A killer returns to his father only to shed tears
A soldier returns to his father only to tell of his fears
A lawyer returns to his father only to share his lies
Because amends must be made before my father dies
A lover returns to his father to share what he scorns
A doctor returns to his father to cry that he mourns
A teen returns to his father to confess he isn’t ready to be a man
But when we think it safe to return, it starts back up again

Like a son without a father

Like a father without a son

Like a tombstone without a grave

Like a grave with out a tombstone

I will march forward and be brave

I will stand alone

I will be that landscape blotter

Until the end has come



And we will continue on our lives

And we will continue on our lives

Insisting left is right and right is wrong

Insisting left is right and right is wrong

A man will die living for which he strives

A man will die living for which he strives

And he will be remembered for long

And he will be remembered for long

Like a father without a son

Like a son without a father

Like a grave with out a tombstone

Like a tombstone without a grave

I will stand alone

I will march forward and be brave

Until the end has come

I will be that landscape blotter

Friends are replaceable.  Family, is not.

If you lost a family member, you will never be able to fill that void.  All you can do it learn to ignore it and remember them.

Cry

That is all you know

Knees to the floor

And away you go

Wide eyed

Reach out to touch

Giggle a little bit

You’re impressed by so much

Scared

Who are these others?

Why are we all here

Instead of home with our mothers

Accepting

Fragile, but developing a core

Understanding, not understood

Get ready, there’s so much more

Status

They’re everything I want to be

They’re so pretty

Why doesn’t everyone like me

Maturity

I love you

Where do I want to go from here?

What the future holds, you haven’t a clue.

Independence

You’re in control of your life

Time to make your own decisions

Take the good with the strife

Establish

A job, a home

Maybe someone else is there

Or maybe you are still alone

Climb

To the top

Become successful, become a success

And once you do, never stop

Give

Time to your husband or wife

Life to your child, pets, and each other

Love to live your life.

Slow

You’ve had your chance

The chance to build the shiny hard word floor

Where you can slow dance

Breath deep

Take in all in and look back

Smile at what you’ve done, at what you’ve been

Forget what you lack

Exhale

Let your lips come together, and eyes close

What images dance on the back of your eyelids?

Feel no pain, as life says “good bye”, and goes.

This is effing ridiculous.  A class action lawsuit waiting to happen.  If anyone knows an attorney, I’d be willing to talk to them and split the winnings with you.

So I get contacts earlier this spring, and each of the 4 boxes come with a $10 mail in rebate for CooperVision.  So i send in the UPC box tops and after like 3 months, i get this stupid visa debit card in the mail.  WTF is this crap?  Where’s my $40 check??

So here’s the deal with this thing.  It’s like a credit card with a $40 limit.  If I want to buy something that costs more than $40 – I’m screwed because it won’t accept the charge.  I’d have to be able to tell the cashier, “Take $40 from this card, then the rest on this other one.”  That’s hassle.  Coopervision has an anti-marketing campaign here because their name is tied to all of this frustration.

The trap doesn’t stop there.  As if that wasn’t making it hard enough for you to spend, you have 6 months to use the card, or you get assessed a $3 “monthly maintenance fee”.  WTF.  I want to [do very violent things].  This thing has a time limit?  That makes me feel like I’m really just borrowing money from Coopervision, and if I don’t burn it all before they remember they lent it to me, they’re going to take it back.

Keep in mind, since it’s a credit card, If I spend $35.32, I have to do the math in my head to know what is left on the card.  Then I have to remember how much is on the card for the next time I use it.  The closer I get to $40.00 without approaching it EXACTLY, the less likely I am able to actually use the full value of the rebate.

Whatever.  I can use this thing in 6 months.  I’ll just take Kallie out for a nice dinner, split the check, and it’ll be nice.  So here we are, at a swanky restaurant in Chicago, and I explain to the waiter what I need him to do.  He comes back and says, “Sorry, this card was rejected for $40.”  I’m livid.  WTF.  I tell him to try $39.99 maybe???  It dawns on me that perhaps I have had it for 6 months and they pegged me with the maintenance fee.  Anyway, after a second time, and much embarrassment, he says that it accepted $30 and he put the rest on my other card.  I apologize, and thank him for his patience.

So I go home and log into the webpage account for this card to figure out what the crap is going on here.  Here’s my statement.  Can you decypher why it didn’t let $40 through????  WHAT THE EFF is that $36????

I’m so sick of this card, I just gave it to Kallie and said, “Buy something.  NOW.  GET RID OF THIS VICIOUS CARD.”  So she gets on half.com and buys a book for $8.99 shipped….WTF IS GOING ON WITH THIS STATEMENT?!?!?!  DIE, COOPERVISION.  DIE, PREPAID VISA REBATE CARDS.  You’re effing ridiculous, frustrating, and should be banned before water boarding.

