Profunksticated

All the talk about the to-be-aired documentary on the disgraced Rev. Ted Haggard got old Pro to thinking about a comment that appeared below an article on Salon.com questioning the very idea of faith.

Here is a portion of the comment I reference, left Jan. 28:

I admit freely that most of the people who talk loudest about their faith don’t have any. In fact, according to a study on authoritarians, authoritarians who called themselves Evangelical Christians were far more likely to confess, under the protection of anonymity, that they had serious doubts about what they claimed to believe in. These folks are loud not because they have faith but because they don’t. The folks with real faith are the ones mostly keeping their mouths shut. They aren’t afraid that science will disprove the existence of God because they really believe in God, so science is not a threat. When science proves that some passage in the Bible is mistaken, that’s not a threat either; all it means is that that passage is, having been written by human beings, wrong. It doesn’t mean the whole Bible is worthless anymore than the testimony of an eyewitness who was mistaken about the color of a shirt is necessarily worthless. Because the Bible is simply testimony, the writings of some human beings about their experiences.

I found that interesting, in that the authoritarianism the poster describes seems to fit Ted Haggard to a T. And the comment about the Bible being testimony leads me to admit that I’ve long struggled with whether to read the Bible literally or allegorically.

In any case, you might want to check out the entire Salon article and all the comments.

Just Pro’s two cents.

Musings on a snowy, wet day in the DMV:

God must have heard my call to help me change some stuff. He’s taken away my cravings for candy and other junk. No more late night ice cream. I’ve also given up soda and other drinks, even Gatorade, which contains high fructose corn syrup. I’m drinking more water than I have in years.

Breakfast is part of my routine now. All I need is fruit and yogurt, and I’m good.

My weight is dropping like a truant student’s grades. On Jan. 3, I was about 250. Today the scale has me at 235. I’m on a roll. But I know me. I can get excited about something and then lose interest. I’ve got to think “one day at a time” in order to stick with this.

Also, I’m starting some weight training. The building in which I work has a workout room, so why not take advantage? I plan twice-a-week workouts. If I keep with it one day at a time, old Pro could be chiseled like granite by the summer. OK, not quite like that, but I hope to be in much better shape.

It was turning 40 that prompted me to finally give up drugs. Now looking at 50 has spurred me to get in better physical shape. Who knows what might happen at 60. Maybe I’ll actually become wealthy! (I’m gonna try to do that much earlier, however.) For all this, thanks be to God.

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I’m using TurboTax to enter my 2008 tax information. After entering mine and The Spouse’s W-2s, it’s showing we owe Uncle Sam a few hundred bucks. Yikes! This is after getting a sizable refund last year. I haven’t yet entered data such as mortgage interest and property taxes, which should ease that bite.

The upshot is that this traveling back and forth between the DMV and the Philly-South NJ, paying both rent and a mortgage without a salary high enough to support such an arrangement, is killing us. But I don’t know what to do. With my weird resume’, finding a suitable gig in the Philly area is like seeking the diamond among cut glass.

So the only thing to do is to try to find something higher paying here in the DMV. Or find some sort of side hustle.

We’re not selling the house in NJ anytime soon; that would only be like twisting the knife even harder, ‘cause we’d take a loss. We’re waiting until at least 2011, when we hope the market turns around.

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I’m sure hoping this Master’s degree program in Information Systems to which I’ve been accepted will be worth going into hock for another $24K or so. Does anyone out there have experience in this discipline? If so, can you tell me what I can expect during and after the program?

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Now time for some fun. Here’s an old-school music trivia question: What 1970s funk band recorded a song that featured the prominent use of kazoos? What was the title? First to answer both questions correctly via the comments section will win, well, a couple of kazoos, courtesy of old Pro. Seriously. The answer will be in a future post.

Seconds after I wrote the post below, I went over to Lord Hannibal’s site. He touched on what I was feeling.

I should be overjoyed that a man that looks like me is now President. But to me, somehow the inauguration seemed an anti-climatic formality. It was the election outcome that had me all geeked up. Wow, America, I believed that November night, is growing up.

