Okay, so today is my 30th birthday.  Three decades following my birth, I sit here, still at the starting line of a new life as I remarried just 43 days ago.  In the last decade alone I got my first “real” job when I was hired by Electronic Payment Exchange in New Castle, Delaware as a Web Developer; I moved into a place that was truly “my own,” at first sharing it only with my first wife and then our daughter, as well — had my first kid, obviously, so that’s another item on this list; I moved more than an afternoon’s drive away from my brother for the first time in my life on June 9th, 2007 when I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina; I became separated from and subsequently divorced my first wife; saw my daughter off to her first day of (pre)school; met, courted, pined for, fell deeply in love with, temporarily “lost” and then totally and wholly found, engaged and married Christina; and here I am today…

…Saying a final and fond “farewell” to InvertedMind, a site I created and have maintained with waxing and waning readership over the last 10 years.

Why?  Well, for one thing, just count the posts over the last three years.  Also, I created a persona, not very different at all from the person I am in “real life,” as if the site hasn’t been a large part of my “real life” all along.  Over the last 10 years, I have grown and changed as a person, hopefully mostly for the better, while InvertedMind has stayed the same.  It’s stale and does not accurately reflect “me” anymore.

But not all is lost.  You all know I am outstandingly opinionated, often times to my own detriment.  But I need to get my thoughts out someplace, so there has to be an outlet.  While I am not yet prepared to give specifics, I can say that there is most definitely a replacement for InvertedMind.  It’s just that I am opting for a new, fresh start.  And that is precisely the reason I am creating Caffeine and Hot Sauce!, a new blog that will have the freedom to grow and change with me, because it’s not going to serve as a sort of “alter ego,” but rather simply an outlet for my thoughts and opinions.  Its topics will be varied, from my faith in Christ our Savior to the Steelers to NASCAR to politics to the completely outrageous in life and in my mind.

Thirty is not an end, although I am closing the final paragraph on a chapter of my life that has spanned 33 percent of it thus far.  Instead, it’s a very new and very exciting beginning to many chapters in my life.  See you there.

It’s no secret, my disdain for politicians.  I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, a Gree, a Red, or if you’re just yellow.  If you are a career politician, the chances are pretty good that I don’t like you — or, at least, what you represent while you are doing your job.

No, I have nothing against government, and I believe all nations should be governed by democratic law (not Democratic law, but that’s another story).  But, when the constitution was written, it was done with the express intent that the nation’s rulers would be civilians — that Farmer Joe, Mechanic Bill, Engineer Sarah and Unemployed Mildred would have an opportunity to run for office.

It doesn’t work that way now, though.  The cost to do so is so prohibitive that only people with either a) immense popularity (Jesse “The Body” Ventura), immense quantities of cash (Al Gore) or both (Arnold Schwarzenegger) can put up any fight at all.  Just look at the presidential race last year, where Barack Obama’s campaign outspent John McCain’s campaign by so much, that the difference in spending between the two camps exceed the maximum ever previously spent on a campaign.  For a complete nobody to raise that kind of scratch is nigh on impossible.

Now, the saying states that “with great power comes great responsibility.”  Understand that, and this one fact: the federal government exists to serve the people.  Yes, they are our leaders, but their lead was intended to be one in which all decisions made were to be for the purpose of improving the overall quality of life for the citizens of the United States.

There are, however, a number of people who have found grasping that concept quite elusive.  And I give you Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as Exhibit A.

While speaking in public with Briggadier General Michael Walsh, she admonished him for calling her “ma’am” rather than “senator.”  The Army code of etiquette explicitly states that “ma’am” is a perfectly acceptable way to address a female senior official.

Was it protocol to refer to her as “senator?”  Absolutely not.  Her reasoning was (and I quote the little ankle-biting twerp with an over-inflated ego): “It’s just a thing, I worked so hard to get that title.”

Need I remind the senator that it is citizens such as Gen. Walsh who vote members of Congress into their jobs?  Is she so out of touch with the general public that she thinks we are all beneath her?

This is a shining example of why electing career politicians is so damaging to fabric of this nation.  She, and essentially all of her colleagues, are out of touch with the people who make up the vast majority of the population: the working middle class.  The people who generally get paid way too little to do way too much, so people in her “upper” class can make more and work less — and show absolutely no respect for it.

