There has been a trend coming back around that I am actually liking.  It is the return of the “Pin-up” style of art and women’s clothing.

There are probably those of you out there that do not know what I am talking about, at least not with the term “pin-up”.  Though you have probably seen it several times, you just do not know what I am talking about.

“Pin-up” is a style of art that involves women that are scantily clad, at least by the standards of the 1940s and 1950s.  Art that adorned the noses of several hundred bombers over Europe and the pacific and in the pockets of the soldiers that fought the ground war.  Images that made women like Rita Hayworth and Bettie Page more famous to some soldiers than their movies did.

In fact, there appears to be a whole new class of this style of dress and photo-art that is making the rounds.  Some of it I like and some of it I am not so fond of, especially the ones with the women who are also sporting lots of tattoos.  That is not to say that they are not attractive, they are just not what I find attractive.

The new models that are making this style popular are people like:

Dayna DeLux

Heidi Van Horn - A few Tattoos, but still lovely

Bettina May

and

Amy - Again… a couple tattoos, but nothing overdone.

What really tickles me is that to this day, there are still people that consider this art a form of pornography or somehow ranks as smut.  I beg to differ, I think that the human body is a work of art.  These ladies do what they do because the have the bodies, as I am sure the minds, to do it and do it well.  They also show, through most of their work, that it is not what you DO see that can be a turn on, but what you cannot see and must be left to the imagination.

Admit it guys… there have been time that you have been sitting at home, or in the car and a song has come on that you cannot help but sing along with… but is not meant for a guy to sing.

Unfortunately, I too am guilty of this.  There have been a couple times I caught myself, being a big fan of ABBA singing something like “Gimme Gimme Gimme” when it comes on the radio.  Granted… I will try, when I think about it, to edit the lines to say woman… so the result is no longer the “Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight” that are the real lines of the song.

There are many other songs that are like this.  Written from the point of view of the woman and sung by a woman, yet they are catchy enough that we all tap our toes and sometime sing along.

I was driving the other day and heard a guy in the car next to me singing Gretchen Wilson’s “Red Neck Woman”, and it looked like he was really getting into it, until he saw me watching him.  As I turned and looked forward again I heard his radio tune to a talk show and he was no longer singing.

Then there are the songs that guys sing when they do not know the meaning of them and the people that do sit, put their head in their hands and groan.  I used to have a friend that loved a song by the Kinks called “Lola”.  He used to say that it was a song that he would dedicate to his wife and reminded him of how they met.  This confused me, because anyone who really LISTENS to the song will realize that is about a guy’s first sexual encounter with a male transvestite.  When I explained this to him, he ignored me.  I am all for having the occasional romantic song in your life, but it might be a good idea to select one that you know the meaning behind.

Then there have been the times I have seen women singing songs that were meant for men.  Yes, ladies… you are guilty too.  Like a time I was sitting in a bar, out of town, having dinner… I noticed a young lady singing Dierks Bently’s “What was a thinking?” to herself and she was really getting into it, too.

Like I said… we are all guilty of doing this from time to time.  I know it will never stop and sometime we just do not realize that we are singing the song until you notice that people are looking at you like you like you just peed in the holy water at church.

So… keep singing… because the rest of the world needs a reason to laugh.

Since there does not appear to be any guides stating that I cannot talk about this and my gym membership did not include a Confidentiality Agreement, at least not that I am aware of, I fee pretty “OK” talking about this subject.

I recently started going to a gym. I did this mostly due to the wake-up call I received a couple weeks ago and shared with you all in the piece I wrote called “A Place in my heart.” Last night was my first time going there, and I will have to admit that it was not all bad. There were some things that I saw that I really need to talk about… let’s call it therapy.

Warning: Some of the following may be considered crass, rude, hostile or even just plain mean hearted… but I mean it in the most constructive way possible. Read it and comment on it, but consider yourself warned.

Many years ago I belonged to a gym here in Bakersfield named Bakersfield Athletic Club. I went pretty regularly until they were bought out by a place called “24 Hour Fitness”. To me, this was like finding out that my local Temple (Jewish) was being run by Saint Frances’ Catholic school for children with spastic rectal disorder. In other words, not a good thing. 24 Hour Fitness could ruin half off happy hour at the Mustang Ranch.

