Compassionate Curmudgeon

Compassionate Curmudgeon


First let me state for the record that I am neither a Satanist nor a Buddhist. I find religion to be a fascinating phenomenon and try to find out as much as possible about it. Every religion, epsecially the ones that are more philosophies than religions, says something about the human race.


I started reading two books recently: The Devil's Notebook by Anton Szandor LaVey and The Art of Happiness by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. Anton LaVey, was the founder of the Church of Satan. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Tibetan sect of Buddhism.


These books and the men who wrote them and the teachings they try to exemplify come from pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. LaVey's Satanism is all about being a jerk if it suits you. Tibetan Buddhism, on the other hand, espouses loving kindness.


Despite these opposite approaches, I found myself nodding my head and silently agreeing with much of what both books had to say. This has led me to identify my own philosophical position: I am a Compassionate Curmudgeon.


My basic worldview can be summarized as follows:
I wish the human populace of the world well and I wish it well away from me.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This Part 3

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This Part 3: Garage Door Story

A more recent one. I won't say exactly when. I had to go to work at the Burrito Gong by ten in the morning. My dad had parked in the garage the previous night.

We went out to the garage on time, but then the garage door refused to open. After some investigation it is found out that the garage door is eletric and the circuit breaker for the garages had been tripped. The circuit breaker was in the apartment complex's central office which was locked and unmanned.

I did eventually get to the Burrito gong, after calling a relative who had moved to the neighborhood for a ride, and worked my lunch shift. My dad did find the manual over-ride for the garage door opener, which involves turning the key that normally triggers the electric motor really hard until a pull cord comes out, so I got picked up on time.

Then I worked an evening shift at an Italian restaurant where I bus boy. It was my first day to work with a new bus boy and I said it ought to be a slow evening and gave a sensible sounding reason. It was anything but.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This Part 2: The Pheasant Story

I really did have to walk five miles through the snow to get to school. Just once, though, not every day.

I was in tenth grade and going to a charter school way out in the boonies, about five miles from my house. I had missed the bus for the third time that week and knew my stepdad would be totally steamed if I came home for a ride. I didn't have my wallet with me, so I had no money to take the city bus. Entirely skipping that day of school simply never occurred to me. So, I started walking.

This was early in December. It wasn't snowing right then, but there was snow on the ground. I mentioned that it was about five miles, but did I mention that most of it was up hill?

Somewhere as you head from the city to out in the boonies, you run out of sidewalk. At about the point that this happens, a bird starts walkling alongside me. I am not an ornithologist, I have no idea what it is. It looks a little like a quail and is brightly colored kinda like a rooster.

It freeks me out to have this bird walking alongside me, so I try to shoo it away with the hardcover book I was carrying under my arm. In response to this, the bird starts pecking at my shoe. I'm kinda frozen, afraid that if I run that will make it go for my face. Eventually someone comes along and distracts the bird long enough for me to get away. I ask him what kind of bird it was and he tells me it's a male pheasant.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This Part 1: Off To School

Actually I doubt my mama ever said there'd be days like some of these. She is a prophetess and seer of the first order, but some things are so unlikely that they can not be predicted.


Like the first day of eighth grade. I knew where my morning bus stop was because it should be the same as for when I was in seventh grade. I knew what day the first day of school was. Somehow though, I never went through the orientation that should have occured before the first day of school. As far as I know they simply never sent us the information about when orientation was and so on.


So, I'm walking to the bus stop, and suddenly I see, I'm heading towards a giant ravening wolf, or maybe it was a German shephard, but anyways I'm heading towards it, and it's heading towards me, and it's not on a leash, and I'm very phobic about dogs. I duck down a side street and reroute a couple blcoks out of my way and make it to the bus stop on time.


Then when I try to get on the bus, the bus driver quite naturally asks to see my student ID. Now, one of the important things about the orientation process is that at the end, you have a student ID. Since I didn't go to orientation, I had no student ID. The bus driver refused to allow me to board the bus. This was in the pre-Colombine days, but some schools and bus drivers have always been more security minded than others.


I had an aunt living a couple of blocks away from the school bus stop, so I went over there and called home to tell my stepdad the story and get a ride to school. Not an auspicious start to the school year.