--JUST LIKE THAT

My Dad is dying. 

It’s incredibly difficult to watch him in his hospital gurney with his mouth contorted, him swollen and gasping through a breathing apparatus. 

When I first walked in, I thought I’d gone into the wrong patient’s room.  My father was that unrecognizable. 

There was a woman playing a harp.  She said she was trying to help him relax.  It was a kind gesture, but I’m sure he couldn’t hear a thing.

They say he will pass away in the next day or so.  They say there is nothing they can do for him.

I got to meet his girlfriend.  She spent an entire night by his side.  She said, “I just love him so much.”  It was tender and brave and heartbreaking. 

One of my brothers was sorting through stacks and stacks of old photos back at the house, the house which inside and especially outside, is probably the biggest, most awful mess you’ve ever seen, not to mention the smell from the dogs.  Anyway, there were lots of pictures from when we were little.  It brought back a lot of memories, many of them not so swell.

That night three of us got very drunk and stayed up until 2:30 in the morning.  I slept in my clothes and don’t remember getting into bed.  I don’t remember anything that happened after about midnight.  My head is pounding still, but it was good to get drunk.  It felt like the right thing to do considering the circumstances.

Ending your life in chronic, unstoppable pain is a horrific thing.  It’s horrific to watch and most of the time I had to look away.  Every so often he’d flop the one arm that wasn’t paralyzed and he’d open his eyes and I’d come over and say, “Hey, Dad, it’s Len,” and he’d stare right through me, his eyes muddy and glossed over.  It sort of spooked me, if I’m honest. 

He’s in hospice care now and I’m back at home.  The drive was a blustery one, with winds and sideways rain, but it cleared when I got to Duval.  Traffic was backed up for miles.  I’d forgotten it was Halloween.  There were hundreds of trick- or-treaters out in every costume imaginable.  It seemed a strange conclusion to a strange set of days.

I’ll likely be going back next week for the funeral.  I think it will be a happier affair.  It certainly can be worse.

I’m not going through anything different that thousands of sons go through, or have gone through, and I’m not pleading for sympathy, but it felt good to write these words down nevertheless.  But I still feel a little sad.  I wish things were different.  

--YEAH, WE’RE PRETTY CUTE TOGETHER

…Hey, Wednesday, why so gray?

...Along with Sheldon Compton, I was featured on Robert Vaughan's column, Two for Tuesday, talking about two of my favorite books:

http://www.robert-vaughan.com/two-for-tuesday-sheldon-compton-and-len-kuntz/

 …Tomorrow I’m driving across the state to see my father who had, in this order, pneumonia, a heart attack, and a stroke.  Apparently he’s doing better, but better is not necessarily good.  I’ll need some inspiration, so there’s these:

“I’ve seen extreme bravery from the least likely of people. Life is about the moments when it's all gone wrong. That's when we define ourselves.” Bear Grylls

“There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less.”  Kurt Hahn

“I have enjoyed life a lot more by saying "yes" than by sayings ‘no.”  Richard Branson

“Paddle, paddle - sometime big wave come.”  Taro, Japanese surfer

 “I have never been a millionaire, but I have enjoyed a great meal, a crackling fire, a glorious sunset, a walk with a friend, a hug from a child, a cup of soup, a kiss behind the ear. There are plenty of life's tiny delights for all of us.”  Jack Anthony

“A wise man once said nothing.” 

“New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I

recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.”

Federico Garcia Lorca

 “Everyone in New York City thinks they are famous without being famous.” Ethan Minsker

“Your imagination is the preview to life's coming attractions.”  Albert Einstein

“If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.” B.J. Marshall

“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”  H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved.”  Will Rogers

 "A riot is the language of the unheard." Martin Luther King, Jr.

 "Do not go chasing applause and acclaim, that way lies madness." Ron Swanson

--I’D FIX IT IF I COULD

           

                                                         Baby, Baby, Baby

We are desperate, or I am.  Yes, it’s me.  I go to lengths.  I take my husband’s hollow silences and try to fill them with code but he snickers or re-fingers the remote.

I get masseuse lessons.  When I come home I say, “Do you want your neck worked on, you look stiff,” but he only whinnies at me.

I find hair in the sink.  Blonde.  Long.  He reminds me he is a custodian.  He sweeps the whole mall, even Cutter’s Salon.

