I just wanted too get a teaser out for later.

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes - to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this thing I have-- ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello?), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?
16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. When my son was a 4-year old he asked me in the car one day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?

19. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

20. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet, on any given Friday or Saturday night, more kisses begin with Bud Light than with a Kay jewelry product.

I don’t know if this is true or not but this is what’s on my mind….

I know it’s been a long tough year for all of us even if we think we are only kidding ourselves into believing it’s been pretty good. I think we all know that’s not true, but lets continue a year ago yesterday Katie and I were on our way to Central Oregon to go pick my father up and have him come live with us, on the way back she looked at me and said look Joe I got you a father for your birthday, it was funny but not overly amusing at the time.

In the last year my daughter and her husband Nate got a divorce something I’m not thrilled about, I always think that divorce is suppose to be the last alternative, Him and I were crying on the phone last year when I told him that he would always be welcome in my home. Funny but he was such rightwing Republitard that he drove lots of people away or at the very least made lots of free thinkers extremely uneasy being around him, but I forgave him haha and to this day I still miss him, my son was going to school and working in Central Oregon at this time last year, but was working at reduced hours when he called and told us that he was being laid off as their company just didn’t have enough work. So I told him he could always move home which he did in March of this year. Katie and I went from being able to walk around our house naked whenever we wanted to, to only behind our bedroom doors. I got news shortly after we got back from picking my dad up that by the end of February I would be laid off as they were moving my office to ....Colorado..... My dad died a little over a month ago so all in all I’d say so far it’s kind of been a shitty year which is why this weekend I intend to change that! In about 1985 my Mom and Dad started taking all of the makings for a great thanksgiving feast to their local fire hall, dad always said they always knew who could use it and that way you were assured it stayed local to the community you lived in.

I already told Katie this is what I wanted to do and she agreed there are always people worse off then you are, when they have food drives I always donate but this way maybe it will put more of a personal touch on it.

Walmart this year has a deal where you can buy a turkey and all the related stuff for 20.00 how can you beat that, 10 minutes in the store and 20.00 and you’ll make some families thanksgiving day a day of joy not sorrow.

 We are having all of Katie’s family over to our house for thanksgiving that will be approx. 24 people, 2 turkeys a ham possibly a roast with all the trimmings so while we’re out why not do the little extra?

I haven’t written anything on my space since the 4^th of this month but I’ve had 653 views of my blogs this week, I would like to see if I can’t get others of you that come on and do the same thing as Katie and I and take a turkey feast to your local fire department to make those less fortunate then us have a better holiday. If you need help send me a note through the site and we’ll see what we can do to help you also.

I believe it’s been a fairly shitty year for a lot of friends and neighbors  maybe we can start to help fix that. Joe.

I will try a and tell you what it was like growing up with and old school father, I was the second oldest of 4 kids which to me meant that I had it a lot tougher then any of the rest of them, of course this is purely from my own perspective, I cant talk for any of the others except to say none of them got ass whoop ins like I did, or nearly as frequent for that matter either.

My dad was from a good Catholic family that had 11 kids so his up bringing was a very strict and stern one, as I called all my Aunts and Uncles on the day of October 18^th to let them all know that dad had died everyone of them to a fault was very sympathetic and thank Katie and myself for taking him in for the last 11 months and looking after him.

One of my dad’s younger sisters ok, his only younger sister told me that told me that when he came back from W.W.2 he gave her a locket that he wore while he was in the Navy with her picture in it, she said when they were young kids he had always watched out for her as they were growing up, then she asked if I would like to have it? Of course I told her yes, and then I told her like I told the rest of his siblings that he had been one tough son of a bitch right up until the end.

She then told me do you remember me coming to visit you where you were born? I said no I sure didn’t and then she said well you were maybe 2 so I’m not surprised, but you Joe were always a little hellion even at that age, your mom was trying to potty train you when I got there and you wouldn’t say my name out of spite, I thought you called me “Marny” not Marlene well the first day I was there you stood up from the toilet and hollered Marny come wipe my butt! I remember fondly that your mom always had a pot of homemade soup going on the stove and that day at lunch as she put the bowl of soup down at the table for you, you grabbed the bowl tipped it upside down over your head and started laughing, so I knew then you were going to be a little shit, that’s why your father was always so tough on you because you were always a little shit, to which I told I still am! She told me that didn’t surprise her one little bit.

Often as I have looked back over my childhood I always knew as far as us kids went I probably deserved all of the spankings I received I didn’t like  them but I did get more then the rest of us kids by at least 10 fold. Growing up for part of my life in eastern Canada you were required to take French class’s then we moved down to the U.S. and I decided too take French again because this would be a breeze, well the first day I got in trouble because I told the teacher Ms. Crowe that she was pronouncing the words all wrong, I then told her that our French books were made in Quebec not in France like the books in Canada were thus I spent a good portion of that class out in the hall because I would always tell her she wasn’t doing it right. When the parent – teacher conferences came along my dad came home from them beat my ass and told me I would never again get a poor work slip because I was now an embarrassment to the family!  