What amazes me more than the gall these people have is the short memories of the voting population.  These moments of glaring idiocy are completely forgotten during an election year because of all the promises being made that we, during any other year, know will never come close to being fulfilled.  Are we that blind?  That stupid?  That easily misled?

I urge you: during the next election cycle, find the candidate — Red or Blue — who has a genuine passion for the United States, not a genuine passion for power, and vote for them.  Because, as oxymoronic as it sounds, the best leaders are those who are reluctant to lead.

A story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reinforcing a growing, frightening trend in school systems around the country: students are not allowed to completely and utterly fail.

The concept, according to the article, is to “give kids a chance” to recover when they’ve screwed up for an entire grading period, giving them a grade no lower than 50 percent on any quiz, test or exam.  That means that they never are lower than 50 percent away from perfection, even if they answered the question, “What is Sacajawea?” with “A bag full of jawea.”  (I wish I could claim ownership of that joke, because it’s flippin’ hilarious, but I can’t.)  While giving kids a second chance is a good idea in theory, it’s a horrible, horrible idea in real life.

Now, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to want to lynch me here, but I believe in letting a child fail.  One of the most important skills a person can learn to prepare themself for adulthood is the ability to cope with failure.  Outside of chemical imbalances, I would bet my life that the number one cause of depression in teens is their inability to understand that screwing up happens, and the only way to fix the problem is to try harder.

The best analogy here is the U.S. automakers.  They’ve royally screwed up their standing in the world auto market by producing inferior products on the premise of “status quo is good enough.”  What ultimately happened is they produced crap long enough to allow Japanese makers to surpass them in quality and take a near-stranglehold on U.S. auto sales.  Now, they carry such a stigma of crap that they’re struggling to regain market share in an economy that is refusing to buy the overweight, fuel-consuming vehicles that have been a trademark of U.S. design for decades, even when the cars are now as good or better than their foreign counterparts.

But, rather than letting the companies fail or allowing one of the major manufacturers to purchase another, the U.S. government is proposing ways to bail them out.  In other words, the people who are supposed to be looking out for the better good of the U.S. are recommending we simply scold the problem child of the economy who broke the neighbor’s window, and then pay to replace the window with no consequence to the one(s) who created their own problems to begin with.  The only message that sends is, “we can’t fail, no matter how hard we try.”  And, in doing so, the government is in no way giving the automakers a reason to fix the disease of failure.

It works the same way with kids: if you coddle them while they can still be coddled, they won’t have a clue as to how to fix their real failures when they are adults and will be held fully accountable for their actions.  Under the sudden stress of failure, a situation in which they never found themselves as a child, I’d wager most of them will crack.

So, by telling a kid they will receive half-credit for no effort, we are setting them up to expect that.  If a recent high-school graduate gets his first job after receiving his diploma at a school where zero equals half, do you think that kid is going to put in a full day’s hard work?  Probably not, because they’ve been taught that “good enough is good enough.”  But, in the real world, there are no free rides (except for some shady people under the current, poorly managed welfare system, but that’s a different issue altogether).  Great gets you a promotion, good enough gets you a paycheck until someone better than you comes along, and expecting a second chance lands you in the unemployment line.  That’s how the real world works, and school is supposed to prepare us to handle the everyday challenges we will face in life.  This does exactly the opposite, and contributes to the sense of entitlement so many people have in the world today.

News flash: nobody owes you anything.  I don’t care if you are black or Native American looking for reparations.  I don’t care if you are earning an adequate wage with a merely adequate effort.  No one owes you a dime for what happened to your ancestors, and no one owes you a pat on the back for simply doing your job.  Heck, no one even owes you a promotion for going above and beyond; this is a free-enterprise economy, and if you don’t like your situation, you are responsible for making it better.  Not your boss, not your neighbor and certainly not Uncle Sam.  And in order to be prepared to improve your life, you need to be challenged in school, not pampered.

