Pressing Puzzles

Way back in an earlier posting, I wrote about music. This posting was music in general and some of the influences I had when it came to music, but I decided that one particular artist needed my full attention on my blog because he is very special to me. I must first preface by saying that I'm not a country music fan. There are very few country artists I can actually say I 'like'. Johnny Cash is one of those very few artists that really can't be placed in a certain musical category. Think about it, Johnny Cash is the only person to be inducted into 4 different music Halls Of Fame: The Song Writers (1977), The Country Music (1980), The Rock-n-Roll (1992) and The Gospel Music (2010)! To me, Johnny is more than just being in four Halls of Fame, it's the message and the music that really reached out to me like it did for millions of other people. I have to echo my sentiments when Justin Timberlake won the MTV award for best video over the video Johnny Cash made from...

Since the main holiday in July is our (USA) Independence Day, this got me thinking about why this is celebrated and are we really honoring what the holiday is supposed to mean? If you ask most people about July 4th, I'm sure most people will say that we're celebrating our freedom here in America, but I honestly tend to question the idea that America is actually 'free'. In the Avenger's movie, Loki describes freedom as "...life's great lie." where he believed that we (Americans) really didn't understand what freedom was supposed to be; to him "we were made to be ruled." If we are 'ruled' properly then we are 'free'. I know that sounds a bit twisted but remember this did come from Loki the god of mischief. Honestly, I've questioned a lot about my self-discovery of Asperger's was freeing for me. I think finally getting an answer to what I'd questioned for many years from my childhood to adulthood is freeing in ...

I want to let you know right away that I'm NOT saying that my Asperger's is a disease nor am I going to try to gross you out, but this is a topic that has come up way too many times in my life very recently. A couple of times this year (2015) I have been getting MRSA or a staph infection. If you’re not sure what this is here is what the Mayo Clinic says: " Staph infections are caused by staphylococcus bacteria, types of germs commonly found on the skin or in the nose of even healthy individuals. Most of the time, these bacteria cause no problems or result in relatively minor skin infections.   But staph infections can turn deadly if the bacteria invade deeper into your body, entering your bloodstream, joints, bones, lungs or heart. A growing number of otherwise healthy people are developing life-threatening staph infections.  Treatment usually involves antibiotics and drainage of the infected area. However, some staph infections no longer respond to common antibiotics. ...

As you may know, I am a bit of a history buff and two things happened in sports very recently that hasn't been seen for a few decades and others a full century. I'm not too crazy on horse racing, but I couldn't help to be captivated by the three major horse races that happen every year since they started back in 1875: The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. If a horse can win all three races then they accomplish a rare feat of winning the Triple Crown. Since I do have Asperger's, number and odd facts are things I can really get into because of the logic that is involved. The last winner was a horse named 'Affirmed' back in 1978. There have only been 12 horses that have ever won all three races and that twelfth horse was American Pharoah. I realize that I misspelled "Pharoah" because when the name for the horse was turned in, the name was misspelled and it stuck. In 1978, I was only about nine-years-old when the last horse ...

When I was younger, I was always curious about the concept of a person going through a 'mid-life crisis'. Many times, I would watch a television show where a married man would cheat on his wife and he would give the excuse that he had sex with another woman because he was going through a mid-life crisis. I was actually a little scared and unnerved about the idea that I might go through one myself when I got older. (Remember folks, I do have Asperger's.) I've actually seen other things adults would do during their 'crisis' like hanging out with much younger adults, doing crazy stunts, or just trying to tap into anything that might make them feel younger like when I see actors who divorce their spouses for a much younger person. I feel like I've hit that point, but not in any of the examples I mentioned. As I write this, I'm currently 45 years old and I've come to the plateau in my career to which some critical decisions need to be made. A real mi...

I realize that rebuke tends to be a more biblical term, but it can reach much further than a simple reference in the Bible. I learned an interesting lesson about rebuking, it's not as easy as it seems. Webster's Dictionary defines rebuke as   " to speak in an angry and critical way to (someone) " I can see how and why the dictionary defined it as such, but I feel like the dictionary didn't quite get this word properly defined. I would almost say this this definition is meant for 'chastising' than 'rebuking'. I would define rebuking as 'a method of correcting one's decisions in a critical manner.' Anger is involved but, not in the way the definition uses it.  I can recall on many occasions when I was rebuke quite often from people that are close to me. The big problem with Asperger's is even though a friend or family member might warn me about something that I did wrong; there are times when I'll do it again. Thus, I would b...

I have discussed my favorite superheroes in a previous entry, but the character Popeye took on a whole different meaning in my life. I had always thought I was a little different ever since I was a child, but trying to relate to characters off of what I had watched on television was rather difficult. The characters were either funny and silly or strong and brave, but there really wasn't a character that seemed to take on a more 'humanized' form and still capture the oddities of what I was like as a kid. All of that changed for me when I got exposed to "Popeye the Sailor Man" on T.V. because my newspaper didn't run Popeye in the comics so this was the first time I was introduced to his universe. For the first time, I got to see a character that did look stranger than the other characters on the show. Many times Popeye was not always 'included' within the circles that Popeye called his "friends". Popeye seemed to have a hard time communica...