bobberdilly.com

1/24/2009
Robert Joy

Yesterday was a crazy day. I was writing my daily letter to someone in the world. This one happened to be to Hannah Johnson from Bedford England. I had noted that she has this wonderful eye for detail. This wonderful knack of being able to recall the little things and to repeat conversations and thus create the most wonderful letters. I say “Letters” even thought I’ve only received one from her, but its because I’ve been to her blog. She writes the same way in there.

So…. Yesterday I decided to just make up the stuff I can’t recall. No this is not the result of some dementia or brain disease. This is deliberate. If I get a partial detail… I’m just going to make up my own ending. I’m going to elaborate if it needs elaborated on. I’m going to punch the bully in the face even if I faintly remember running away. I’m going to make up the little stuff and create the conversations. I’m just going to be everything thing I ever wanted to be or become or ever dreamed to be. I’m going to do this, became I’m immature as hell and I’m going to start acting that way. No more of this pretending to be grown up stuff. If anyone has an objection, they can take a flight with it. If anyone takes the notion to put me down or insult me… they’ll be bound to see their lives and names in print and everyone knows how far the internet can reach. I’m going to do this, because I’m sixty-five and I can do as I damned well please.

!/21/2009
Robert Joy

Any change would be an improvement.

I once read a book by the Russian Author Varlam Tikhonovich Shalomov. It’s name was “Kolyma Tales.” It was a series of short stories about that Russian author’s experiences in the Stalin Gulag camps on the Kolyma Pennisulia. Horrible freezing and starving conditions in the frozen Northern Siberia. One quote that stood out from that reading was this paraphrased version. “There comes a time when any change at all, is an improvement.”

That’s exactly my philosophy during the whole of the recent election. Frankly and honestly I was not as concerned with who was going to win the nominations and eventually the presidency as I was just replacing the current president. People thought I must be crazy. I was told that McCain would just be four more years of the same crap that’s been happening already. I was told that if I would vote for Hillary, it would just be a repeat of the “President Bill years. I kept telling them it really didn’t matter as long as there was a change… Any change. Nothing could be as bad as it was.

The only direction would be up. One can only go down so far and there just isn’t any more. The change maybe wouldn’t bring us up, but it wouldn’t, couldn’t get worse. That had to be an improvement, because it wouldn’t be George Bush that wasn’t doing the moving. My hope was… Maybe I could at least be able to look at the new president without getting embarrassed. Maybe the change in the face would be enough to satisfy me.

Then yesterday the most amazing thing happened. I turned on the television and I watched millions of Americans standing out in the cold waving a sea of American Flags. Tears came to my eyes. I haven’t seen America so happy and hopeful in years. I could see the old bounce come back. American’s had come out from under all that gloom and doom of potential terrorist acts that we could expect if we just let our guard down for second. Out from under all that rhetoric of the Axis of Evil and the Evil Doers and on and on and on. I could see America not as a frightened child any longer. I saw a country expressing something I though was lost under a blanket of fear. I saw courage!.

I’m a registered Republican. I’ve always been a Republican, but I haven’t always voted Republican… Simply because all the candidates haven’t pleased me. But of course that is my right and my freedom as an American. Then, yesterday the installation of Mr. Obama as our new president, made me feel like a proud American again. Even more that that! I feel like a Courageous American and the next time when I’m at a community concert and they call for the American Veterans to stand up… I’m going to be proud to do it for the first time in eight long years.

1/20/2009
Robert Joy

The world keeps turning, even if you’re sick and not paying attention.

I had a small bout with some bug for the past week, but I’m back and feeling pretty good. I was down for all the really cold weather and I missed out on the news from the middle east. The same old thing I’m told. Hamas gets some money and they make up a whole batch of new rockets instead of trying to help the people they have pledged to rule and care for. They set up the rockets and shoot the unguided things over the border while at the same time, praying to god for a magical guidance system to kill Israelis when they land and explode.

The rocket explodes in a open field and the Israelis respond with a dozen F-14’s or what ever aircraft they are provided with from our country and plaster the Gaza Strip with a carpet of thousand pound bombs with their usual overkill. Hamas fires back another barrage of unguided missiles… Maybe one might make a kill. The whole Gaza strip celebrates until the Israeli jets come back with double the load of over kill and it just goes on and one and on.

Eventually the causality numbers come out. The poor Palestinian’s get slaughtered with maybe eight hundred to a thousand dead. Hamas always claims around forty-five of its members killed. No one knows the real figure. The Israelis always predict a higher number of enemy killed, because to them, anyone found dead after a battle, just had to be a card carrying member of Hamas. There are a lot of babies carrying grenades for Hamas. It’s all just crazy!

The Israelis have less than a dozen dead and wounded, but they always claim to be the poor little victims in these exchanges. Hamas members dance in the streets shooting their rifles in the air claiming victory while everyone else is out trying find dead family members under the rubble of their former existence.

Of course… They have a cease-fire now and the Good-Ole Saudies have pledged a billion dollars to help clean up the mess… And of course, help Hamas restock its supply of unguided missiles, so it can do it all over again some day. Oh… I almost forgot… Our country will surely restock our good friends (The Over-Kill, top dogs that have no incentive to talk to anyone; the Israelis) with some new thousand pound smart bombs and Stealth fighters to deliver the death right off-target onto some poor little Gazian School. I’m just trying to make sense of all this needless crap, but its just the flow of life in it’s deadly version of “As the world turns!”

