Pilot's Log

My overnight dream was that a brewery staged a fait accompli act through a school board bureaucracy to enable a Beer Day at a high school, wherein all the students at the school would get a free 12-ounce bottle of beer from the brewery.

I'm still not sure what it means.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 14, 2009

I'm not necessarily saying you fell into a hole a while back, but if you did, the time is right to extricate yourself. Your strength is returning and help is in the neighborhood. Likewise, I'm not making an authoritative pronouncement that you did indeed cast a little curse on yourself during a careless moment. But if something like that did occur, you're entering an excellent phase to undo the mistake. You're awakening to how you went awry, and that's the first crucial step in correcting for the messy consequences.

It wasn't "a while back", it was tonight. I gave Aleks money to buy himself a bottle of beer because he told me he couldn't sleep without it due to the noise level around the house he lives in. I could have said no, but I didn't. I didn't feel that at the time, denying him would do anybody any good. I still feel very lousy about it.

A Tennessee Sheriff And His Friendship With A Now-Sober Former Moonshine Outlaw.

I'm just venting about this. I doubt this stuff will get back to him because he doesn't have a computer or any of that.

Previous mention of this fellow HERE and HERE.

I went into Knoxville and saw Aleks again today. The houses next door to his were on fire when I came up to his place so I was very concerned to the point of alarm about him. Turned out the places were condemned and the Fire Department firefighters were training on them.

I caught him on the way out the door and gave him stuff I meant to give him and we had about an hour's worth of conversation.

He's still trying to give up booze--but he's started using marijuana. I'm very concerned, to the point of alarm, about him. I don't know what I can really do about his troubles.

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I don't know about "most likely", but what I want to see is a ban on advertising of prescription drugs on broadcast TV and via e-mail. The makers of Levitra and Cialis and Viagra make their products sound like recreational drugs. I think it's immoral and harmful to our society.

Hey.

Well, the job interview went nowhere--as expected. You see, to sell insurance in Tennessee (and probably every state) you need to get a license from the state, which costs around $300 in examination fees and whatnot...assuming the applicant passes the test. I don't have $300 to "invest", and so my "no" vote was assured. Nothing against the company...I'm sure the insurance office manager was perplexed when I mentioned that I had never even gave much thought to insurance as a consumer, let alone a seller. (I don't handle that kind of business in my household and frankly I'm scared for my own lack of consumer savvy. I've applied myself in other arenas and while it hasn't exactly sustained me, I had hoped for better.)

I guess I'll surf Monster.com again tomorrow and see what appears.

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I don't drink, don't smoke and stay away from drugs for one main--and very personal--reason...I watched a friend get drunk once when I was a teenager and I didn't like what I saw at all. I think about this incident every time I hear in the news about a teenager who went to a party and came back home in a body bag--either through binge drinking or drunk driving accidents or outright violence. If we don't take responsibility for ourselves right away, we throw ourselves into the hands of evil and destroy ourselves--whether we realize it or not.

As for parents who let their kids drink, I think they should be held to account for not exercizing their authority. I don't advocate jail time, but things like restitution, group counseling, compulsory community service should be handed down to them. It is logical for our society to take action on this issue because anything that harms our pool of youth will eventually harm us as a nation.

(And if you use this argument on abortion, I argue back that unwed fathers in our society should also be held to account...too many of them ruin the lives of women through unwanted pregnancies and this is also a grave problem. I support a woman's right to choose simply because there are far worse things I can think of happening to our society if this right is taken away.)

* * *

These days I try not to think about politics. I've tried to be apolitical but unfortunately the times do not support such an attitude. The more I think about politics the worse my thoughts get. Maybe I'll write more about this later...I'm just using this paragraph as a space marker.

FP