            I buy plastic sheets and a vat of baby oil as one magazine recommends.  I dress in stilettoes and two pieces of string.  I lock the door and insert the key in a private place he’ll have to reach.  So, we slip and slide.  My eyes burn from splashes of oil.  One of us sweats a small lake.  When we are through, he showers, then slinks off to watch Sports Center.  In the morning I say, “You didn’t come back, why not?” and he tells me he thought I’d be sleeping.

            I say, “I’m going on a trip.”

He says, “Fine by me.  How long?”

            I say, “A while.”

            I land in the tropics.  It’s like a Malaysian fat farm but better.  I get liposuction.  I apply lip plumper.  I wax what’s never been waxed.  I get a cut and dye job, going red.  I bleach my teeth.  Buy a Pucci-print dress and Channel bag.  I get piercings below the neck.

            When I come home, my husband is all nerves, a jumping bowl of spaghetti.  His eyes jerk like pinballs.  When I ask if I should get the oil, grab the plastic sheet, he chuckles, tells me we don’t need it.  He keeps humming, “Baby, baby, baby.”

            I can’t get enough air.  He’s gained weight while I’ve been gone.  He smells like ammonia and has a forest of black nose hair I never noticed.  When we kiss I can feel canker sores in his mouth.

            He asks, “Round two?”  Then after that, “Ready for a hat trick?”

            He wants me.  All the time.  I tell him I need a break.  He says, no.  I complain, threaten to go back to the old me.  He says there’s no going back, calls me Baby, Baby, Baby.

            When he comes home from work the next night I can hear him panting.  He opens the bedroom door with a flourish.  “What the?”

            I’ve shaved my head.  I don’t have any makeup on.  I’m wearing my flannel pj’s with the poodles on them.  I’m eating my second tub of Ben and Jerry’s that’s given me a awful case of flatulence. 

            When he steps closer, I burp up a little cloud of Chunky Monkey.

                                                                        ***                 

Now it’s years later.  We’ve eaten dinner and dessert.  We’re sitting in a booth by the window.  My husband runs a toothpick through the gulley between his teeth.  He reads a magazine about tattoos and motorcycles.  I stare past my reflection in the glass at a young couple wrestling in the front seat.  I wonder if he calls her Baby.

            Inside the diner, there’s Muzak playing: “Here Comes the Sun.”  Oh, and there’s you and your girlfriend.  You look nice together, like a twin sweater set, yet you both look away.  Good thing I’ve still got my hearing. 

Your girlfriend whispers, “Can you believe it?  They haven’t even said one word the whole time.”

            You rip a hunk of meat from a gray slab of chicken, and let it wobble against your wrist.

            “I hope we never get like that when we get old.”

            “Here,” you say, flapping the greasy meat, “take a bite.”

            “That’s so gross.”

            “Come on.”  And then you do it, call her, Baby.  And she does it, too.  She eats the meat right off your fingers, says, “Sugar, you know I’d do anything for you.”

           

--PEOPLE SMILE AND TELL ME I’M THE LUCKY ONE

           

                                                               At The Deep End

            At the pool, I watch the blind girl’s parents lower her into the shallow end.  She’s maybe five, and skinny as a ladder.

            The girl kicks her feet, giggling.  She wears a Hello Kitty one piece swimsuit and has floaties on her arms.

            “It would really suck being blind,” I say. 

            Gordy shoots me with a spray from one of the squirt guns we shoplifted earlier in the day.  When I tell him to knock it off, he squirts me in the eye, so I slug him on the shoulder.

            “Asshole.”

            “Sorry.”

            “You’re still an asshole.”

            Gordy and I have been friends our whole lives, but next Monday he and his mom are moving to Kansas.  After another “dust up”, Gordy’s dad got put in jail for beating his mom pretty bad and the divorce is all finalized now.  “Dust up” is Gordy’s term.  He’s a professional at making misery seem harmless.  Once when Gordy’s dad tried to drown his mom in the bathtub, Gordy said it was merely a “boating accident.”

            “Geez, Elaine,” the blind girl’s father says, “you’re going to break her damn arm.  Just let her go.”

            Gordy says he’s not excited about moving away.  He says life is a peach, even though he’s been in and out of trouble quite a bit this last year, starting with an episode where he broke several of our school’s windows with a crowbar. 

            The blind girl looks ridiculous.  She won’t stop grinning, nor does she stop slapping water against her face and chest.  Her mother is flustered while her father reads a magazine on a lawn chair.