I digress… the above was not what I came here to talk about. What I really wanted to talk about are the items that people wear to the gym and some of the things you see in a gym. Trust me, they are not all good and some of them would send Freddy Kruger back to the pits of hell looking for someone to hug him.

First of, let me tell you how I dress to work out. It is a matter of utility for me, I am not there to attract the women, expecially since I have been off the market for almost twenty years. So my attire is usually a pair of sweat shorts and a heavy sweat shirt. Yes, I wear this all the time that I am working out, even in the summer. The object of doing a good workout is to sweat, right? For the ladies reading, I will call it “Glowing”, but for me, it is sweating.

I am also not there to have a discussion, so you will not see me chatting with other people. I just go in, get on the machine that I want to use and sweat away.

The reason I talk about what people wear to the gym is because while I am not not on the market and I am not looking for a date, I am also not dead. I will notice the ladies if they are pleasing to look at. Which brings me to my first point.

Ladies… just because you fit into the size 6 unitard, when you are actually a size 12, does not mean you SHOULD put it on. There are many reasons that you should not wear it.  I know that there may be something that tells you that this looks sexy, but that is the same voice that keeps telling you that one more banana split will not make a difference. IGNORE THE VOICE.  I have NO problem with large women and I have no problem with them working out.  I do have a problem with seeing things that are better left to someone else’s imagination.  I will end that portion of the topic with two words, and leave the rest to your imagination…  Camel Toe.

To be fair, I am not slender.  I am 276 pounds and most of it is in my ass and stomach, but you will never see me in the gym in bicycle shorts or a tank top.  Heck, even if I had a great body and was built like Bruce Lee, you would not see me dressed like that.

Guys… I have two issues to pick on with the guys who go to the gym.  There seem to be three types of guys that go to the gym… people like me who are trying to get our bodies back in some shape other that pear or “bowling pin”, who go in at regular times and work our butts off… hopefully literally.

Then there are the guys that seem to mistake the gym for a pick-up joint.  They go in and try and pick up on the ladies to see who might be available.  You guys are the reason that many gyms have created a “Ladies Only”.  These are the idiots that come in, find a machine next to a lady and start working out on it for no other reason than to chat it up with a person that wants nothing to do with you.

Then there are the muscle types… they go in and work for hours on the free weights.  You can usually tell these ones, because they lose their sense of anything but themselves.  when they walk around they strut, if they happen to walk by a mirror then they watch themselves walk past.  That alone gives me the creeps, because the way they will sometimes look at themselves, you start to wonder if they are have some weird homoerotic fantasy about themselves.

Now… I know that anyone reading this may stop and ask me about the issues that I have… and I do have issues.  I lack a great deal of self-confidence, I am ashamed of how I look, especially when I thing that I was once a Marine and did have a good body.  I am paranoid that others are watching me work out and whispering under their breath about me.  There… I am not perfect.  That being said, I do get out there and do the best that I can.  I am not getting any younger.

Please do not be offended by anything I have written about in this post.  I am venting about things that I think are silly.  You will have your own opinion, I am sure, but I am sure that there are things you can all agree with in this.  We have all been to gyms and seen things like this.  This is no longer the late 70s or 80s… there are no more Kelly LaBrock’s or Olivia Newton John’s bouncing around in leotards and leg warmers, images that filled the fantasies of many a young man, myself included, in those times…  I cannot speak to what you ladies reading this looked at and fantasized about during that time .  Two decades of gluttony have caught up with us all.

Now we see the gyms filled with people more like the Michael Moore’s and Rosanne Arnold’s trying to do the same moves, and it is scary.

Good Night, all… with all I have written I hope that you have no nightmares.

When I came up with the title for this post, I was thinking of all the fun things I could put on here that would rank as the things that I do not understand. The possibilities for humor in such a title are endless. I am not sure why, but then I realized that there are other things that I need to express that do not rank as humorous, but still fall within the scope of the title. And so I shall begin…

• I do not understand how a person can abuse or exploit a child, for any purpose.

