MEETINGS: A HORRIFYING glimpse of eternity's downside!

By Joseph Walther

In the fields of Astrophysics, Astronomy, and Cosmology, TIME is the result of an entropic process: the flow of energy from where there is more of it to where there is less of it. The process began with the Big Bang.

This gets complicated. I don’t want to talk about here because, as it does to me, it will only give you a headache.

However, another term we hear people speak of is ETERNITY. The God people tell us that if we live righteous lives, we’ll spend it in a place called Heaven basking in a state of absolute ecstasy with God.

In this case, eternity is probably a good thing, especially if there is free Internet access and unlimited cell phone minutes.

Those same people also tell us that if we don’t live righteous lives… you know, having too many “dirty” thoughts and such, we’ll spend eternity in a place called Hell, burning, under the supervision of a dude called the “devil,” in fires of unspeakable agony.

In this case, eternity is a BAD thing even with free Internet access and unlimited cell phone minutes.

Look, I’m a scientist. While either or both of these outomes may be true, I can’t find a anything in our legitimate, natural law-oriented scientific data banks to support the existence of either of them.

So, I’m not going to discount them out of hand. I’ll just leave it all for the philosophers to sort out. On the other hand, I think I have some absolute worldly proof that eternity IS real AND that we may NOT want to experience it.

While eternity, in the scientific sense, is a difficult concept to get our frail, human arms around, certain human endeavors bring its meaning into much clearer focus.

Watching Cricket matches, listening to boring speeches, and attending “business” meetings are examples of such endeavors. In addition to their seemingly endless nature, they also demonstrate the very essence of the concept of HELL!

I voluntarily sat through a Cricket match in England. Human society should reserve this kind of punishment for only the vilest of sociopaths. It would render the need for fire moot.

I once found myself trapped in a room with a former colleague. She was in the third hour of a five-minute “talk.” I couldn’t get out of the room—at least not inconspicuously.

She went on and on for another two hours about… something, but I’m not sure what it was. The fires of Hell would have been a welcomed reprieve.

Yes, even though these things, at least in my mind, give us a much more practical glimpse of “eternity” and what Hell must be like, nothing drives the point home like business MEETINGS.

I’ve attended many of them. I’m sure that some of them are still in progress. If it were not for pager and cell phone technology, I’d still be there, too.

In over forty-years of professional experience, I think I attended the absolute worst one two weeks ago in a Superior Court conference room in Maryland. It was horrible. Thoughts of suicide began to permeate my mind.

A young man from the Information Technology department conducted the meeting—let’s call him Satan’s Helper (SH for short). His business card showed a title of Security Supervisor.

He handed out a highly technical 4-page memo that he had written in which he described the IT group’s security concerns over public online access to criminal case disposition.

I’m no technical neophyte—especially when it comes to computer security. I’ve trained police agencies at the federal, state, and local levels in matters of computer security.

In fact, I’ve managed to get out of jury duty on a few occasions simply because some defense attorney thought I was too chummy with the cops. I’ve lost count of the number of courtroom sidebars in which I participated just to convince various presiding judges of my testimonial objectivity.

In addition to SH and me, five other people attended the meeting. I assure you that those five people were completely lost after the introductory paragraph of the memo.

Beginning with the second paragraph, SH used 19-acronyms, half of which I never heard before. I’m still researching some of them. I think he just made them up to impress the non-technical mortals in attendance.

Still, the technical stuff didn’t drain my enthusiasm for the stated purpose of the meeting; even though the others were sound asleep after the first 15-minutes of the meeting’s beginning.

To their credit, though, like all competent meeting attendee pros, their eyes remained open without the slightest hint of glaze-over, an essential survival skill in the business world.

However, the thing that intrigued me the most was how SH managed to remain a department supervisor. Technical savvy notwithstanding, the ability to write in complete, cohesive sentences using proper spelling and at least a modicum of syntactical mastery is also required. At least it used to be.

I counted twenty-three occurrences of the word, “their.” He spelled it incorrectly as “thier” each time. So, it was not a simple typo. I concluded that SH simply did not know how to spell “t-h-e-i-r.”