            We started shoplifting a few weeks ago.  It was just candy at the start, but it’s progressed to games and toys, items that are trickier to conceal inside our clothing.  I’m pretty sure the manager’s onto us, but Gory could care less.  “What’re they going to do, toss us in the clink?” he says.

            A plump woman with marbleized thighs comes over and talks to the blind girl’s mother, and from their easy manner I can see she’s some kind of friend.  They gawk over the blind girl, then get lost in conversation.

            I watch the blind girl start to move through the water, going fast.  Gordy sees it, too.  “I hope she drowns,” he says.

            I jump up, dive in and reach the girl just before she’s about to reach the slope that leads to the deep end.  When I break the surface, holding her by the waist, there’s a crowd poolside.  The blind girl’s dad tells me to get my goddamn hands off his daughter, while the girl giggles, splashing us both, using her hands as paddles.

            When I get out of the water, Gordy says, “Smooth move, Ex-Lax.”

            Before bed that night, I lay in the bathtub under the water, holding my breath.  I look up through the murky surface thinking: Life’s like that--unclear and fluid, always moving, wavering, slippery yet certain.

--IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

…At least that’s what they tell me.  At least that’s what they say.

Never too late for what, though? 

I guess it just depends what is that you want, or need.

…Anyway…

I am a fan of pop culture, though sometimes it seems idiotic, like these two bits of entertainment news from yesterday:

…A song listed as "Track 3" from the pop star's latest album "1989" was mistakenly released as a brief audio clip of white noise. Despite the glitch, the Canadian news site Nation Post reported that the track rocketed to the top of Canada's iTunes on Tuesday morning.

For the past few weeks, Swift has been unveiling songs from the album in the days leading up to its release. Apparently, the chance to listen to and download new music from the singer was so enticing that for a time, "Track 3" beat out her actual songs "Welcome to New York," "Shake It Off" and "Out of the Woods" on iTunes' Top 10 chart.

…Britney Spears was doing well with her Vegas contract -- raking in nearly $30 mil for 2 years ... but we just found out, 50 shows into her run, her show was so successful she got an even sweeter deal.
Sources connected to Britney tell TMZ ... the singer did indeed sign a contract for $310K per performance, with 96 concerts over 2 years the total was $29,760,000.
But Planet Hollywood was blown away by ticket sales, which they said broke Vegas records. So Britney's people went back to the bargaining table and hashed out an amendment -- with back end, merchandising and other perks, the singer will earn around $475,000 a show.  Celine Dion, the top money earner in Vegas, makes $476K a show.
Planet Hollywood actually added shows for Britney ... she'll now do 140 shows during the 2-year residency.
Bottom line ... with all her ventures ... we're told EVERY WEEK, Britney's people deposit around 1 MILLION DOLLARS in her bank account.

…But then I go on Facebook last week, and have a laugh or chuckle (are these the same thing?) reading posts such as these:

- just found a dead bee in my room and cried about it.

-warm and breezy, like your singing voice.

-"Men will let anything suck their dick. Dog, coyote, vampire, werewolf, zombie, Walgreen's clerk, retard from Dixie."

Today while I was with a client, this woman was staring at me for a good 10 minutes before I said something to her and when I did, she told me it was because I looked like someone who was wanted for murder in Italy. WAY TO BLOW MY COVER, BITCH!

-Darby just told us he hopes he doesn't need our money when we die. Oh boy. How do I let him down easy? What $$?

-"There has never been a sadness that can't be cured by breakfast food."

-does anyone have some thin wire/twine? i wanna make this rape whistle cross i found into an upside down cross necklace

-So, I'm at Penn Station an hour early because that's how I like it but it's sort of like arriving in hell an hour early and who wants that? Also, I put on too much make up so that people won't confuse me for a man, a thing I noticed middle aged women did when I was younger and felt sorry for them

-subway quote: "what the fuck you looking at me for?"

-Excitement at opening a package with advance copies of my novel dissipated quickly when a certain 7yo asked, "Why have you only written two books? That's not very many."

"Writing a poem, for me, is a lot like drunk dialing an ex-girlfriend at 1am."

OK I might as well just come out and say it. I'm riding an armadillo naked across the Mexican border at midnight under the harvest moon.

-I love it when toilet water splashes up and hits you in the face!

-Been a pretty productive day on Facebook so far:

Learned what Gordon Ramsay was like when he was young.

Watched someone pet a huge snail.

Learned 15 different potential pet names for my penis.

Saw the 15 best high heels for my penis.

Learned about Cat Circles.

