The Main Point by Michael Main

Saturday, April 03, 2004

HAIR BRAINED SCHEMES

Amy has a certain code phrase she uses on occasion. Actually it's not really code, it's a blunt statement: "Michael, if you do that I will divorce you."

It's not as harsh as it sounds. In fact I'm the one who told her to say it.

She has a standing order to repeat that phrase, at the top of her lungs if need be, anytime I attempt some household chore for which I am obviously unqualified. This means all plumbing jobs, carpentry, car repairs, anything involving power tools or open flames. In truth my household do-it-yourself skills are limited to changing light bulbs...and if the bulbs are halogen I still might require supervision.

Amy was having a rough day today. The home health care nurse came by twice to draw blood. The fatigue of being sick for so long, being hooked up to an IV antibiotic again, still being tethered to a feedbag, etc. had her emotions on edge. She dropped a teacup in the kitchen, shattering it on the floor. There was hot water everywhere, and tears in her eyes.

She decided to simply lie down and try to put this day behind her.

Being the thoughtful, loving husband I am, I decided this would be the perfect time to give myself a haircut.

Amy has cut my hair for the past year or two, usually under protest.

I'm not picky about how it's done. Amy uses the dog shears and lops it off. She does a good job of making it look even all the way around.

She may not like it, but I'm completely satisfied.

I've learned over the years that my hair comes back even faster than my bad habits.

Tonight though, I figured since Amy was feeling lousy, I'd do the hair cutting myself.

How hard could it be?

This plan had some merit when I was dealing with the front of my head. I trimmed a little with the scissors and then pulled out the shears. I cut it a little close on the sides, but I figured that was no big deal. My accuracy improved slightly towards the top of my head, but then the flaw in my thinking became all too apparent.

It didn't take many attempts before I had to admit I don't bend in a manner allowing me to cut the hair on the back of my head. Were this not true perhaps I might have a career in a carnival sideshow somewhere, but alas as I stared in the mirror I realized it was indisputable.

Leering back at me from the mirror was the visage of a man who could easily be mistaken for someone undergoing radiation treatments while still vainly attempting to grow a mullet.

It was frightening.

What's worse is I was forced to stick that same scary looking head out the door and plead for help from Amy who was half dozing on the couch, blissfully unaware of my antics.

Suffice it to say there were some disapproving looks. To put it mildly there were some comments of disbelief and chastisement.

There wasn't much I could do to blunt her criticism. It's not like there are any other potential barbers in the house.

Despite her obvious anger, Amy lopped off the rest of my hair.

As far as I'm concerned it turned out fine; Amy thinks I look like a death row inmate ready to be strapped down and fitted with electrodes.

I really don't think it's that bad, for the first haircut I've ever given myself.

And the last...if I want to avoid divorce court.

KEEPING IT REAL

Conversation with Tiffany, my eldest stepdaughter, this evening.

Tiffany, "Aren't you thankful you missed out on the really early years with us. Dirty diapers, crying kids in the middle of the night, and all that?"

Me, "In all honesty, oftentimes yes. But truthfully, considering my parenting skills and the way I was back then, you should be just as thankful...if not more so."

Friday, April 02, 2004

LISTENING FOR BUTTER FINGERS

Twice a day I give a pill to our special needs dog, Winston. It's an anti-depressant - the generic form of Elavil. We've had him on it for 3 and a half months - a couple of weeks ago, on the vet's advice, we doubled the dose. He's still a loony dog, but in all honesty, Winston does seem happier. He likes to be petted a little more. He doesn't sit still very often, but he will occasionally lie at my feet as I type - as long as I reach down quite often and rub his belly.

He wags his tail all the time, and challenges Amy and me not to smile at him as he hunches down and gives us his own unusual blend of part bark, part howl, tempered by an underlying baseline of something akin to a half hearted guttural growl.

Of course, he still howls at things only he sees and barks at the dark, but what can we expect from generic pharmaceuticals?

Whenever I prepare Winston's pills, Klondike - our aging dog who has the run of the house -saunters into the kitchen. I mean every time I touch that particular pill bottle.

It's literally a Pavlovian thing. Klondike has learned that when I give Winston his pill, I coat the pill in butter in order to avoid an unsightly struggle where I try to shove a pill down Winston's throat. It's a battle which invariably results in me thinking I've won only to spy a soggy pill sitting at Winston's paws as he looks up at me with a countenance of confusion. Then I try again...and again until I finally manage to cram the tiny pill down the tiny dog's pie hole or the pill dissolves in canine saliva and I give up.