In the third paragraph, fourth sentence of the memo, SH wrote; “Each time that a computer tech sees unincripted personel information on the web, thier bloodpressure goes off the scale.”

These were SH’s words, exactly as written and in complete contextual perspective. With all due respect to SH’s technical expertise, the memo presented undeniable evidence of a serious affective shortfall.

Anyone having achieved 8^th grade grammatical competency would be able to see that spelling is not SH’s only faux pas. Apparently, he was absent from school the day that a competent teacher covered pronoun/antecedent numerical agreement.

The litany of grammatical felonies made me wonder whether SH, himself, reported to an operational manager. If so, did the manager simply fail to read the memo or did the manager simply fail to recognize SH’s errors as such?

I’m still researching this. If it’s a case of the former, shame on the manager. If it’s a matter of the latter, however, it explains many of the problems with our criminal justice system.

Anyway, the meeting went on for two and a half hours without a single break. This comes to 150-minutes or 9,000 seconds. What did we accomplish after this “eternity-like” interval?

NOTHING! Unless, of course, you consider an agreement to “revisit” the matter in 30-days some sort of a positive outcome.

Here’s my take. On average, in the United States, we live about 78-years. Some live longer life spans and some live shorter ones—much shorter some of the time. But, I’m talking averages here.

If you get to live the entire average of 78-years, it breaks down to about 28,489 days, or 683,729 hours, or 41,023,756 minutes, or close to 2.5 BILLION seconds.

I’ve lived 66-years. If I make it to the average life span, I’m already down to my last 378,680,832 seconds and I am not going to waste a single one of them on any more of this kind of crap.

Have a great week. Stay safe unless, of course, you’d like to find out if “eternity,” good or bad, is all it’s cracked up to be. And, oh yes, God, if you’re out there, please don’t let the readers find too many grammatical screw-ups in this article.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

Somtimes we have to be serious.

By Joseph Walther

I ran into an old friend last week. We talked for several hours. It brought back so many incredible memories for both of us. She had recently lost her adult son to cancer and was afraid that she was about to lose her adult daughter to a serious surgical procedure. The doctors put the daughter’s odds of survival at “7 in 10” chances.

My children are grown and out of the house into successful careers of their own. They’re incredible people and I couldn’t be prouder of them. The mere thought of either of them dying before I do, sends horrible chills down my spine. Both of them dying before me is simply too much for me to think about.

Sometimes, when people we care about are hurting, the only thing we can do is simply help them to cry. There is no consolation for a mother who has lost a son to cancer—even an adult son. And, how horrible and helpless she must feel at the prospect of losing her daughter—even an adult daughter.

When my children reached their teens, there were times when I felt like a second-class citizen. At times, I didn’t even think my children knew I was around for anything other than paying the bills and getting them to their appointed places on time.

I was in a real funk one week-end and a woman friend of mine—she was a nun (Sisters of St. Joseph) at the time, handed me a written piece titled, I’m Invisible.

I don’t know who wrote it, but I’m sharing it with all of you. Here it is in its entirety. Even though it was written for moms, I think it an appropriate piece for loving dads, also!

I’m Invisible

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.

Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you see I'm on the phone?" Obviously not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, "What time is it?" I'm a satellite guide to answer, "What number is the Disney Channel?" I'm a car to order, "Right around 5:30, please."

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude—but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again.

She's going ... she's going ... she's gone!

One night, a group of us was having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in.

I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it.

I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.

I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:"To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."

In the days ahead I would read—no, devour—the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:

• · No one can say who built the great cathedrals—we have no record of their names.
• · These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
• · They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
• · The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam.

He was puzzled and asked the man, "Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it."

And, the workman replied, "Because God sees."

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.

No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become."

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table."

That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, "You're gonna love it there."

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

I am their father, not their mother, but I love my children with every bit of the same fervor…more than my own life. I would spare no amount of effort to make sure they remain healthy and outlive me.

I didn’t build these two cathedrals singlehandedly, but I was a working partner in their construction. They have turned out to be fantastic people. To me they are my emissaries to a time I will not see.

Even though my friend knows that I’m here for her, I know that all I can do is put my arms around her and help her to cry.