Heard a woman destroy everything I thought I knew about the clarinet.

-Don’t send me poems with stolen lines in them from Beyonce and Kanye. Stop it!

-News reporter just said his "life got flipped turned upside down" about a man in a hit-and-run accident.

 -one of my housemates uses AXE BODYWASH. am i wrong, or is this grounds for eviction?

-i like butts.  a lot.  there are a lot of butts I like.

                                                             

--EVERYONE TAKES EVERYONE FOR GRANTED

Hey, Wednesday.  You’re looking good.

I’m trying to muster up some energy for a productive day.  I came across this (below) which was one of the first pieces I wrote after looking across the lake one night:

Center and Fringe

           

            I want you to lie to me. 

I want you to pull my hair and threaten to leave me again, tell me every soiled thing you loathe about me but, later, do a paint-by-numbers watercolor on my chest, inserting a subliminal message between the stripes of a rainbow.

            I want to cuddle with you on this bed of pine needles so scratchy we’d never be able to sleep, the frosty air cold enough to make our noses bleed, dribbling down our chins like scarlet fondue. 

I want the taillights glowing rat-eyed across the lake to be your eyes, fascinated by me on this winter’s night.  I want the cones of light reflected on the wafting water to be a cloud that morphs in undulation so that we can find new characters and objects in its wake, its center and fringes. 

I want you to see what I see, the people who own that light and the house where that light glows, the ones that have been together since before the war against Germany.  I saw them at Safeway yesterday.  She was testing a melon with her gnarled thumb while the brittle little guy manned the cart, hunched, grinning like a very happy gnome.

I want our skins to spot and sag together.  I want us to molt and refute what happened last weekend.  I want magical powers, the ability to make you stay put, to cause that car to miss you, take a different corner, let you live.     

I want to take it all back.  

--I’VE GOT RIGHT NOW AND THAT’S ALL I WANT

..It’s stormy as hell right now, early on a Monday morning.  It feels like an angry rain.

…So what do think crooks are trying to accomplish who send things out like this (I get several of these a week)?--

                --Dear Beloved in Christ.

This may sound strange to you, but it God's will. I am Mrs. Karolin Wolfram 79-years of age who live in United Kingdom for 37-years now; God has touched me in a glorious way to fulfill His blessing toward charity / mankind.

I have asked God for forgiveness and I believed he has because he is a merciful God. I will be going for an operation on Friday which the doctor has directly said is 50/50 chance of surviving after diagnosing me with Cancer in three (3) years ago. Read Romans 1:16-17

I have decided to WILL/donate my late husband entitlement fund of $12.5 Million USD (Twelve Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars) which I inherited from him to you for the good work of God and to serve His divine purpose and favor to humanity as that has be my late husband unfinished work before his death.

Recently, my Family members have advise me to share my late husband inherited fund to them for their selfish interest after receiving the news from the doctor that I might not survive the operation. I refused to accept that from my family members as I have promise my late husband before his death that this fund would be use to serve God divine purpose and favor to humanity around the world and for poor people.

I was privilege to send this letter to you with the help of a lady nurse here, who has be so kind to me, believing that a total stranger like you can fulfill my last wish to humanity.

All I ask from you is to make sure you use this fund for the work of God to fulfill his divine purpose and favor to humanity. It is clear that I don’t know you but God known you more than I can ever do. For this purpose I bow my knees and pray for you, May the Lord bless you abundantly as you fulfill this mystery toward charity and Humanitarian service. Thus, you are to use 60% of the funds for this Humanitarian Mission while 10% goes to my family Lawyer in United Kingdom and 30% goes to you for your faithfulness toward God and mankind.

Lastly, I want you to pray for me regarding my health situation, because I have come to find out that to everything there is a season; and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8) May the Grace of our Lord, the love of God, and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you now and forever more, Amen. I we send you the information of my lawyer once I hear from you to advise you further on the procedures.

Yours Faithfully
Mrs. Karolin Wolfram

…Usually these have tons of misspellings, but this time it’s fairly well written.  I’m kind of dumbfounded.

…Anyway, here are a few things you may or may not know that I just learned:

77 million Americans own an average of $5,200 in past due, collectible debt.

-4 out of 5 men have traded blows defending a woman’s honor

 --55% of men have had a fight with their wife or girlfriend behind the wheel.

--8% of men claim to have been sucker punched at some point in their life

--You have a 64% increased chance of developing heart disease if you hold a grudge.