LH put his finger on, in part, what was going through my mind Tuesday:

In the abstract, yes, Obama represents hope and possibility. I never thought I’d see the day when a man who shared my heritage would be president. Last night as I lay in the bed, it dawned on me that Obama and I are fewer than 10 years apart in age. Instead of becoming depressed because I’ve accomplished so little relative to Obama, I felt empowered to do whatever I want to do (something I’m still working out in my head).

I’m 49, only two years older than Obama. He’s about my brother’s age. I admit to feeling like, damn, I too have accomplished little compared to this guy. I truly believe he got as far has he did because he as a biracial kid who’s lived around the world, was relatively untainted by the stuff we American-born black kids were bombarded with by our well-meaning elders:

“The white man’s only going to let you go so far.”

“You have to be twice as good.”

And so on. Lord knows, I heard more than my share of that crap.

I do remember being inspired after the election. But watching the inauguration somehow depressed me.

Maybe being among the shivering masses did it. Maybe it’s the thought of turning 50 and feeling like I’m locked into a line of work I’m not exactly in love with.

I should be up there amidst those dignitaries, I was thinking. Sounds egotistical, right? But it was some measure of ego that got those folks where they are.

And don’t give me that stuff about well, you’re a dad, and you’ve done a good job raising a family and that’s an important accomplishment. Yeah, and so have millions of other men.

Somehow I believe I am, even as I approach 50, destined for something bigger. Something that will impact many, many people, like I did when I was a newspaper guy.

But I’m doing nothing with that destiny. That’s got to change. I’ve got to make up my mind that I’m going to work on it. God, please help me.

LH, thank you for getting this brother to think.

And to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, a heartfelt congratulations. May God bless you both and guide your walks in this stage of your lives’ journeys.

Mom, sis, son and a guy I grew up with came down from NJ to the DMV to stay with me at my landlady’s house to attend the inauguration of one Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States. My landlady’s other housemate, her college buddy, also went with us.

We were up after 4 a.m. and arrived via the Metro Yellow Line onto the National Mall, just west of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, about 5:30 a.m. We sat down on pieces of cardboard. It was freakin’ cold, with temps only in the teens. And we all were layered like cakes.

I’ve never in my life been in a crowd that large and packed in. I admit to being a little nervous. My cheap little MP3 player has an FM radio, so I tuned to WTOP 103.5, to stay up on what was going on and repeating the news to the folks around us. I think they appreciated it.

My friend and I finally had to walk around to keep warm, ‘cause our feet were numbing. In between, I managed to get video of Samuel L. Jackson, D.L. Hugley and some guy I believe was a correspondent for the Daily Show.

All that was forgotten once the ceremony started and Barack was finally sworn in as President at around noon. I recorded from the nearest Jumbotron screen the swearing in on my little camera as well as his inaugural speech until the memory on my SD card was full.

After it was over, it took us about two hours to get back to the L’Enfant Plaza station and onto the train back to Virginia. A few folks jumped the line that most of us formed, leading one woman to yell, “Now Barack just spoke about responsibility!”

I’m feeling a bit wistful as I write this. I should have been covering this event for some media outlet somewhere. I guess this blog will have to do.

I do believe, however, if Barack Obama is elected to a second term, I will be covering this as a journalist. If not, I will watch the second inauguration on TV.

Pro muses on a very cold mid-January day on the East Coast:

Remember this post? Seems that scenario has played out on that Bravo show Real Housewives of Atlanta.

The story goes that DeShawn Snow, the wife of NBA star Eric Snow, was booted from the show for not being “hood” enough and failing to bring the requisite amount of drama and conflict common to these cheap, unscripted “reality shows.” I watched RHOA one time some months back. I wasn’t impressed.

I got word that I’ve been awarded “conditional” acceptance to an online Master’s degree program in Information Systems. The “conditional” is due to my relatively low undergraduate GPA. Never mind that isht was 27 years ago. Don’t they believe I’ve matured just a little bit since then? I must maintain a GPA of 3.0 during my first three quarters/semesters of my attendance. Whatever.