• I do not understand how you can hate a class or race of people based solely on their race or class.

• I do not understand why people believe politicians who have a history of lying.

• I cannot understand what we think we can accomplish by not pursuing nuclear energy

• I do not understand why people insist on talking on the phone while driving.

• I do not understand why people still try to run from the law when it is almost impossible to escape.

• I do not understand how people can still walk around with messed up teeth, when dental services so readily available these days.

• I do not understand why, as technologically advanced as we have become, we still have wars and conflicts over theological issues.

• I do not understand why, again… as technologically advance as we are, we still think that the color of our skin makes us better or worse people.

• I do not understand why our government seems to exist solely for it’s own benefit and not for the benefit of those that it is supposed to represent.

• I do not understand why a person working on behalf of the government, doing his job to protect the borders, can be arrested and jailed for doing his job.  While the person he tried to stop, who is an illegal alien with a know criminal past, is treated like a hero.

• I do not understand how people who have the task and honor of putting their lives on the line for our country, in many cases, do not make enough money to make ends meet.

• I do not understand why every TV show uses the same plots, just with a few different changes to make you think you are watching something different.

• I do not understand how if a show like “24″ is supposed to be about the events through the course of one day, why it never has a 10 minute period while Kiefer’s charactor is taking a crap.

• I do not understand how a person’s life can be so boring that they need to sit and watch a TV program about several people in a house with manufactured issues with the sole intent on exploiting those of the others on the show.

I talk to myself.

I would like to think that we all do from time to time, personally I think it is healthy to talk to yourself.

I am pretty sure that I talk to myself more than most people that I know, however, and there are times that I have pretty good conversations with myself. Some of my best ideas and thoughts come from these conversations.

I would wager that my level of “self conversation” goes a little to far sometimes. I mean if you are having a conversation with a person and reach a point were the conversation goes south, you can walk away from one another. There have been several times where my discussions with myself have not gone well and I reach a point where I cannot agree with me, so what do I do? I cannot walk away from myself… I have tried to not talk to myself for a while, but that always ends badly. I thought about taking myself out to dinner once to make up for the argument, but that is always uncomfortable when you get to the restaurant. Especially when both of you forget to bring money.

Seriously, though… Some of my best ideas have come from talking to an empty room with a tape recorder going. It gives you a way to hear your ideas through another point of view. I have even gone so far as to video tape my discussions with myself to, afterward, view the process from afar. It truly can be fascinating.

Now… I am sure that there are those of you who are now saying something along the lines of: “OK… The Samurai has lost it.” No… I would say not. I know exactly where it is, but I just occasionally have trouble getting to it. I never put it in the same place twice and I do not always recall exactly where it was that I left it the last time I had it.

I use talking to myself much the same way that Einstein used his mental simulations, to figure something out. If I am writing, it often helps to say the lines aloud to see how they will actually sound when spoken. When I am thinking about something, there are times that speaking about it as if you were discussing it with a person helps the thought congeal.

Then there are actually times that I do like listening to myself talk about something I know well. It makes me feel good, I suppose. After all… when I do that, I do have a captive audience.

All in all… I like it in here… and so do the rest of us!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

How often do we and should we just take a moment to sit and listen to world around us. Every so often it nice to just sit and be and listen to the world. The sounds of the wind rustling through the tree’s, the sounds of birds communicating with each or calling out to friends in different places. Children playing and laughing without a care in the world, theironly concern what they are doing at that moment. No thoughts of what tomorrow will bring, or for that matter the next hour or afternoon. The just live in the moment. Living in the moment is something we should learn to embrace. Just be, enjoy, not worry about how well things are going at the moment, just enjoy the moment for what it is. The times when you can do that, are the times that will remain with you as good memories or funny memories at least, when things don’t go as well as we sometimes hoped they would. How often have we used the phrase, its funny now, when describing some event that at the time, had us pitching fits, or angry or rushed for time. Why wasn’t it funny then, because we wouldn’t let our minds just be in the moment. We are too worried about time or what is going to happen next.