I've found the butter approach is much easier and since medicated or not, Winston is a little dim, he thus far hasn't caught on to the devious nature of it. He'll almost always swallow the pill if I coat it in butter.

In Klondike's mind, these are not a medicinal moments. Pills and butter equal treat time! He knows our home adheres to a certain form of socialism when it comes to dog treats. All dogs get whatever the others get...sans the pill.

It's amazing how acute Klondike's sense of hearing is, he can distinguish when I've touched that one particular pill bottle. I don't lead that exciting of a life, so I've tested him repeatedly. During my Lenten fast I've thought it prudent to take several vitamins each morning - Klondike never budges when I touch those pill bottles. I've gone so far as to try to find pill bottles of Amy's that are similar in size and content to Winston's and shake them. Klondike doesn't even perk up an ear.

But as soon as I touch Winston's pill bottle, Klondike heads to the kitchen. He's even heard me from outside the house, and quickly come over to sliding glass doors to peer through the dog snot and scratch marks while knowingly wagging his tail in anticipation.

The pills may be intended to improve the functioning of Winston's pea sized brain, but Klondike wants to make sure I also remember to butter a finger for him..

I'm nearly deaf in one ear thanks to a repeatedly blown eardrum. Even without that small impairment, I could never hear as well as Klondike.

Whenever I go through this ritual with the dogs though I try to remember how important it is to keep my ears, my mind and my heart open - for when I do, I too receive treats...for my spirit ...for my soul.

Proverbs 23:19

Listen, my son, and be wise, and keep your heart on the right path.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

APRIL FOOLS

Being in radio, I've witnessed a number of attempts at broadcast April Fools day jokes. Most of the time, although some folks fell for them, I thought the jokes themselves were fairly lame.

None certainly compares with what I, and many others, consider to be the greatest broadcast April fools day joke of all time - The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest.

It was done in 1957 (the year I was born, but we needn't dwell on that coincidence) by the BBC.

If you have Real Player on your computer you can actually watch the broadcast via this site.

P.S. Happy Birthday Lisa Davis! You've been a major blessing to your sister and to me...and that's no joke!

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

WELCOMED AND OVERWHELMED

Psalm 63:2-3

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

It's been hectic...it's been good.

I'm overwhelmed.

The Waco job, which was going to start Monday, was fast tracked this afternoon. I start tomorrow.
I was sort of hoping to have the weekend to adjust my sleep schedule a little, but daylight saving time hits Sunday anyway and that always messes up my internal clock...might as well dive right in.

I really have been in a daze for a week as these new opportunities have literally been tossed into my lap. I know it's taken some stress off Amy and her worries about money. That may be the best medicine she's gotten in some time. Despite a lingering infection and the added wearisome need for I.V. antibiotics, she had two good days in a row this week, the most she's had since January. I can't help but believe knowing our cash flow is going to increase played a role in that.

I also have to admit the job stuff has been an ego boost of sorts too. I really haven't competed for a job - with the exception of a brief fling with the concept of abandoning our sanity and running away to a somewhat ill defined low paying position at a Christian college in Ohio last year- in 20 years. A little validation apparently goes a long way.

The new opportunities, the money, the small signs of health improvements, and the ego boost are all good things...but that's not what has overwhelmed me.

I was struck by it this afternoon while walking - a heavy sense of the presence of prayer. I know that friends, family, and complete strangers have been praying for us for some time, but in these past two days I have literally felt it: the energy of hope.

I am convinced our fortunes are turning, but no matter what lies ahead, for today at least the burdens seem lighter.

It's been invigorating.

It's been humbling.

I'm thankful.

I'm blessed.

I'm overwhelmed.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

THE GLORIOUS APPEARING

The title of the final "Left Behind" series book out today is The Glorious Appearing. Yes, I actually purchased it today.

But that's not what this post is about...I'm already a self-confessed Left Behinder.

The glorious appearing I'm talking about is the job in Waco. The job I was certain I didn't get.

On a whim this morning I sent a polite email to the folks at WACO-FM saying since I hadn't heard from them I assumed they had made another hire, but I appreciated the opportunity. They emailed me back immediately saying no decision had been made, except to narrow the list of candidates from 35 to 4. I was in the final four.

I took that as a good sign, since San Antonio is hosting the NCAA Final Four by the way.

Moments ago, the morning team called and hired me.

Call it the glorious reappearing job.

God is good and it's a good day.

Monday, March 29, 2004

DICK CLARKE AMERICAN GRANDSTAND

If you have no interest in the latest political blatherings, and I suspect that's probably true of most folks, this post is something you can skip. However if you're caught up in all the latest fingerpointing in Washington and trying to keep score, the following is taken from the London Telegraph. It is, in my opinion, an excellent synopsis of what is going on, and has gone on in our country in recent days and in recent years.