I’m glad, but I’m not really all that overjoyed. I’m only hoping this educational endeavor will be worth the price and help me become an expert in one topic as opposed to being a generalist with broad but shallow knowledge in a lot of areas. I start in March; the program is to last about two years.

The interview with the tech firm earlier this month yielded a rejection. The recruiter e-mailed me a note saying that despite my “impressive resume’,” I’ve been eliminated as a candidate for the proposal manager position. Again, whatever. There’s at least one other iron in the fire. We’ll see how hot that one gets.

Pro thought you all would like this post from Salon. In this era of porn-on-demand, has kissing become a lost art?

The comments are worth reading, too!

Here is a guy who was willing to die for the cause. His name was Lasantha Wickrematunge, a leading Sri Lankan journalist. He was murdered last week.

Thing was, he knew thugs in the crime syndicate that is the Sri Lankan government were coming after him, and wrote a column to be published posthumously.

You all know I was in journalism once, here in the United States. But my motives for being a reporter pale in comparison to this dude’s.

Pro’s Philadelphia Eagles – could they be taking a cue from their cross-street neighbors, the Phillies, by being determined to bring home that Lombardi trophy, presented to the winner of the National Football League’s Super Bowl? I sure hope so.

Watching my Birds beat the New York Giants in the NFL Divisional Playoff was sa-weet. By a score of 23-11 at that. No NFL game in history has had that final score. And in their house, no less!!! Yeeeaaaahhhh, babeeeee!

Now it’s on to Arizona and a date with – the Cardinals (The Cardinals??? – they’ve sucked for years!!!) for the National Football Conference Championship. The winner goes to the Super Bowl.

My older son, then 15, and I attended a November 2004 Eagles-Giants game in the Meadowlands and were harassed by a couple of yahoos sitting behind us who saw we were wearing our Eagles gear. Now, granted some good natured razzing is expected when you venture into an opposing stadium, but it was obvious these two guys had been drinking since early that morning, and were taking things too far over the top. The game started at 1 p.m. that Sunday.

“How does sperm taste?” was one of the pleasantries one of those guys shared with us. I said something like, “It’s only a game, dude,” turned around and tried to ignore them. My son wanted to hit them with an equally vulgar comeback, but I told him to keep quiet. I really didn’t feel like fighting, getting kicked out of the stadium and getting thrown into the Bergen County Jail.

All game long, these guys screamed, cussed and even said “Ufck that n—-r!” as then-Eagle Terrell Owens began waving his arms like a bird after making a catch for a long gain near the game’s end. My ears really began to burn.

The Eagles won that game en route to the playoffs and Super Bowl that year. But I was hot, angry, pissed, you name it. Our seats were not nosebleed; they were in the third row in the lower bowl, corner end zone.

For the money I paid and for the seat location, I expected to at least be surrounded by a higher class of football fan. These Giant fans were straight up obnoxious despite the fact there were kids sitting nearby. I was hoping a fellow Giants fan would tell the guys to knock it off, but it never happened. An usher would show up periodically at which point those guys would make nice.

So I wrote a letter to the Giants, describing in excruciating detail our experience at the game, and said they should have had ushers stationed near our seats. I sent copies to the New Jersey authority that operates Giants Stadium, the National Football League and the Eagles.

Long story short, I got responses from the stadium authority, the Giants and the NFL. A stadium authority official, who said my letter damn near brought him to tears, provided tickets to a 76ers-New Jersey Nets NBA game at the authority-owned Continental Airlines Arena.

A Giants official provided my son and I 50-yard-line tickets and pre-game sideline access to the following year’s Eagles-Giants game at Giants Stadium. He said he didn’t want our son’s unpleasant experience to be his last memory of attending a Giants game. He said he would also use my letter as ammunition to convince his higher-ups to restore permanently stationed ushers in the lower bowl.

The NFL wrote back but only to acknowledge my concerns. I’ve recently seen articles in the news were the NFL was seeking to crack down on unruly fans, so maybe my letter played a part.

I never did hear from the Eagles. But that’s OK. They’re still my team.

Here’s wishing you all a prosperous 2009! Thanks for reading Profunksticated.