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Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 23rd

Fandango27 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 23rd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 23, 2017.

Relevance is Relative

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“One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

What one person finds relevant, another finds irrelevant. In other words, relevance is not absolute. Relevance is relative.

Let’s take Donald Trump as an example. Donald Trump is a liar. That is an absolute, indisputable truth. Yet to many people — to too many people — the fact that he is a liar is irrelevant. It’s not that they don’t know that he’s a liar. They do. It’s just that they don’t really care. They are not bothered by his lying. To his supporters, his being a liar is irrelevant.

To others, me included, Donald Trump’s lying is highly relevant. It means that you can’t trust anything that he says (or tweets) to be the truth. And he’s the President of the United States.

Some people claim that all politicians lie, so the fact that Trump lies is irrelevant. They point to Obama’s promise that “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” as the illustration of a lying president. Yet most people under Obamacare were able to keep their doctors. I was.

But everyone knows that Mexico is not going to pay for “the wall.” Most people, even Donald Trump, know that Russia interfered in last year’s presidential election. Most people don’t think that climate change is a hoax.

But to Trump supporters, it just doesn’t matter. To them, it’s irrelevant. Because relevance is relative.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “irrelevant.”

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 16th

Fandango19 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 16th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 16, 2017.

Faith Versus Reason

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My blogging buddy, Jim, wrote a fascinating post today entitled “Why is it So Hard to Believe in God.” In addition to being a provocative post, he managed to get in the WordPress one-word prompt, “recreate,” when he wrote, “We cannot recreate the Big Bang, so we may never understand all of this, but we can believe that we do exist.” Well done, Jim.

In response to one of the comments on his post, Jim wrote, “I believe in logic and God makes sense to me….” I found that notion to be particularly interesting. I believe in logic, reason, and rationality, and it’s because of embracing those things that God makes no sense to me.

For purposes of this post, I’m going to consider “logic” and “reason” to be synonymous, although technically they aren’t. Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.

That said, logic (or reason) is the antithesis of faith. It takes tremendous faith to believe that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, supernatural being created everything that exists.

So the question I have for Jim, or for anyone who cares to weigh in is this. When it comes to belief in God, can logic and reason support that belief, or must one suspend logical and rational thought in favor of pure faith to believe in the existence of God as the creator of all things?

Please feel free to share your thoughts (or beliefs).

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 9th

Fandango25 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 9th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 9, 2017.

Good Samaritan Gone Bad

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Before I begin, everything you are about to read really happened. It’s the truth. It’s not flash fiction. There are no embellishments, no exaggerations. I’ve taken no literary license. I am relating actual events as they occurred in real life.

With that out of the way….

Did you ever have one of those days where you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time? And then, when you thought you were doing the right thing it turned out to be the totally wrong thing to do?

Yesterday morning I was out walking with my dog. On our way back home from the park, I heard what sounded like a woman groaning. I realized that the groaning was coming from a car parked on the street. As my dog and I got closer to the car, the volume and intensity of the groaning grew louder and more urgent.

I sensed that someone may have been in trouble and was possibly in need of some sort of assistance. The groaning continued as I arrived at the car. When I looked inside the vehicle, I saw a middle-aged woman sitting alone in the back seat. Her groaning was even more intense. I tapped on the window to get her attention and to see if there was something I could do to help.

That was when I realized I had made a terrible error in judgment. This middle-aged woman shot me the dirtiest look you could ever imagine. Realizing my mistake, I grabbed my dog’s leash and pulled her away from the car, where she had been busy sniffing the tires.

When my dog and I got home, I told my wife what I had seen.

“You’re kidding me,” she exclaimed. “This woman was masturbating in the back seat of her car, which was parked on that busy street, in broad daylight?”

“Uh huh,” I said, and we both burst out laughing.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — August 26th

Fandango18 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 26th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on my old blog on August 26, 2014.

Banana Bread from Scratch

Let me start off by saying that I have never before, in all my years of blogging, posted a blog about cooking, baking, broiling, frying, or even microwaving anything. Yet here I am, writing a post about how I baked my own banana loaf bread from scratch.

The reason I’m doing this is because earlier this month I wrote a post called “Going Green.” In that post I expressed my antipathy toward overripe bananas. A few commenters suggested that, rather than throwing the overly ripe, brown-spotted bananas into the compost bin, I should consider using them to bake a banana bread loaf.