-The average man has seven arguments a year about when to have sex

...Here's wishing you a great start to your new week.

--CONGRATULATIONS.  GOOD LUCK

…Well, I had my reading and book signing Tuesday night at Uppercase Books here in Snohomish.  It was a small crowd, as I had expected.  I read for an hour and a half and took questions.  People were very engaged.  I could have done a lot better.  Still need to work on inflection and enunciation.  Next time will be the best.

…Have you ever watched “The Walking Dead”?  You should.  I was very reluctant to watch a show featuring zombies but the zombies are secondary to the story line which is, holy shit, intense and dark and clever and surprising.  I’ve never seen a show where they’re less afraid to kill of main characters, and when they do you’re stunned, thinking, Who would do that?  I’ve got one episode left of last season then the premier of the new season.  Last week I literally had to pause the TV to catch my breath because so much was happening and it was that intense.  Great stuff.  I’d put in easily in the top 10 best shows ever, up there with Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and True Detective.

..Listening to the fear-mongers on TV going on and on about Ebola and how we’re doomed reminds me of hearing the same thing a few years back when people in Asia were coming down with, and dying from, Bird Flu.  I haven’t heard anyone contracting Bird Flu in years.  I think the same will be true of Ebola once they get a handle on it.  I’m not making light of the illness, but rather I’m just pointing out how the media uses certain things to create hysteria and higher ratings.  If they can make their audience paranoid enough, that audience will keep tuning into to learn more details, thereby getting even more paranoid.

…So about enough gloom and doom.  Here are some good things to dwell on instead:

“Paddle, paddle - sometime big wave come.”  Taro, Japanese surfer

 “I have enjoyed life a lot more by saying "yes" than by sayings ‘no.”  Richard Branson

 “If successful people have one common trait, it's an utter lack of cynicism. The world owes them nothing. They go out and find what they need without asking for permission; they're driven, talented, and work through negatives by focusing on the positives.”  Mike Zimmerman

 “The greatest gift you will ever receive is the gift of loving and believing in yourself. Guard this gift with your life. It is the only thing that will ever truly be yours.”  Tiffany Loren Rowe

 “Do what you love to do, and do it so well that those who come to see you do it will bring others to watch you do it again and again.” Mark Victor Hansen

 “I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well.”  Diane Ackerman

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who have made a difference in our lives.”  Dan Zadra

--I WISH THINGS WERE DIFFERENT

...Well, tomorrow night I'll be reading and doing my first ever book signing.  I'm a little nervous.  It'll be the first time I've ever read in front of non-writer friends.  Maybe I've said this already.  I'm not sure.  Anyway, I haven't figured out what all I'll read.  There's time for that all day tomorrow.  I know, though I know i won't be reading this:

                                                                       Sphinx

            She said she’d be there for me.  She said forever.  Then she amended the declaration; “I’ll be around until the first of us dies, or at least until one of us flunks out of high school.”  She suspected I’d be fleeing the scene before her, mainly because I’d become careless and had stopped showing up for most of my classes.

            I could hardly be blamed.  I was beside myself, smitten with love for Dawnielle.  My life—the bland summation of fifteen whole years—now belonged to the trout fishing ballerina with bowl cut hair and stone cutter’s eyes.

            I said, “Name something impossible and I’ll do it for you.”

            “Buy me the moon.”

            “Ah, that’s too easy,” I said.

The next morning I watched Dawnielle leave her house for the bus.  She stopped immediately, struck by a series of chalk moons I’d painted in succession across the sidewalk.  From a hiding spot, I watched Dawnielle break open a grin, and it felt as if I was the books she hugged against her chest, the light glittering in her eyes.

            Another time I said, “If you knew how much I loved you, you might be frightened.”

            “I don’t scare easily.”

            “I love you so much that sometimes it’s hard to breathe when you’re not around.”

            “Just practice holding your breath.  It’ll come in handy for swim meets.”

            “I love you more than my parents.”

            “I would hope so, your parents suck!”

            “I love you more than God.”

            “Now we’re talking.”

            I was afraid to kiss her.  I did not want to soil or stain or defile her in anyway. To me, Dawnielle was the perfect creation; the sphinx before Napoleon’s cannon blast, before erosion and sun damage.  I could never stop gazing at her.  She said, “Most boys go blind doing that other thing.” And here she made an up-and-down motion with her hand.  “But you’ll be the first to go blind from staring at me.”

            “Do you think you’ll ever fall in love with me?” I asked.