There’s another downside to this mountain-like issue, too: by flattening out failure, you are cheapening success.  If it isn’t as hard to succeed, people won’t give it the extra effort.  And, thanks to decades of caving to minority factions of the population who think giving a kid an F is harmful to his or her “fragile” ego and to those who believe that spanking lowers self esteem, we’ve spiraled rapidly into nearly unfightable crime and standings in math, science and language that are so low in the developed, modern world that it’s a wonder we’re still even considered a world power.  By attempting to bring up the average through artificial means, we’ve dumbed down the top end of the supply of intelligence.

Bottom line: the failures of those at the bottom end — and I say this with heartfelt apologies (but no remorse) even about the ones who give it an honest effort but still struggle — should not carry a bill that is paid for by those at the top end.  Those who excel should not be hindered by those who don’t.  Period.

I hate English.

Anyone who knows me can see the absurdity in that statement.  After all, Inverted Mind majored in English.  Heck, I’ve been a published writer for years, in subjects ranging from computer games to software development articles to sports to…well…me.  I wrote for a newspaper.  I was editor-in-chief of a small, Web-based marketing publication.  Had I not chosen to go down the software engineering path instead, I would be a professional writer today.

But let’s face it: our language is absurd.  Sure, the grammatical constructs make the most sense of any language on earth.  Of course, the relaxed standards to which we adhere in this nation today have all but eliminated poetry that would be considered among history’s finest.  But screw poetry.  While I consider myself to be well-versed (pun intended) in the intricacies of poetry, it’s linguistic fluff.  I’m talking about the way we allow words to be spelled in America.  That’s where my beef with the language lies.

What got me thinking about this was a post on a sports site I frequent, pointing out how many wild variations there are in the names of athletes.  I give you my response — verbatim, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, Lorem Ipsum and a whole bunch of other Latin words:

Aaron Rodgers is 0-2 in the Phonetic Names competition: a double-A and a superfluous D.

That said, American English is so hard because we’ve mashed together various combinations of Olde English, New(e?) English, Spanish, French, German and, of course, Latin. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U (as in “vacuum”) and Z can be doubled but make the same sound as they would all by their lonesome; C, G and J can be hard or soft, and it’s not a medical condition; H makes other letters do weird things (CH, GH, PH, RH, SH, TH, WH, ZH); C, K, CK, KK, Q and QU can all sound the same — sometimes; and don’t get me started on dangling participles. And that’s not what you think it is, you perverts.

Welcome to the melting pot, where we can’t decide on a national language, our PRIMARY language is harder to learn than pi to 500 decimal places, and we all taste like chicken.

This is Mike from The Steel Tradition, signing off.

(I majored in English; sue me.)

This has actually led me to create a new category on this site that I’m going to call So To Speak in which I will discuss the insanities and inanities of the English language.  Seriously, I could write a book on this.  But I won’t, because it’s been done, and conforming isn’t exactly my style.  I value my individuality, just like the other six billion people on the planet.

Wait…that doesn’t sound right…

The Audacity of Hope?  More like Hopeless Audacity.

The two primary non-bashing talking points of the Obama campaign have been “change” and “youth.”  Barack Obama is 47 years old, and has used his age as a weapon to attack the McCain campaign.  Then he picked a 66-year-old senator as his running mate — a guy who is just six years younger than John McCain.  Youth?  Out the window.

Then the Obama campaign — and his “independent” supporters, the so-called unbiased media — had the audacity (you like how I worked that in, don’t you?) to rip into McCain’s vice-presidential selection of 44-year-old Sarah Palin, saying she was too young and inexperienced.  Well, age can’t be a problem, since the three-year difference between them would be, in statistical terms, inconsequential.  And to attack her experience?  Okay, so she hasn’t been in politics as long.  But she governed first over a town, then over a state.  What have you governed over, Mr. Obama?  A campaign?  Being a senator is hardly governing; in fact, you have no constituents, you merely have a region within a state whom you represent.  You have no power, no authority, beyond your meager vote in the senate.  And, when senate decisions are split almost entirely down party lines, your vote doesn’t mean crap.