I’m not the best brusher, but I do make it a point to go to the dentist atleast twice a year for a good cleaning and this last summer I decided to change all that by brushing and flossing every day. For a while it was all great and then about two months ago I popped a filling out with the floss. I went to the dentist and they told me I’d been doing it all wrong. I got the tooth refilled. Well I wasn’t all that brave any longer so I just brushed my teeth. I was afraid to floss, but the filling came out any way. Well I got it put back in, but it fell out that very everning. The dentist said this tooth was a good candidate for a crown. I decided to to that and made an appointment. Then a tooth on the other side top of my mouth really flared up one evening when I drank a hot cup of tea. I had to take an aspirin to keep from dying. Of course it was the weekend and the dentist was closed. This was the first tooth ache I’d ever had in my life.

Finally I made it to the dentist with the aid of painkillers. They decided to Xray the tooth and it was found to be absessed. I had to take a large bottle of anti-biotic’s and come back in a week. In the meantime another filling fell out. I was beginning to wonder if I was just falling apart from old age.

Today I went into the dentist and had my tooth extracted. It didn’t hurt… Well until I got home and I guess it was from the shock of the whole thing, but I didn’t feel all that chipper. Now I have to go back in a couple of weeks and start on a bridge and then I still have to do the crown job. When will it all end? I guess I should have started getting serious about brushing sooner, and maybe all this would have been repaired and I wouldn’t have to go through it now.

Remember kiddies… don’t do this at home… I’m what they call… “An Expert!”

1/3/2009
Robert Joy The new soap opera, “Doing the wrong thing!”
(Allow me to clear up some of the confusion)

The Soap Opera continues: Another chapter unfolds in the Israeli/Palestinian feud. First, Hamas is under tremendous pressure to put it’s back to where it’s mouth has been for years. The Israeli’s have put the clamps down on those poor people in the Gaza Strip and those people want some relief. Well… Hamas in all its wisdom, could see it’s glamor starting to tarnish, so they decided to crank up the people’s admiration by getting them to focus on the evil Israelis across that concrete and barbed wire border.

Hamas takes out its new fresh supply of homemade unguided rockets and starts shooting them over the border at Israel. Now, normally this is a really stupid thing to do, but Hamas was desperate and it was the only trick in the bag and it worked like a dream. The Israelis went crazy and came back with bombs and as up to now, have killed some five hundred Palestinians, but The people of Gaza came swarming out in throngs to protest and throw rocks at Israel. “Bingo!” Then having done the wrong thing for what they thought was a right reason, Hamas has to respond to those horrible deadly air strikes by shooting more rockets.

Then Israel has to respond by doing the wrong thing by coming back again and bombing the hell out of everything in sight. This whole ordeal is nothing more than a deadly version of “As the world turns.” It goes on and on as one crisis feeds the next and nothing is ever resolved. It’s like the theory of the speed of light, Resolution can only be approached and maybe talked about, but never achieved.

Hamas is compelled do the wrong thing, because it doesn’t have fighter planes with giant bombs or tanks with giant cannon to go in and really screw things up. Every time one of its homemade unguided missiles come out and explodes in some open field the Israeli war machine is compelled to come back with it own familiar heavy handed response that does nothing, but again reinforce the resolve of the Palestinians people to resist and continue to do their wrong thing over and over.

It seems to be a trend lately in the Great Bend Tribune. A local Minister has discovered the opinion page of the Tribune as a platform to preach to the multitudes. The Good Reverend Swain is of the persuasion that he can simply start his sermon off with a “Dear Editor” and that makes his sermon into a candidate for the opinion section… and so far the newspaper has been allowing him to get away with it.

This is my opinion!

Dear Editor

Well, its time to start a new year. In this new year I’m going to propose that the people send in all their hard earned money and labor to form a new kind of church. A church so radical that the traditional preachers start scratching their heads in astonishment. So wonderful and new that the new congregation can all stand back and say to themselves, “Wow! What a great place to come on Sunday and get in a nice nap.” They would all have a nice restful time while a automated recorded message drones on and on about something or nothing, because no one will really care. Then after everyone has gone fast asleep from all the creature comforts around them, some automatic system could crank up a high octane air conditioner to the point where everyone has put on jackets and coats to keep themselves from hypothermia. Then, in the winter time; the system could be programed to crank up a furnace so hot everyone would start to praying earnestly for lunch time or even (“Wow”) a bit of salvation the first time in years.

Then the church’s automatic system could be programed hire a really good singer. Then the system would have the singer perched above the heads of the congregation like some sweet angel and would sing really nice popular stuff that causes everyone to cry and want to get up and dance and weep at the same time. Weeping in church… Wow that hasn’t happened in a long time! God forbid, I’d even start going to church myself.

I’d certainly encourage this new church’s elders to hire an automated preacher who’d be delighted to read secular opinions from the Great Bend Tribune and magazines such as “Mother Jones” every Sunday. There would be such a sigh of relief; I am so sure of this. The congregation would be so happy, that on Sunday instead of a sermon, sermonizing them on how bad and lazy they have become, they would hear real hard secular, conservative or liberal opinion. Maybe even the Great Bend Tribune would actually start putting some of it on their opinion page.

Just kidding!

Now this is just my opinion, (I hope this article shows up on the opinion page of the Tribune and not in the religious section) but I would bet people, not being sermonized by the newspaper opinion page over things that are not really opinion; would respond overwhelmingly, with joy and happiness at the privilige of being able to hear the good news of the lord straight from the lips of a real live breathing person of faith. And even better yet, from the pulpit in the front of the congregation.