Bush has nothing to fear from this hilarious work of fiction

By Mark Steyn

In January 2002, the Enron story broke and the media turned their attention to the critical question: how can we pin this on Bush? As I wrote in this space that weekend: "Short answer: You can't."

So Enron retreated to the business pages, and, after a while, the media and the Democrats came up with an even better wheeze: how can we pin September 11 on Bush? Same answer: you can't. But that doesn't stop them every month or so from taking a wild ride on defective vehicles for their crazy scheme.

The latest is a mid-level bureaucrat called Richard Clarke, and by the time you read this his 15 minutes should be just about up. Mr Clarke was Bill Clinton's terrorism guy for eight years and George W Bush's for a somewhat briefer period, and he has now written a book called If Only They'd Listened to Me - whoops, sorry, that should be Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror - What Really Happened (Because They Didn't Listen to Me).

Having served both the 42nd and 43rd Presidents, Clarke was supposed to be the most authoritative proponent to advance the Democrats' agreed timeline of the last decade - to whit, from January 1993 to January 2001, Bill Clinton focused like a laser on crafting a brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, but, alas, just as he had dotted every "i", crossed every "t" and sent the intern to the photocopier, his eight years was up, so Bill gave it to the new guy as he was showing him the Oval Office - "That carpet under the desk could use replacing. Oh, and here's my brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, which you guys really need to implement right away."

The details of the brilliant plan need not concern us, which is just as well, as there aren't any. But the broader point, as The New York Times noted, is that "there was at least no question about the Clinton administration's commitment to combat terrorism".

Yessir, for eight years the Clinton administration was relentless in its commitment: no sooner did al-Qa'eda bomb the World Trade Center first time round, or blow up an American embassy, or a barracks, or a warship, or turn an entire nation into a terrorist training camp, than the Clinton team would redouble their determination to sit down and talk through the options for a couple more years. Then Bush took over and suddenly the superbly successful fight against terror all went to hell.

Richard Clarke was supposed to be the expert who could make this argument with a straight face. And, indeed, his week started well. The media were very taken by this passage from his book, in which he alerts Mr Bush's incoming National Security Adviser to the terrorist threat: "As I briefed Rice on al-Qa'eda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard of the term before, so I added, 'Most people think of it as Osama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organisations with cells in over 50 countries, including the US.' "

Mr Clarke would seem to be channelling Leslie Nielsen's deadpan doctor in Airplane!: "Stewardess, we need to get this passenger to a hospital."

"A hospital? What is it?"

"It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."

As it turns out, Clarke's ability to read "facial expressions" is not as reliable as one might wish in a "counter-terrorism expert". In October the previous year, Dr Rice gave an interview to WJR Radio in Detroit in which she discoursed authoritatively on al-Qa'eda and bin Laden - and without ever having met Richard Clarke!

I don't know how good Clarke was at counter-terrorism, but as a media performer he is a total dummy. He seemed to think that he could claim the lucrative star role of Lead Bush Basher without anybody noticing the huge paper trail of statements he has left contradicting the argument in his book.

The reality is that there is a Richard Clarke for everyone. If you are like me and reckon there was an Islamist angle to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, then Clarke's your guy: he supports the theory that al-Qa'eda operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building".

On the other hand, if you're one of those Michael Moore-type conspirazoids who wants to know why Bush let his cronies in the House of Saud and the bin Laden family sneak out of America on September 11, then Clarke's also your guy: he is the official who gave the go-ahead for the bigshot Saudis with the embarrassing surnames to be hustled out of the country before they could be questioned.

Does this mean Clarke is Enron - an equal-opportunity scandal whose explicitly political aspects are too ambiguous to offer crude party advantage? Not quite. Although his book sets out to praise Clinton and bury Bush, he can't quite pull it off. Except for his suggestion to send in a team of "ninjas" to take out Osama, Clinton had virtually no interest in the subject.

In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qa'eda's attack on the USS Cole: "'What's it gonna take, Dick?' Sheehan demanded. 'Who the s*** do they think attacked the Cole, f****** Martians? The Pentagon brass won't let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qa'eda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?'"

Apparently so. The attack, on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clinton's Defence Secretary Bill Cohen as "not sufficiently provocative" to warrant a response. You'll have to do better than that, Osama! So he did. And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be "pre-emptive" about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11.

