Ball Licking-Man Research Opportunity

Was hard at work today when it I saw that FINALLY the smart people at Harvard (They gave us G.W. Bush, right?) were offering to hand me sacks full of money to contiue my research.

But hey, this might not work out so be sure to hit up the T-Shirt store on the side of the page. With your help we will find the missing link in the fossil record and I am pretty sure it will be the Ball Licking-Man

Science/Technology

Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology Initiative at Harvard University Invites Letters of Interest for Research Project Funding
Grants of $200,000 per year for up to two years are available for research projects designed to substantially advance fundamental questions in the context of evolutionary biology....

Posted on January 15, 2012
Deadline: January 31, 2012 (Letters of Interest)
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Two Weeks

It's been two weeks since my mother died. It is a miracle she survived for the past five years and every day was a blessing. See, Mom was a diabetic and she got gangrene and needed an amputation. But she also had a rash and "did not meet the criteria for surgery." So three Tulsa hospitals sent her home to die.

We didn't give up. I called a friend of mine who is a doctor in Oklahoma City and he had a team meet her in the ER at OU's Medical Center. They did not look for reasons to turn her away, but for ways to save her life. They succeeded.

I can fill the rest of this post with bitter and bittersweet stories of how universal insurance does not mean health care. I could share her painful last days. But instead, maybe I should tell you why she mattered.

Mom was a drunk. Nope, I am not exaggerating nor holding back. She was a drunk and she married a drunk and she hung out with a bunch of drunks. All of this creates a legacy I struggle to maintain and build upon.

My mother came to the realization she had a drinking problem while I was in high school. I always I suspect I had a bit to do with that realization when I verbally struck out one morning when I had myself been partying with friends all night. I never knew for sure, but it seemed as if shortly after that she entered Alcoholics Anonymous. Mom got sober and stayed. Like a lot of reformed drinkers, Mom got the religion to save others and she dedicated the reminder of her life to help others break addictions.

She was always dragging people home, and waking up to find her TV stolen and checking account wiped out. Mom found out not everybody who joins AA really wants to keep from drinking or using drugs! Her brothers like to say she had to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince. She did finally find that prince and he stayed by her side to the end, offering all the things she had wanted and missed out of in life. Together she and her reformed drunk husband joined with a few others and bought an old church and fixed it up for AA and NA meetings. Ending the need to track down meetings at various churches, city buildings or basements. That building allowed people to go to meetings in the small community twice a day seven days a week if they wanted.

Off of the power of that volume recovery sessions the local District Judge wrote for and got a grant to start up a drug court that has saved the lives of thousands of people. This program worked so well he wrote for a grant for a family drug court to help even more people. That worked so well he added a mental health court and wants to add a juvenile drug court! This judge and the Director of the mental health clinic claim none of those program would be able to succeed without that church that hosts all of those meetings every day. And that place was started by my Mom.

Several years ago she came to a community meeting I had started for service agencies in the area, and asked if we could help. The building was run as a corporation with a board of directors that make decisions on the use and maintenance of the building. All of the old guard that had bought the building and maintained the property were dying off. They were in danger of closing the doors. Several of the directors of those agencies and myself started attending meetings. I am the only one of the service agency people still attending and have been appointed to a board position that does not require a vote.

Since that time even my mother quit the program she started, due to health problems and the high level of tobacco smoke in the meeting rooms. She saw how stressed I grew working with the group and she urged me to leave several times, but like her, I saw the bigger picture, and somehow, without ever attending an AA meeting, I had caught her need to help save others. A legacy from her to me. Nothing tangible, nothing I can sell or trade or even take a picture of for others to marvel over. But a legacy that is bigger than ourselves.

One week ago there was a memorial service held at that old church. The room filled out with generations of people who testified that their life was changed for the better because my mother either helped them stop drinking and using drugs, or helped their children stop drinking and/or using drugs, or even a few who said they would not be alive today if it weren't for that old church that now hosts two meetings a day, seven days a week.