This my friends was a tough old man, of course at that time he wasn’t old…

More tomorrow

I awoke yesterday morning at 4:24, if you know me that’s not all that unusual as I am a frequent early riser. I looked at the clock rolled over on my left side and thought “well I’ll just lay here for a few minutes longer”, 3 minutes later my phone rang and I knew before I answered it that it was the hospital calling. I guess I had been expecting this call for awhile now, In July after him having to be taken to the hospital by ambulance more then a few times, Katie and I finally realized we couldn’t look after him anymore. The previous few days I had been discussing with him that very thing and he understood the situation, it certainly wasn’t what any of us wanted but after having a stroke in May and then spending about a month and a half in a physical rehabilitation facility and not getting much better we brought him home to see if we could deal with it. Two days later it became abundantly clear we could not. I have to tell you it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. The stories you here about those places is true once you’re there they just don’t give a shit, and at the same time I don’t think my dad did either. He had been telling me for months that he didn’t want to be kept alive if it ever came to it just for the sake of being alive.

The nursing home would call me at times during the middle of the night and tell me my father was being difficult or your father just hit another patient with his cane, like I might be able to help out this situation. Well of course they were wrong, no one other then my mother could ever get my dad to do anything he didn’t want to! I am pretty sure that eventually they might have figured that out but they still called. They called me about 2 weeks ago at about 3 in the morning and told me that he was having trouble breathing and they were going to have him taken to the hospital, an hour or two later I received a call from the hospital doctor who explained that he had looked at my dad and believed he had pneumonia and would be admitting him for treatment, later that day while I was at the store a nurse called to tell me that they were indeed treating him for that and he was in intensive care. I explained to her we couldn’t come to see him as both Katie and myself had extremely bad colds that had started 2 days earlier and I certainly wouldn’t want him or anyone else to catch what was almost knocking both of us on our respective ass’es . She asked me a number of questions about my fathers wishes etc. and had me repeat it to another nurse, and that in the next day or so a doctor would call.

Knowing that my dad had been getting progressively weaker over the last few months had allowed me the time to start the process of understanding that he wouldn’t be with us much longer. Mentally I was now trying to wrap my at times small brain around the idea of this once large and powerful man not being around the, intricate balance  of knowing he was leaving me with so many things instilled in me as I got older have made it much easier to now deal with. Yesterday I thought leave it too my dad to buy me the extra time to try and deal with the inevitability of his death.

In the next few days I will try and explain what it was like for me to grow up in the foot steps of my father….

Oil has just gone over 75.00 barrel gold is at a record high of approx. 1079.00 an ounce and now I read that Wall Street is hoping for the dollar to collapse because of the way they buy and leverage Commodities!

The dollars value keeps sinking and the government thinks this is a good thing as more countries will buy or goods because they’ll be cheaper which in turn should put people back to work as factory orders go up the companies will have to hire more employees to fill those orders. Of course wages for those new workers will go down because with the dollar being worth less the profit margins will be less, what we get paid won’t go anywhere as far as it used to because just getting to work will cost us more. The dollar has to be worth less as we just seem too keep printing more and more, oh wait Fed chairman  Bernanke said we won’t keep printing money for ever, I’m bad sorry.

It soon will be just like the German Depression and we’ll all have to fill the trunks of our cars with cash just to buy gas to get to work with, in their old depression people would fill wheel barrels with money to buy soup and bread.

I wonder where the line starts? If people aren’t working as I’ve said many, many times there will be no economic recovery, unemployed people do not buy big ticket items like homes and cars, appliances, or do much remodeling to existing homes.

Supposedly the banks are now all making big killer profits from the money that the government loaned them to stay afloat and help loan money to businesses but I’ve seen little evidence that they are loaning anything, because they are sitting on the money and collecting interest! They might need that money as more home loans are defaulted on and trust me there will be a lot more, before this is all over.

Here is the next thing I see coming as the 8,000.00 tax credit for new home buyers expires at the end of November, I believe sometime early next year as it becomes clear that people can’t afford to buy homes that the government will give new home buyers the required down payments instead of a tax credit, you will of course have to pay it back at probably about 3% over a 10 to 15 year period, because right now no one has the down payment. I think that there is still no recovery and if you believe there is let’s look at it this way, we are being told there are 15 million people with out jobs, yet in the same breath they are claiming that unemployment nationally is right at 10%. I say this is bull shit there are a little over 300 million people in our great country, just simple math tells me it’s more like 30 million people out of work!!! Every one of us knows people that are out of work and I’m betting it’s more then just one out of every 10 people you know, that’s either people you know or neighbors etc.

So who doe’s this leave to start buying things to turn our economy around?                               

Ever since they started telling us back in the Vietnam War days partial truths they’ve used it against us to make things not so bleak and dreary. Back then we would hear that American forces killed 270 Viet Cong while we only suffered losses of 3, even then I used to think if that’s the case the war will be over soon because the North won’t have any people left to fight with!

There is no easy fix to the shit storm that George Bush left us with, but I know we can’t keep printing more money like nothing is happening and not have dire consequences to go with it.