But, here’s the REAL tragedy. Whenever children precede their parents in death, it cancels out their emissary mission. And, there is no telling the potential loss to the human race.

Have a great week. I’ll be back next week. If I can remember to do it, I’ll tell you about that meeting I spoke of last week.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

Sex in the cafeteria... not to mention some OTHER stuff!

By Joseph Walther

I use a standard definition for “work.” I define it as anything I’d rather NOT be doing. As such, I’ve always earned my living, NOT by working but rather though the pursuit of my life’s passion. In such pursuits, I’ve never worked a day in my life.

Even though I’ve been long retired, my passion for scientific and legal research has yet to wane. I still do it, only now I do it on a voluntary basis for people who appreciate the effort.

The upside is that I can PICK my research projects, publish my findings and to hell with the nay-saying bureaucrats. And, the downside? I haven’t found one yet. But I have to admit that I have not looked very hard… not at all, actually.

I currently have three big projects going right now. The most interesting one, however, involves the criminal justice system, the courts, and the judges who preside over criminal cases.

It takes me into numerous courtrooms throughout the United States. However, as interesting as this is, I’ve come to realize that some of the most interesting stuff does NOT happen in the courtrooms, but rather in the courthouse cafeterias.

This past week I was in a courthouse in Ocean City, Maryland. The trial I was involved with had recessed for the day due to some legal technicalities. It was close to lunchtime, so I went to the cafeteria to get a bite to eat before leaving for the day.

I was seated at a small table—a two seater—located next to a larger, five seater table. About a minute later two people sat at the larger table. Both were courthouse employees. I could tell this from their conversation. They had brought their own lunches.

They tell us that opposites attract. These two were about as opposite as it gets in terms of physical attributes, but almost identical in terms of their emotional IQs.

One of them, a woman… 50ish or so… worked directly for one of the judges. Her lunch consisted of nothing more than a couple of slices of individually wrapped Kraft American cheese, one slice of whole wheat bread (dry), a pear, and a bottle of water.

The other diner was a man in his early 40s, about five-feet, six-inches tall. He had to weigh 350 pounds—MINIMUM. He pulled HIS lunch out of a full-sized shopping bag.

The first item he pulled from the bag turned out to be a large (VERY LARGE) ham and cheese submarine sandwich wrapped in oil-stained white wrapping paper. It looked large enough to feed two people.

The oil literally dripped from its end each time he picked it up. There were mounds of ham and cheese, enough to provide an average eater with ham and cheese sandwiches for about 5-days.

After removing the sub from the shopping bag and opening it, he then took out a large bag of Herr’s potato chips, popped it open, and poured its entire contents onto the oil-stained paper wrapper next to that huge, oil-oozing submarine sandwich.

Next, he removed TWO chocolate covered éclairs from Dunkin Donuts. But thankfully—and I’m sure it was out of concern for his own health—the last item from the bag was… get this, a 16oz bottle of DIET Pepsi.

I suspected that the woman had some serious physical problems. She was… shall we say petite. Actually, she looked horribly frail. But, the sparseness of her lunch didn’t get my attention nearly as much as her incessant whining over the dishonesty of the human species.

It seems that she had fallen victim to a street scam-artist. She had driven “into” Delaware for some reason. On returning home, she had stopped at a 7-Eleven store. A man approached her as she got out of her car.

Having shown her a Powerball ticket and claiming that it was a $20 winner, he told her that he was about to miss his bus and lose his job. He needed $5 for round trip bus fare but didn’t have time to wait in line to redeem the ticket.

He offered her his 20-dollar “winner” in exchange for 10-dollars from her, further explaining that all she’d have to do was wait a few minutes in line and cash it in. REALLY. She fell for it. You can’t make this stuff up!

She gave him a 10-dollar bill. He gave her the ticket and took off toward the bus stop on the other side of the highway. She went into the store and stood in line for about 5-mnutes to “cash it in.”

Try to guess what happened next. Give up? OK, it was bogus! The ticket was a real Powerball ticket, but it was worthless. NOT A WINNER… not even a free ticket! And, the guy was nowhere to be found. Can you imagine?

Now, I don’t know this woman. I certainly can’t claim any factual knowledge as to the status of her IQ. So I’m not going to write any pointed wise cracks pertaining to her specific intellectual capabilities.