It has been two weeks and just typing this post my throat is constricted to the point I can barely breathe and once again I find tears leaking down my face. I will miss my mother. But her loss is greater to the world than it is just to me. In the final weeks of her life she was back in the hospital again. Her body was bloated from retained fluids that diminished her heart capacity to 10%. We learned later that was terminal condition. I went to visit her after work, as I tried to do every night I was in town. She had a smile and seemed more at ease. She told me a nurse had come in to check on her and noticed the AA charm on her bracelet and admitted she had a drinking problem but had stopped going to meetings because of her work schedule.

Had it been me, I think I would have asked for a new nurse and not the admitted drunk in the failed recovery program. But Mom pushed her laptop computer aside, sucked in a deep breath of oxygen so she could talk and asked the nurse when her break was scheduled. See, anytime two or more alcoholics get together they can have a meeting. That is how lives are saved, one at a time by somebody who is also recovering, still addicted and fighting the urge to relapse.

Thirty years since she stopped drinking and Mom was literally reaching out on her death bed to help HER caregiver find sobriety. That was my Mother. She died two weeks ago on Father's Day.

I have mAnswers

OK all you hot chicks that are always pissed off about stupid people ruining your life. It turns out there is a way to solve the problem and you are sitting on the solution right now baby! Oh yeah.

There was a study released back in 2007 where Scientists had noticed that brains seem to have retarded growth in bad stress situations. So they naturally started wondering what would happen if they exposed brains to the opposite stimulus, and created stressful situations that caused pleasure. The result was they compared mice they isolated to mice they pimped out for sex.

I am SOOOO happy to report that study findings show that sex makes your brain grow! Oh yeah baby! So if you are bothered by the bovine plodding of the pimply faced store clerks or the smelly old man who holds up the check out line while he searches for his double value coupons, you KNOW what you gotta do cowgirl!

The study also had another interesting find. Mice that had been exposed to sex not only had bigger brains than the virginal mice, they showed less anxiety. This was shown by the fact that sexed up mice would quickly go to new food when introduced wheres virginal mice were more timid and anxious. It has been suggested that the sexed up mice were more ravenous due to increased activity, but I suspect the male mice reasoned it out. I mean after hours of sexual activity they probably felt there was nothing left that they could put in their mouth that would hurt them now. Then again, I am not a scientist. Just a man with a computer and a thirst to share.

Empty Nest

It's an odd feeling. After 19 years of obsessing and hovering, nurturing, protecting and providing for the first born... she is suddenly gone. Not dead or anything tragic, in fact it is wonderful that she gets to do what she has prepared for all these years and start her college life. She secured funds and created a plan that will provide her a good professional education at a good school.

Yes the house is quiet and haunted by memories of a lifetime of her growing up. Daddy's little girl took her last trip in a little three hour drive to a new and exciting life that holds all the promise of a future that we parents have always targeted. But I look in her room and see the long line of nights at work or play, with friends and alone. The long, deep philosophical discussions of right and wrong, good and evil. All ghostly and faded memories of a little girl that no longer exists.

Every time I see her from now on she will be a newer, more grown up, more educated, more responsible adult. Carving out her independence as young adults should. As all parents hope their children will.

With a flash of painful realization I see that my parental drive to raise a capable, independent and self sufficient adult daughter means the most tragic pain of loss for a parent. Because by design of nature she is clawing and scraping to gain independence FROM ME! Just as I clawed and fought to be free of my dependence of my parents so many years ago. Every achievement now will not be a shared victory but another wedge driven solidly between us, separating the little girl that clung to my neck and smothered me in sweet kisses. At one point her mother and I made up her whole world. Now we are like the old playthings of her youth, left behind to collect dust in the back of the closet back home. Sure, she will always look back with love and fondness, but for a short shining time in her history I was the greatest man in the world. I don't know when that changed but I knew for certain the time was over when I left her at college and she hugged her mother, kissed her boyfriend and waived goodbye to her father.

Hukuna Matata Bitches

The Heat is ON

Mrs. Cris took the little furry dog for a haircut again. Usually the lil fella is so please he got pampered and trimmed and is so relieved he has lost all those pounds of fur and can see, hat he bounces all over the place in joy. Today he scooted to the front edge of the porch where he was hiding from the heat.