Many years ago, while participating in a writing experiment that at the time I originally thought was silly, I experienced one of those moments, when the words just seemed to flow from somewhere, that I was not aware of. I can remember bits and pieces of what I wrote but not the whole thing. If memory serves me right, it was about time and the passage of it, and much like the earlier paragraph was focused just on the moment. Time is precious and meant to be enjoyed, because we can never have that moment back again. What we choose to do with moment however is important, not the fact the moment is gone, never to reclaimed again. We want to be able to relive those moments and laugh about them or remember them fondly, not as missed opportunities or wastes of our time.
Enjoy what you doing at the moment and do worry about it going right or wrong, just be in the moment. It is those times that will give you peace and happy thoughts when there are moments that aren’t going so well. You can look back on them, and get that feeling you have when you are with someone, that knows you well enough, that you don’t feel the need to filter thought or feelings. Someone who when you are with them the silence is comfortable, pleasing and calming, when just being around that person makes you at ease. Often times, just being with them, provides a calming influence, you don’t even need to be in the same room with them, you can be on the phone, doing completely different things and it is just a comfort knowing they are there. And often when you are not with that person, you still get the sense that they need you to call them, to provide that comforting influence, or call you and do the same. Cherish those moments so when you need them, you can recall them for the times when you can’t talk to or be near that person, and you will find that they are just as comforting as when you are near.

Today (5 July 2008) I saw something that made me decide to write this piece. I saw a Black man walking two pit bulls. He was wearing a pair of jeans that were low in the back so that you could see the underwear and a white t-shirt. What struck me about this sight is that I felt myself immediately think of this person as a “gang-banger” type who probably kept the dogs for fighting.

The problem is that I as I got closer to this person, I realized that I knew him and there is no way that he would do that with his dogs. Add to this that he is the furthest thing from a “gang-banger” that I know a person to be.

So it makes me wonder, is what I experienced actually true racism, even in a small form, or is it a case of social imprinting, where we see something and based on news, past experiences or stereotyping, we assume something that is not always the case.

Using the black person I spoke about at the start of this as an example, how many people that saw exactly the same thing I did, would think the same way?  Granted, I am sure not all would, but I would wager that a majority of people would. I would even go so far as to say that it would not only be Caucasians that would think this way, I think that you would see similar reactions in various other races as well, including other Black folks.

Who’s fault is it for people thinking this was? Is it the fault of the person who is looked at and assumed to be what he or she is, in fact, not simply because of how they look or choose to dress? Is it the fault of me, or anyone else, for being so quick to judge a person because of certain things they do that fit in with a social group? Where DOES fault lie?

Here is my take on the answer and I am betting that many of you will not like it. The fault lies with us all and it is all about understanding and education. When I looked at that person today, for that briefest of moments, I did not see a fellow human who is almost 100% anatomically similar to me, I did not see human whose only difference from me was the color of his skin. For that moment I saw what he media wanted me to see based on the minority of the black people that appear on various shows in the negative light.

The fact that I reacted the way I did shows a certain level of failure on my part to, in that one moment, not differentiate fiction from fact and assume that because this guy was dressed the way he was and had pit bulls, I made the cardinal sin of thinking that he was a gang-banger.  This does bother me, because anyone who REALLY knows me, knows that this is not who I am.

The moral to my little rant here?  Be aware.  Be very mindful of your thoughts and actions.  Our thoughts and ideas about how we see things lead to actions, either obvious or hidden.  This is what creates hate in the world.  There is already enough of that, we do not need more.

I am a big proponent of “Simpler Times”.  I am the first to tell you that I am a little jaded when it comes to how I recall my childhood and what I consider to be a simpler time from both my own perspective as well as that of the people I know who are older than am I.

This is why I enjoy listening to “The Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor.  If you are not familiar with who this person is, or have never heard of the program, then you are truly missing out on something wonderful.

Unfortunately I learned about the Prairie Home Companion (PHC) late in life, so I cannot tell you that I have been listening to it for years and years, but I can say that I have been listening to it for about two years, on and off and I can tell you that I love the feeling of the program.  That you can get lost in the music and the stories that are told.  Most importantly to me, is the fact that there is something in Garrison’s voice that is like visiting an old friend that you only get to see on occasion.  Soft, with some humor, but you never question the fact that he really means what he tells you.  The kind of voice that you might associate with your father or any other patriarchal figure in your family.