Their advice reminded me of that old adage about turning lemons into lemonade. And so I thought that turning rotten bananas into banana bread was a good idea. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I am not someone who displays a lot of prowess in the kitchen, but I decided to give it a try nonetheless. I found what appeared to be a simple recipe for banana bread at a site, Inspired Taste. It looked easy enough and I had all of the specified ingredients on hand. I just had to let the bananas ripen well past their prime, like those in the picture below.

I took the three most rotten looking bananas, peeled them, and dumped them into a bowl. I smushed up the three bananas into what the recipe called a “chunky paste.” I added all of the other ingredients noted in the recipe and poured the gooey mixture into the loaf pan.

Then I carefully inserted the filled loaf pan into the preheated oven and cooked the mixture at 350° for around 50 minutes. I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool in the pan for about five minutes before removing the loaf from the pan and putting it on a rack to cool to room temperature.

A few hours later I sliced up a few pieces of the banana bread so I could taste the fruits of my labors. It had a nice flavor to it, but it was dry. There may be several reasons for that. The recipe called for a loaf pan that was 8 1/2 by 4 1/2. From the illustrations on the recipe, the loaf pan also appeared to be metal. I used a glass loaf pan that was actually 9 by 5. So maybe I cooked it too long given the size and material of the loaf pan.

Perhaps tonight I’ll put a slice of my made-from-scratch banana bread into a bowl and top it with a scoop or two of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream ice cream. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

If I try this again, I may go out and pick up a metal 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 loaf pan. Or if not, I may try cooking the loaf for only 40 minutes.

Or maybe I’ll just throw my spotted bananas in the compost bin and walk to the Starbucks a block from where I live and get a tall vanilla latte with a slice of banana bread.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — August 19th

Fandango37 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 19th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on August 19, 2017.

SoCS — Pant-Pant-Blow

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The first time my wife got pregnant we were advised by her OB/GYN to enroll in a Lamaze class. These classes teach young couples how to prepare for childbirth and, more importantly, how to make it through labor and delivery.

One of the key learnings from the Lamaze class was how to breathe. Naturally, this lesson was intended for the soon-to-be mother to learn breathing techniques during labor. But the husband had a role as well. He was to be her coach, and as such, he, too, needed to learn the proper breathing techniques in order to help his wife manage the trauma of labor and delivery.

One such breathing technique is referred to as “pant-pant-blow.”

Our Lamaze instructor told my wife that as her contractions became more intense, she should exhale in a pant-pant-blow pattern. She needed to take a deep breath in through your nose when her contraction started and then exhale in two short pants followed by one longer blow. That breathing in and panting out should take about 10 seconds and should be repeated until the contraction stops.

Well, one night my wife’s water broke and we headed to the hospital. She got settled in her room in the maternity ward, where, in my role as her coach, I was by her side.

I was armed with a large cup of shaved ice in case her mouth got dry. I had a small, brown paper bag for her to breathe into should she start to hyperventilate or feel dizzy while doing the breathing exercises we’d learned.

Things were moving along, albeit slowly. She was only about five centimeters dilated after about six hours and her contractions to that point had been fairly mild. So her doctor decided to give her Pitocin to speed things up.

It worked. Within an hour her contractions started coming fast and furious and that’s when she really needed my help. I was there for her, holding her hand, mopping her brow, and pant-pant-blowing right along with her.

Between contractions, I was dropping pinches of shaved ice into her mouth like a mother bird feeding her chicks.

And then the wheels came off the bus. My poor wife was in the middle of an intense contraction and we were pant-pant-blowing together. The next thing I remember was waking up in the other bed in my wife’s hospital room. I had a major headache and a bandage on my forehead.

I must have been a little too exuberant in my pant-pant-blow technique. I somehow managed to black out and, on my way to the floor, I knocked my head on the metal railing of her hospital bed.

Fortunately I was revived just before they wheeled my wife to the delivery room. Still, I was mortified by my failure as her labor coach.

To this day, though, I tell my daughter, who was born that night, that being there for her birth really knocked me out!

Written for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt from Linda G. Hill. The challenge was to write a post around the word “pant,” just in case you couldn’t tell.