How hot was it? Well at one point I got in may can and noticed I couldn't touch anything! Not the steering wheel, not the center consol, not the dash. My on board temp reading was 114 degrees. The banks downtown said it was 107. In the peek heat I decided to walk a block over to a store. I was at the office doing some weekend work and thought the walk would do me good. The trip over was slightly downhill. The trip back was slightly uphill. I had no trouble going to the store but thought I might not make it back! It was HOT!

Hey did anybody else see the gay cell phone commercial? I mean I look up and see these guys that are so gay they make the Village People look understated. I am shocked at the marketing strategy. I was so shocked I keep asking why would they feature guy people?

Now we have a fairly non judgemental house. While I doubt if anybody is really successful, we try to not push prejudice onto our children... except towards lazy stupid people that refuse to work or think about financial responsibility. ...but I feel that is our job as parents, show them the real harms and dangers of life and hope they never see barriers like color, race, sex or orientation.

But these guys selling cell phones were like WAY gay! I mean gayer than Jack on Will and Grace gay! "So what's wrong with featuring gay people?" my son asks me.

"The message they are giving is it is a gay phone service," I explain. "That commercial is airing here in Oklahoma! Once that image sticks to the phone how many kids in your school would be cool if that was your cell phone service? Do you want to be the kid in school with the gay cell phone carrier?" The adds are bold and unapologetic about gay... to the point it's kind of "We're here, we're queer: Get used to it." That will not play well in the reddest state in Oklahoma. From a strict marketing view it is near corporate suicide to air that commercial in Oklahoma.

Good news... I bet there will be a few job opening as a result of that commercial. Bad news... you know the jobs wont be in Oklahoma.

Boy Story

So the boy comes bouncing into the room. This is a rarity as he usually only ventures out of his room to feed or beg for money. This time he tells me he has good news. His friend's mom came home early and said he could have company for the night after all. It is a Friday night, the end of summer vacation is looming before us like living with a terminal cancer patient.

Unfortunately for the boy I came home tonight and decided to dive into my favorite summer past time... my fruity gay drink. While I value my son's waning youth, in what he calls the final summer of his childhood: Next year he will be 16 and a licensed driver who has to work to pay for his underage 25 male insurance premiums as well as cash for gas and probably hookers. Thus he knows, his idle days of video gaming and sleeping til noon will have soon past him by, "Nope!" I stammer over my faded Eskimo Joe commemorative plastic cup of rum and Wal-Mart brand Koolaide. "That taxi ship has sailed. I am not getting out again tonight."

"But I wanna go to Jacobs!!"

"See if your sister will take you," was the first buck I tried to pass off. Then a thought occurred to me as I pictured my 18 year old daughter snuggled up in the other room watching movies with her boyfriend. "In fact, if you go in the other room and jump on the snuggle buddies and wiggle down between them... I'll give you a dollar!"

He looks at me with that sneer of adolescent morality and nicely asks his sister for help. "DO I OWE YOU A DOLLAR YET?!!" I yell out because I don't hear the screams of protest.

"No!" He shouts in reply. "I am not going to do that!"

My wife stirs next to me. She has fallen asleep while we watched Eureka. I don't know how she could, because I love that show! I tell her the boy needs a ride to his friend's house but I thought it best if I don't drive. Then I asked if she would be willing to take him. "Sure," she agrees in a tired mumble, "if I can just wake up."

Soon the boy wanders back into the den and slumps into the recliner. Defeated and dejected vibes radiate his sorrow into the room. "What did your sister say about taking you?"

"She said she would only do it if I gave her gas money," he said glumly. I knew he was penniless because he spent all of his summer money repairing his computer after he fried the motherboard last week.

"Well hey, I told you how you could make some money!" I encouraged.

"No I am not going to jump on them and wiggle in between them."

I wait. The silence builds. He begins to suspect his sorrowful broadcast is analog in a digital household when I happily tell him, "Hey Colin...? Mom says SHE will take you to your friend's house if you can wake her up first." Then I smiled as big and innocently at him as possible.