There was also a movie that was made several years ago about the PHC called, oddly enough, “A Prairie Home Companion.”  If you have not seen this movie, then I cannot urge you enough to rent it and watch it.  While there is a lot of the side story that is just there as filler, the rest gives you a feel for the show itself.  Attached it a scene from the movie that I particularly liked.

But the radio program is where you really get to experience the feel of the people and the characters they portray.  There is something “comfortable” about listening to this program that I just cannot explain to a person that might not have ever heard of the show before.

If you have a chance, then please take a moment to go to the web site by following this link, and go to their archives and listen to a show or two.  I think you will enjoy them.  Good music, good stories and in the end, when the program is over, it leaves you with that feeling of emptiness, like you have when you have had a bunch of friends over, and then the time comes for them to leave.

Recently there was an event in Hartford, Conn. that has me worried.

This is the news piece, please follow the link for the story.

A man is hit by a car while they are, by the sounds of it, playing a game of cat and mouse. Chasing each other through busy streets.

The fact that he was hit at all was bad enough, but what makes it worse is that while the man lay in the street, people just watched. No one lifted a finger to help, short of calling 911 to get emergency crews out. It was very likely that another car could have come along and hit this fellow. The video and the stills clearly show that people did see this man, and while taking the time to gawk, took no measures to stop traffic or make sure that nothing further happened to him.

Right here I would like to step out of the calm way I usually talk and just ask, what the HELL kind of society are we becoming? Is it more important for us to take pleasure in someone else’s agony than to lend a hand, or at the very least stop further injury or suffering? Even if someone had gone so far as to pull their car out into traffic to protect this guy, or as simple as kneeling next to him, holding his hand and telling him that help was on the way.

Now… of all those people on the side of the street, I wonder how many pulled out there camera phones and took pictures of this man laying there. How many of those same people stood there wondering if someone else was going to do something, or said to themselves that someone else would take care of this.

THAT is the problem. We have become a society that is waiting for others to do something, and not taking action ourselves. You will probably argue with me on this, but when you look at the stills and the video, how many people are standing there watching, and not doing a damned thing to help the man? How many people do you see go out and see if there is anything they can do?

Everything is an episode of Survivor or Real World to people these days. People are too busy watching and enjoying the pain and suffering of others to get involved in something as meaningless as, oh, I don’t know… SAVING A LIFE! They see it happen, think, “Man, I am glad that was not me!” then go home and sit in their chair and watch the news of the event, then see the person there. They might go so far as to say to someone, “Yeah, I saw that happen.”

There was a time when more people used to give a damn. When you saw something happen, and sprang into gear and tried to help. I know of one person, personally, that did this. He lived in central Utah, and was there when a child was hit backed over by a van. He did all he could, but was not able to save the child. THAT is the type of people that we should all be. Willing to help when the time calls for it. He may not have been able to save that child, but I have to think that there are two things that happened… First, he took a chance to save a life, and he did his best. Second, maybe somewhere in the little consciousness that ebbed from the child, she knew that there was someone there trying.

That man, Arce Torres, laid in that street and waited. He may or may not have known that there were people around him, treating him like the latest side show, or an errant cat that was hit by a passing car. He may or may not have felt that no one there cared enough to try and help him. But if there had been even ONE person that had been a stand up guy, like the one I spoke about with the child and the van, then Arce would have known someone was there who cared about him and wanted to see him safe.

It angers me that so many people out there no longer care about strangers the way we once did. That we have to fear getting involved in something just because we do not want to become inconvenienced by what might happen if you help a person in need.

If any of the people that stood there and watched this happen, and did nothing to help, happen upon my site, and read this. I do hope that I am wrong, and there is a hell… because there is a special place in it for you, I am sure. You should all just hope that if something like that happens to you, that the people who show up are kinder than you were.

That is all… At least all I have the stomach for at this time.