Family

Families are bodies. They work when all the pieces can collaborate and function together. Without there are few things that can be missing from it and it still works. Every body is unique. My body lost its heart a long time ago. When this happened it forced the other parts to work harder to survive. The brain in all it’s amazing glory somehow found a way to pump the blood through the veins all the while it thought as well. After all it had the rest of the body to care for. This went on for some time. All the while the body kept working. At a slower pace, but it kept moving. Because it had to. The heart if it were there would not have let it down so the brain and the rest of the body were not going to let the heart down in its absence. The body could feel itself moving slower, but it kept moving and was content to move at that speed. The brain used what blood it needed for itself to give to the rest of the body parts. The brain, though it learned to pump the blood out of necessity, couldn’t do it as well as the heart could. After all it’s just one organ. So the brain found a new heart. And the heart became part of the body. This heart was different. It pumped the blood differently and the blood was not the same.  The new heart came from a body of its own. This heart was damaged, but so was its new body. When the transplant was complete the body felt different. It didn’t see how hard the brain struggled doing the thinking and pumping the blood at the same time. Some of the tissue rejected the new heart. But other parts took to it. This new body was full again and the brain was happy to have a heart. And the heart was happy to have a brain. The brain thought of ways to repair the heart and the heart was able to pump the blood to the brain that it so desperately needed. If it weren’t for this new damaged heart, the brain would have ceased to function and  the body would have died, leaving just parts, not a functioning whole. And if the heart had no new body it would have remained damaged until it to ceased to exist.

I ‘m just thankful for the transfusion.

The origin of the Kung FU Custodian

In the wake of my last blog, I was feeling a bit complain-y so I've decided to steer clear of complaints this week.  I decided to instead shed some light on the origins of my url for this blog.

For years now I have been using the moniker KungFuCostodian as my xbox live gamer-tag as well as numerous other places where a unique name is required. The name came from my favorite cartoon series as a child: "Hong Kong Phooey." To my 6 year old brain, this cartoon is about a dog who is a janitor at a police station who becomes a super hero who uses karate to defeat his foes. I remember singing the theme song while running around my house at an early age. I don't know what I loved about karate so much, but apparently every other kid in the 90's loved it too. I know a large chunk of the movies I watched with my brothers centered around karate and martial arts... or ninjas. Movies like Three ninjas, Surf ninjas, Three ninjas: 2, Teenage mutant ninja turtles, Three ninjas 3... Ahhhh those were the days.

It wasn't until recently that I watched some of this karate based entertainment as an adult. Watching "Hong Kong Phooey" I can now see that it is clearly a riff on the black-sploitation films of the 1970's, and it's vaguely racist and sexist. The dog/janitor/superhero has the voice of a sole station radio dj and he and his cat sidekick make a complete mockery of martial arts. The only female character on the show is a phone board operator with a jersey accent that would annoy Fran Drescher.

Though I can identify the bias and misrepresentation of these characters I can't honestly say that I care I don't think that this had a profound effect on me growing up, even though it was my favorite cartoon. The thing is that I was a kid. I never heard Hong Kong Phooy's voice as a black guy, I heard my favorite dog super hero. There's a lot of talk about childhood development  in relation to television exposure and what they see on tv. I think tv does has a lot less of an effect on kids than is thought. At least, I think it did on me.

Crime and Punishment

I work in the customer service industry and have for the last five years. I generally do not despise my position behind the counter helping people to pay for their various goods. Many times however my day is soured by rudeness and lack of decency. It is for this reason that I would like to offer some new propositions for a punishment system for rudeness that this world needs badly. I will present a situation that I have encountered and provide an example of the system of punishments for this.

My first instance of note comes from my current job. I work at a convenience store/gas station. This is the most frequent situation that Irks just about everyone who works in my position. A guest will approach the counter swiftly, toss a bill onto the counter, mumble a pump number and sprint for the door. Often times these people cut through a line just to do this. I’m not sure if this sort of behavior is just the case with the purchase of gasoline or if people do it other places. I can’t imagine paying my rent by tossing a handful of cash in the face of my landlord and saying my apartment number as I leave her office. I wonder if these same people toss their insurance card at a doctor and say, “gastric bypass.” This is not socially acceptable behavior and ought to be punished. Here’s how J. I don’t think that there should be a fine of any kind for these people. I would like a more creative solution. I think that we should be allowed to tag these people in the way that scientists tag animals that they are studying. Give them a nice orange tag on their ear or something. This tag should signify to everyone else that this man or woman is in a hurry. They’ve got places to be and don’t have time for trivial things like ensuring that they’ve properly paid for seventy five dollars worth of gas.  So from that point on these people should be prioritized. We will put these people first in all lines and put them on the top of all the lists. Up to this point this doesn’t really seem like a punishment, here’s the catch. Everyone that they pass in line should have the opportunity to punch them right in the face. This face punch would be totally legal and permissible by the law. The passed people would not be required to do any punching, but they would have the legal right to. This will insure that these people will learn what is really worth treating other people with a complete lack of respect.

Now, I have been in a hurry before, but I can’t imagine a situation where in I could act that rude to complete strangers. I have, in my time in the industry, learned to brush off people like this for the most part. I am however still wishing for there to be some kind of universal justice system for people who completely lack courtesy and respect for people whom they do not know.