On the other hand, even idiots are capable of devoting a neuron or two to common sense—albeit all too infrequently. Even the truly intellectually gifted in our midst often add to the robustness of a long-standing theory of mine: that greed often short-circuits intellect.

The greed factor can reduce the most intelligent among us to babbling morons. This woman proved that, once again, nothing seems to define humans better than an uncontrollable compulsion to do the irrational hoping for monumentally unlikely payoffs.

Now that I think back on it, perhaps the meagerness of her lunch had nothing to do with the dictates of a physical condition. Maybe it’s all she could afford to buy!

The overweight dude, in the mean time, kept lamenting about how “mad” his doctor was going to be at his next scheduled visit in two days. He really did not appear to see even a slight correlation among his diet, his weight, his blood pressure, and his love life.

His love life entered the conversation when he voiced a serious concern over the likelihood of his girl friend dumping him.

As in the case of his lunch partner, I don’t know this man or the status of a possible uncontrollable physical condition that may be contributing to the largeness of his mass. So I won’t make any pointed wise cracks about him, specifically.

In general though, negative health consequences notwithstanding, once people—males and females—permit food to replace sex in their lives, they should not be shocked when they awake one day to find that they can’t get into their own pants, let alone someone else’s.

I’ve learned that there are incredible stories lurking within the confines of our nation’s courthouse cafeterias. Often, the diners therein relate things about their own lives that make some of the drama in the courtrooms pale in comparison.

Be ever vigilant! There’s danger out there and nothing is more dangerous to our species than the ever-present pitfalls reaped upon us by well-intentioned but extremely determined resourceful idiots.

Speaking of which, I attended a meeting late last week in Harrisburg, PA—in one of the Supreme Court conference rooms. It was a classic! I swear that the attendees—all lower-level judicial support personnel—came right out of a Dilbert cartoon strip!

I won’t be naming names, but I can’t wait to tell you about that one. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, let me just tell you that my experience at that meeting intensified, EXPONENTIALLY, my empathy for judges… even the wrist slappers.

Anyway, watch those Powerball tickets, and if needed, lose a few pounds. You might… you know, get lucky! As for me, I’m going to go get a large ham and cheese sub with extra oil! Too much sex isn’t good for you, either… know what I mean?

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

Watch the flip-flopping. I own a gun!

By Joseph Walther

I’ve been out of town—in Washington, DC, actually. Upon my return, I learned that the word on the street is that Obama’s been flip-flopping on some stuff. I’ll get back to this in just a few minutes.

By now everyone, other than those in a coma, knows about the Supreme Court’s two most recent landmark decisions. The first: We can’t execute people who rape children. The second: As citizens, we have a right to own guns, not just as part of a militia but as individual citizens.

Observing the intra-workings of the United States Supreme Court is a process to behold. While I’m not sure that “collegial” is a fitting description, I’m positive that “lovey-dovey” is NOT.

These two issues resulted in an unprecedented inflow of amicus (friend of the court) briefs. You don’t have to be a practicing attorney at law to submit one, either. Anyone with sufficient procedural knowledge may submit an amicus brief.

By the time these rulings came down, each justice had read a 60-page advocacy/petitioner brief, a 60-page respondent brief, a reply brief of between 40- and 50-pages, plus as many amicus briefs (40-pages each… at a minimum) as their nerves and stomachs could stand.

Still, it took several hours to scrape Justice Ginsberg off her chambers ceiling after the gun ownership ruling and she only weighs about 90-pounds… fully clothed and soaking wet.

And, as I write this, parts of Justice Scalia are STILL stuck to his chambers ceiling as the result of the child rape ruling. Of course, that vision is much more compelling because he’s such a porker compared to Justice Ginsberg, not to mention much more scathing and animated.

As always, we’ll all survive these rulings regardless of our respective positions. Just the same, I’m in the process of gathering research data for an article I intend to post in a few weeks.

I’ve written many times that I’m indifferent to the imposition of a death penalty. As long as its use meets Constitutional muster, execute away!

However, as far as I’m concerned, the only LOGICAL reason for executing people convicted of capital murder is to decrease recidivism. Such people, once executed, do not murder again.