As for Clarke's beef with Bush, that's simple. For eight years, he had pottered away on the terrorism brief undisturbed. The new President took it away from him and adopted the strategy outlined by Condoleezza Rice in that Detroit radio interview, months before the self-regarding Mr Clarke claims he brought her up to speed on who bin Laden was: "We really need a stronger policy of holding the states accountable that support him," Dr Rice told WJR. "Terrorists who are just operating out there without basis and without state support are a lot less dangerous than ones that find safe haven, as bin Laden does sometimes in places like Afghanistan or Sudan."

Just so. In the 1990s when al-Qa'eda blew up American targets abroad, the FBI would fly in and work it as a "crime scene" - like a liquor-store hold-up in Cleveland. It doesn't address the problem. Sure, there are millions of disaffected young Muslim men, but, if they get the urge to blow up infidels, they need training and organisation. Somehow all those British Taliban knew that if you wanted a quick course in jihad studies Afghanistan was the place to go. Bush got it right: go to where the terrorists are, overthrow their sponsoring regimes, destroy their camps, kill their leaders.

Instead, all the Islamists who went to Afghanistan in the 1990s graduated from Camp Osama and were dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, where they lurk to this day. That's the Clarke-Clinton legacy. And, if it were mine, I wouldn't be going around boasting about it.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

So it goes. I haven't had any contact with the radio station in Waco since I was initially approached about doing some work for them. If things were going to fall into place, I was expecting I'd probably get the word today. I got my hopes up a little high for that one, it did seem like the answer to prayer, but if it's not to be that also means I won't have to adjust my schedule too dramatically which is certainly a plus.

Since radio people are associated world wide with adjectives like lazy and procrastinating, there is still the chance that the deal could work out, but I'm going to let a little more realism creep its way into my normal sunny outlook and figure it's most likely not to be. It's a shame, the work would have dovetailed perfectly into what I'm doing now and the money could not have come at a better time.

On the upside, I've about worked out the kinks with the new duties for the Corpus Christi stations and today I realized that may take even less effort than I expected. I think I can do what I'm being asked to do there by merely adjusting the process of what I do at the office, instead of adjusting my alarm clock. That would be a very good thing.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

IF YOU CAN'T BRING THE MODERATE TO MUHAMMED...

It's a sad truth I suppose that there are extremists in every faith. Yet, when I see stories like this I can't help but wonder why we don't hear an outcry from moderates in the Muslim faith.

If a fundamentalist Christian leader were to say that "God declared war" on Yasser Arafat, or that Muslims were enemies of God, other Christians would be falling all over themselves to distance themselves from that position.

Perhaps moderate Muslim leaders don't issue press releases. Yeah, maybe that's it.

LEARNING NEW TRICKS FROM AN OLD DOG

Abby dribbles.

This would not be an unusual phenomenon were Abby an infant, a doddering fool, or a basketball player...but Abby is a schnauzer.

She's the dog of one of Amy's clients. Since Amy is not really able to drive these days I go along whenever Amy makes a service call. Sometimes I'm able to be of use, updating virus protection or installing software, but most of the time I simply wait for Amy to resolve the current computer problem and then return to my role as chauffeur, although Amy prefers to refer to me by my formal title: lackey.

As with most dogs, Abby has her own peculiarities. She barks incessantly at every new arrival, she bites some folks, and saves virtually all of her affection for the people nearest and dearest to her, those who feed her.

For whatever reason, Abby and I have always gotten along and soon she taught me the game of fetch...by Abby's rules.

If you only have one ball and throw it, Abby will scamper after it, snatch it...and then never give any consideration to the concept of returning it to you. This in itself is not unusual. I've seen this particular form of canine greed with our own dogs quite often. It makes for a very short game of fetch, not to mention a less than satisfying way to pass the time. However if you have an extra tennis ball, Abby puts a whole new spin on the game.

There's no real trick to it - you throw the first ball and once Abby has full possession of it, you toss the second.

If I did this with any of our dogs they would either drop the first ball and grab the other, ignore the second ball completely, stand there confused, or in the case of Winston our special needs dog, sit down and howl.

Abby dribbles...literally.

I don't mean she drools, although there is a component of that I suppose. Abby will clutch one ball in her mouth and then very deliberately and with great accuracy she will kick the second ball. She moves it a few inches at a time using alternating paws until it rolls to a point where she deems it's close enough for you to pick up. Then she waits for you to throw it again. She never loses possession of the first ball, but she'll dribble that second ball back to you every time.

This is Abby's style of fetch.

Maybe this isn't so uncommon, but I've never seen any other dog do it. I find it amazing.

I enjoy this game with Abby. It passes the time, but it also serves as a good reminder to me.

That little game of fetch admonishes me to be open to new ways of looking at things...most especially those things I presume I already know.

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