            “I’m working on it.”

            We traded dirty jokes our brothers had told us.  I bought her perfume that smelled like pomegranate because it was her favorite fruit.  I wrote her poetry that made her laugh and cry.  She said, “You’re a really good person.”

            When she went missing, I thought she was pulling a prank.  Dawnielle liked surprises and sneaking up on me, shouting “Boo!” so I’d jump and start to get angry.  “Go ahead,” she’d say, egging me on, “Yell at me.  Get really pissed.”  But I coudn't ever get mad at her, just as I still can’t get her out of my head to this day.

            She never ages.  She’ll always be fifteen, perfect and pure, a little aloof and unattainable.

            I picture her in slow motion, skipping or twirling inside a shower of leaves.  I imagine her leaning in for our first kiss.  I recall the scent of her breath.

            My wife says I drift a lot.  “Everyone daydreams occasionally,” she says, “but you, you get lost in other galaxies.”

            And she’s right, of course.  We’ve been married thirty years and, like any wife, she knows me better than almost anyone.

--THE LEAVES ARE ABOUT TO SHOW US HOW LOVELY IT IS TO LET THE DEAD THINGS GO

…I’m a news junkie.  It stems from my college days when I majored in Political Science and I was very interested in International Affairs.  So I typically have CNN on during the day and I read the paper and check news online, but lately it all seems so terrible

For instance, what’s with all of these parents wanting to kill their kids?  It’s hard to fathom.

Here are to back to back headlines from the other day…

BEULAH, Mich. –  A judge Wednesday sentenced the mother of an autistic Michigan teenager to 10-22 years in prison in what she described as a failed murder-suicide attempt brought on by despair after years of violent attacks by the child and failure to find affordable and effective treatment.

HARDWICK, Vt. - A mother and her boyfriend in northern Vermont are accused of killing the woman's disabled son by putting alcohol in the boy's IV.

You have to have a license to fish or drive a car, a boating license, etc., etc., yet you don’t have to have a license to be a parent.  I don’t know if that would make a difference, but it couldn’t hurt.

…Then there was this article:

Iran's latest crackdown on freedom includes lashes and prison for seven young adults who posted a video of themselves dancing to the American pop hit "Happy" and a death sentence for a blogger accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad.

The seven me and women were arrested in May, but then released after self-professed "moderate" President Hassan Rouhani tweeted that the regime should lighten up. But the group was forced nonetheless to apologize on television and endure a trial in which they were convicted and each sentenced to 91 lashes. One was given a full year in prison while the others got six months, although their attorney told Iranwire.com the sentences were suspended.

“A suspended sentence becomes null and void after a certain period of time,” attorney Farshid Rofugaran said. For the Happy Group, that period will be three years. “When it’s a suspended sentence, the verdict is not carried out, but if during this period a similar offense is committed, then the accused is subject to legal punishment and the suspended sentence will then be carried out as well.”

The video was part of a global campaign launched by pop star Pharrell Williams and was viewed by more than 100,000 people on YouTube. The six who appeared on the video and a man who shot the footage apologized and said they had been tricked into doing it. After the confession, they were released on bail.

“We can accept the verdict or appeal,” said Rofugaran, adding that his clients are not banned from leaving the country.

Meanwhile, the ultimate penalty was handed down to Soheil Arabi, a blogger found guilty of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in his postings on Facebook. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported that Arabi will be able to appeal the decision.

Revolutionary Guard agents arrested Arabi, 30, and his wife last November. Arabi's wife was released a few hours later, but Arabi was kept in solitary confinement for two months inside the notorious Evin Prison before being found guilty of “sabb al-nabi” (insulting the Prophet), on Aug. 30.

“Soheil had eight Facebook pages under different names, and he was charged with insulting the Imams and the Prophet because of the contents of those pages. He has accepted his charges, but throughout the trial, he stated that he wrote the material without thinking and in poor psychological condition,” a source told the Campaign

…And that’s not to mention ISIS and Al Queda (who just set off a bomb in Yemen yesterday that killed 70 people).

I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll change the channel to cartoons.

…But then there are these:

“The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you finish the work.”  Pat Clifford

  “Hope is neither passive waiting nor is it the unrealistic forming of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. “  Erich Fromm

 “The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life.”  Dan Zadra

 “The eye can only see what the heart is willing to obey.” Ryan Meeks, or maybe Jesus

 “Everyone of us is beautifully fucked up.” Karen Stefano