Michael

Guess I need to work on my poetry. Oh well.

that is very sweet

the pace of chat is not my mine

we control-freaks suck

But maybe someday I'll mature. Until then, the haiku above instead.

had to cell phone the studio

Anyway, a cell phone operates on phantom wiring.

Exercising her right to bear arms, eh?

Dust, what is your opinion about this outcome?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/h...icle5420921.ece

The comments are also worth a look.

And the hits just keep on comin':

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/...short-man-says/

Great question.

With everything said above being true, I suspect that may people become providers expecting it will be easier to rescue, relieve pain, comfort, and generally help or save others than turns out to be the case. Expecting one's urge to be useful (and expecting to be thanked) to be instantly and visibly gratified leads to bitter frustration in those with low tolerance for frustration, and the handiest outlet for that frustration is the nearest dependent captive audience. It happens with caregivers at all levels, it happens among couples, families, in friendships, in teaching situations - wherever people are unaware of and unobjective about their own mixed motives about the ingredient of pride in their ambitions.

When a goodwill offering is rebuffed, that goodwill easily decomposes into indignation, outrage, vengeance. When Cain's offering was rejected, his disappointment turned into murdering his innocent brother Abel, who had done nothing to harm him. It's even the explanation for how evil originally came into the universe: Lucifer, whose name means "The One Who Carries the Light," had been created as the highest angel, but when he discovered his good power wasn't supreme, he furiously set out to overthrow the whole system. (To prevent this from happening, Man was created as a buffer, and continues to be the field of battle between those who have learned seek satisfaction in promoting others' welfare without predictable reward vs. those who are still in the mode of Lucifer's defiant motto: "I shall not serve!"). Much later, when Judas Iscariot's plan to establish Jesus as a political messiah was thwarted by Jesus' rejection of that route to salvation, Judas took fatal revenge.

Anyway, I think Ridryder had it right. Aiding others provides a splendid opportunity to discover one's own hidden agendas, and not everyone is prepared to recognize how much self-seeking is involved in the endeavor. Ungrateful patients (and turkey-like behavior among our colleagues, supervisors, subordinates) test the quality and resilience of our attitude. In 1441, a monk named Thomas à Kempis wrote: "Occasions of adversity best reveal how much virtue or strength each person has. For events do not make a man frail, but they show what he is."

Fortunately, that's something we can improve.

Flamers?

The rare case in which 02 is toxic. To bystanders.

I can't find a reference to it now, but I once read about doctors and med students in the Soviet Union who played jazz as amateurs - jazz is very big in Russia. They were too poor to afford to hire recording studios, but discovered they could take discarded X-rays and somehow - I don't know how - record their music on these as if on the old vinyl records, and then listen to their performances later. They called it "playing the bones."

once it starts burning, it will continue to provide it's own oxygen source

I've met a few people like that too.

When Volkswagen Beetles were new in the US, a gas station attendant reportedly asked the driver of one where the gas tank was, so she searched with him until they located a cap, which they unscrewed and filled what later turned out to be the car's radiator...