His eyes widened in surprise only to narrow in suspicion. "Wait... You're messing with me! You just want me to try to wake her up so she will be mad at me!"

"Colin!" I gasp in mock shock. "Why would I do that?! What could I possibly gain from that?!!" I always ask him this question when I am messing with him.

"You think it is funny when I get in trouble because you are mean!"

We sit in silence. He in shrouded in clouds of suspicion and me in what could only be called a shit eating grin. Finally I break the silence. "Hey Colin...? You know she really did say she would take you to your friend's house if you wake her up first."

"I don't believe you!"

"Colin...? Hey Colin...? You know what you need to do here?" OK so now I am laughing, I can't help it. This does not help sell my story and I really was being nice but he thinks I'm being mean... and I REALLY hate to disappoint my children. "What you need to do is decide what you want most. Do you want to go to your friend's house... OR do you want to believe I am playing a mean prank on you? Hmmmm Which is it Colin?"

He squirms and twists and you can see the battle play out across his face as he desperately needs to be with his friends. "Really? You would rather believe I am mean than try to go stay with your friend? REALLY?"

Just as he was about to break, my wife wakes up and ruins the game. She took him. He was happy. And best of all.... next time... when I really AM messing with him... He will never see it coming! BAHAHAHA

Protective Dad

We drove across the state as the sun went down. I drove the whole way in spite of the plan to allow my daughter to drive, so she would get used to finding her way through Oklahoma City. OKC is one of the largest cities in the nation in land mass and has some pretty dangerous driving where I-40 meets I-35. But it was about dark and there was no reason to take chances with my little girl at this stage of the game. Therefore I drove.

The next morning the college made the parents go to a different orientation session than the children, even though I felt I should be there when she enrolled in her classes. I do have a Master's Degree in Education and have spent more than a few hours deciding the best courses a person should take, but for some reason the college wouldn't allow that. I can only assume I will have to make corrections later.

The presentation is predictable and boring. I take care of business on my Blackberry that ranges from checking on the site-visit back at the office to dealing with the local bank. Then the Dean of Students took the stage.

I don't remember her name, she referred to herself as "Dean." She showed interest in the students on the stage and even the equipment they used in the presentation. Then she turned to face the assembled parents and with a look of concern asked how many were there with their first child?

Suddenly overcome with a wave of emotion at the "loss" of my baby girl that I have cherished and helicoptered around for the past two decades, I raised my hand with eyes brimming with tears. Be a freakin man, you big wuss! I silently screamed to myself as I struggled to NOT wipe away the drops welling around my lower eyelids. I glanced around nervously and saw there were a few other parents (yes, mostly the moms) who were openly weeping.

The Dean nodded her head as she surveyed the room, like she had seen this several times in her career. "Now," she said. "How many of you are here with your last child...?"

The room erupted into cheers and whoops of joy. An aged and broken looking couple even got up and began a little dance of joy. "Well you people need to stop trying to push those poor kids out of the house already! Sheesh! They know you intend to turn their rooms into the guest room or game room or whatever you plan... they know because some of you already have them sleeping in the laundry room! Quit it! They will be gone soon enough but they are NOT feeling the love at home, so scale back for a little bit longer."

Then she focused on first group of parents who went from tears of loss to amazement and shock at the other parents. "And you first timers take note... you need to let go. Your child will be fine. We have a long history of taking your life's work and turning them into the adults you always hoped they would become. Trust them and trust us... and back off!"

So now, a few days later I am reliving the words in my head and I can see maybe I was holding on a little too tight. I let her drive home.... well up to Oklahoma City and and then after we got through Oklahoma City. I griped and yelled and cussed at her so she would pay attention and stop texting and watch the road and the traffic. "This is important!" I told her as I dodged a semi moving into our lane without warning. "You will be making this trip all by yourself in two weeks when school starts. You are an adult now and you will have to do this on your own from now on."

Is it wrong that I only made sure she learned how to drive through Oklahoma City on the way back home? Maybe she will use that knowledge before Thanksgiving... you think?