On the other hand, while child rape is a crime that is despicable beyond description, I think we need to exercise due caution relative to expanding reasons for executing people. I’ll give more detail on this in that later article I referenced above.

As for our individual right to own guns, I agree wholeheartedly. But I think that we need to have a full understanding of what the Court ruled, though.

Contrary to much of what I’ve heard from most Wyatt Earp wannabes, the Court did NOT rule that we ALL, as U. S. citizens, have a right to own guns. It ruled that government—at ALL levels—does NOT have the authority to ban, outright, gun ownership rights for the general population.

Government still has the authority to restrict gun ownership for those who are no longer legally eligible, such as convicted felons, those legitimately declared to be psychiatric “nut” jobs, and others residing within the realm of similar circumstances.

Again, I think it an extremely dangerous form of naiveté for people to think that outlawing gun ownership will eliminate guns as a major societal danger. The only thing this does is make it impossible for law-abiding people to protect themselves and their families.

OK, now back to the matter of Obama and his flip-flopping ways. First, understand that Obama’s not the only one doing it. McCain’s doing it, too. In fact, ALL politicians do it.

It’s been standard operating procedure since our break with King George for politicians to create massive problems and then campaign against them. In this respect, McCain’s 30-plus years in Congress has given Obama a lot more to campaign against than Obama’s less than 7-years have given McCain to campaign against!

Here are a few items I think we all need to take into account relative to Senators Obama and McCain and their final dash for the Oval Office finish line.

There is no comparison between running a campaign for a PARTY’S nomination and running one for the “GOLD.” We, the electorate, possess the wonderful luxury of pontificating about our moral indignation over what we consider as “flip-flopping” on issues. On the other hand, the candidates must be more discerning.

To quote the late Ronald Reagan, “I can’t do anything for you if I don’t ‘get’ elected.” He was stumping in Harlem at the time he said it, too. I was there and still have the digitized recording.

Unfortunately, in order to “get” elected, the candidates must appeal to the electorate’s lowest common denominator. As such, Obama can no longer afford to be an impractical optimist nor can McCain any longer afford to be, even perceptually, an “in your face” maverick.

For Obama, it’s private campaign funding instead of his promised public campaign financing. Call it flip-flopping all you want, but it shows he’s no fool.

Either can he afford to remain indifferent to Muslim associations—real or otherwise. As it is, he has an uphill battle convincing well over 25% of the electorate that he’s NOT a Muslim.

He’s going to flip-flop on other stuff, too, before it’s all over. So will McCain. It’s going to be very interesting watching things unfold.

For McCain, he has to get the Neo-Conservatives back in his corner and reestablish himself with the God people. As such, he’s NOW in FAVOR of making the Bush tax cuts permanent; he’s NOW in FAVOR of overturning Roe v. Wade, both of which he adamantly opposed back in his good old “up yours“ maverick days.

In an attempt to atone for his prior Conservative blasphemous utterances advocating amnesty for illegal immigrants, he now seems ready to demand their immediate deportation, if not their execution.

And he now thinks offshore drilling for oil—including Alaska—is a “swell” idea. It does not matter that even if we began the drilling in the next 5-minutes, it would be at least 15-years before we’d see any of the oil.

The real flip-flopping has just begun. I look forward to this election year with unprecedented enthusiasm. Even so, I don’t think much will change no matter which of the two wins in November.

The key to both candidates’ successes will be the manner in which they address their particular reassessments (meaning flip-flops). I think Obama’s demonstrated willingness to admit mistakes will help more than hurt him.

However, assuming nothing bombastic happens, I think Obama will win the popular vote—not by a landslide by any means—but he’ll win it nevertheless.

He’ll do it simply because I don’t think the average Conservative (not the Neo-Conservatives) has any idea of how much irreparable damage George W. Bush has done to the Republican Party at the national level.

Although… I keep forgetting the Democrats’ uncanny ability to snatch defeat right out of the sure arms of victory. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, not to mention John Dean, scare the daylights out of me and I doubt that I’m alone in my concerns.

Yes, it’s going to be interesting to say the least. Back at you all next week. I hope your holiday was fun and safe.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.