This is just disgusting business tactics to not give money.  They say they’ll give you a rebate, but they make it nearly impossible for you to claim that money.  It’s like a carrot dangling on a string, and I’m about ready put that carrot someplace that CEO won’t appreciate.  Or maybe he would.  I’m throwing down some serious hate here.

Had they just cut me a check, I would have enjoyed the experience, and done business with them again.  Now I don’t trust them, and I want to kill anyone will the last name “Cooper”.

BUYER BEWARE

I’ve written before that I’m convinced [at least my] deja vu’s are my past dreams coming true.  Part of my dream blogging is an effort to prove that.  The hard thing is to separate the dreams from things that can possibly happen from the impossible, and then remember the non-remarkable dreams after waking, and the final step is usually the kicker, to blog about it.  It’s easy to blog about the entertaining, far-fetched, or intriguing dreams, but it’s hard to place importance on the dreams, or part of the dreams, where I’m sitting at a table with 3 people and someone says or does something and another person says or does something else in reply.

A lot of my dreams take place at the estate (the house where I grew up).  I would say it’s the most frequent dream location, with Heritage Hills (the school I attended from 3rd grade until 9th grade) being a close second.  Both of these places no longer exist.  I know these will never turn into a deja vu.

A lot of my dreams involve my dad, or me at high school, or just at a younger age.  I know these can never happen.

It’s the dreams that are mundane, or even with people that I don’t know (yet?) that I need to focus on and document.

Sometimes, my dreams are hard to deal with.  Sometimes, I do things that I’d be ashamed to do in real life.  My dreams are in my memory though, so they don’t just fade away.  I remember them, as if I did them.  If the act alone is not bad enough, sometimes the emotions that go along with it make it a nightmare.  In real life, I’ve trained myself how to deal with my emotions.  Possibly as a result, my dreams become emotionally intense, and that emotion does not go away when I wake up…

She’s standing on the landing to the upstairs of my house.  I get down on my knees to be at her height and she laughs at me.  “How old are you, Daddy?”, she says to me as I chase her up a few steps.  “I’m 37″, I reply, knowing I’m lying, but not really able to remember the right answer.  She says she’s older than me.  I look at her analytically to figure out her age.  “No way, you’re like a 2 year old, Jule.”

I know her name.  She’s my daughter.  She looks like Mara Wilson of “Matilda” and Mrs. Doubtfire, only with shorter blonde hair.

As she climbs a few more stairs to the top, she calls out that she’s taller than me now.  I crawled up to her and tackled her to put her under my height again as she laughs.  Kallie’s at the top of the stairs, holding our son.  “I’m going to give Micah a bath.”,  she says.  I reply, “OK, I’ll keep Jule busy.”  As I roll around with Jule, a yellow lab comes up the stairs and joins in on the fun.

And then they’re gone.  Your first reaction is probably, “aww, that’s cute.”  My first reaction, in the middle of the night, is tears.  Actually, as I assume I felt myself waking up, I held Jule closer, starting to cry even in the dream, and that carried through to reality.  This was not a dream to me.  That was my child, I knew her, and I loved her.  I effing loved her, and then she’s gone.  It’s the same exact thing as death.  Even though the cause (what takes them away) is different, the effect is still feeling like someone you love is not there anymore, and never will be.  It’s pretty effed up.

That’s part of the reason I don’t want to talk about kids.  Dreams tend to pull inspiration from your real life and your actual thoughts that day.  I want to reduce the risk of me ever having dreams like that.  A beautiful nightmare?  Perhaps, but a nightmare still.  I’m still getting watery eyes just typing about her.

Are there more people alive right now then people that have ever died?  What’s your first thought?  I want to say that there are more dead people, but I’m not sure how to figure this out, or the best possible way to make an educated guess.

According to census.gov, there are 6,812,935,148 people alive today.  So if we assume an average of 2 people (parents) for every person alive today, then we’d only have to go through 1 generation of dead people to tip the scale to the dead people.  If the most common family dynamic is 2 kids per 2 family, then we’re almost at a stand still.  Thoughts?

Here’s a visual aid:

I don’t want it to be sad.  I’d hope that friends and family that know me well would throw up gang signs in jest at my funeral.  Maybe even going as far as pouring out some champagne on the floor.  If I died in an accident, I’d hope that someone would do an impression of me saying, “what the crap” or “that was ballz.”  Death hath no sting.  I wouldn’t want to be remembered for being a boring “stand up citizen” or a “good person.”  I’d want to be known as the guy who just wanted to have a good time, love people, explore, and be creative.  I’ve said a few times before, I’d love to be buried viking style; body set on a raft and then set on fire and pushed out to sea.  I’d be screwed if we could feel pain after death…but whatever.