Palin, on the other hand, has had to oversea an entire state, and to bear the brunt of any bad press that may befall the Alaskan government.  See, the beauty of being a senator or a representative is that you don’t have to be the face of a failure; you vote, move merrily on your way, and then blame the other party if things don’t go your way.  But, as a governor, Palin became the face of a state — a state that is no less than an equal to any other state, regardless of how many people reside there.  She put herself in harm’s way; she doesn’t have an army of fellow party members to laugh or cry with.

Okay, so the youth-and-experience is a pile of bull excrement.  What about change?  John McCain has 26 years of experience as a politician.  The Obama camp has attacked this fact, stating that their candidate hasn’t been in Washington very long, and hasn’t been in town long enough to have become a true politician.  Well, Mr. Obama, your votes are entirely along Democratic party lines.  Where, Barack, is the change?

Not convinced yet?  Okay, I’ve got more.  This man touting the fact that he hasn’t spent much time in Washington went ahead and picked a 36-year political veteran as his running mate.  And Joe Biden has made a career of toeing the party line, too.  Did great things for Delaware?  I lived there.  The state has been on the verge of bankruptcy for about two decades, if not longer.  And don’t get me started on the bunch of whack-jobs who have run the state for the last 12 years.  A foreign policy expert?  The same guy whose cries to bring the troops home only grew louder as the surge in Iraq began to show true dividends?  Don’t forget, Iraq was one of the main talking points during the primaries.  But things on the ground have stabilized — a sign that current strategy is becoming more and more successful — and the topic has suddenly falledn off the political radar.

Palin, on the other hand, has made a history (albeit a very short one) of standing up against traditional government beaurocracy.  Party lines be damned, she’s done what is best for her state.  She’s a maverick in the same mold as her partner in this election, but maintains her conservativism.  She is exactly what the Republican party needed to win in November.  The other party now knows that.

And now they have to find a whole different platform on which to stand.

There's a certain sense of vulnerability late at night that you can't help but feel when you are the lone adult in the house.  Unless you are asleep, you are infinitely more aware of yourself and everything around you.  The silence augments the slightest bump in the darkness, and lightning can wake you — abruptly — from the deepest slumber.

About 25 minutes ago, a ridiculously severe thunderstorm passed directly over Raleigh, specifically targeting the eastern side of the suburbs outside the beltline.  In other words, the very heart of the storm passed directly over my house.  I was just about completely out cold when the first flash woke me.  The storm was probably still a good five miles northwest, and I thought little of it.  I closed my eyes…

Flash.                      Rumble.

Flash.                 Rumble.

Flash.        Ruuuuuuuuumble.

FLASH-BOOM.

A booming crack of thunder roared up so quickly after the flash that the two were impossible to separate.  While far from the worst thunder I've ever heard (that title is reserved for the mid-summer thunderstorms over the plains of Texas that literally can shake the concrete slab most of the houses there rest upon), it was enough to make me instinctively reach my hands to my ears.  There was no rumble, just a sharp crack, the very sound of which seemed to actually be visible for just that fleeting moment in the flash on which it was borne.

It's not the thunder itself that scared me.  I've grown up fascinated, nearly obsessed, with severe weather.  Tornadoes intrigue me like nothing else in the universe.   No, it wasn't the thunder, or the lightning, or the storm as a whole.  It was, in that instant, being suddenly and minutely aware of the world just outside my house: tall trees, wide-open skies, and the hill upon which my home resides, making it the tallest structure on the street.  Every possible threat of nature to me, my home and — above all else — my daughter was revealed to me in stark contrast as the thunder roared outside.

As adults, these are the monsters in our closets.  It's the fear of a home invasion, or a fire, or a flood, or any other disaster beyond our control that can strike without warning and do devastating damage.  It's our role as protectors that often leaves us feeling entirely and utterly defenseless in the knowledge that we can only control our own bodies, and nothing more.  All the promises we make to ourselves and our families — that we'll never let anything happen to them, that they are safe with us, that there's nothing to be afraid of — are entirely fantastical.  While saying those things may be comforting not just to those at whom we direct them, but also to ourselves, there's a moment each time you stare into the face of danger that you realize one of two things: either God is in control of your life, or no one is.  No matter how much we try to buy into the illusion of control, the complete lack of it becomes obvious to each of us in the presence of a mortal threat.

For me, God is in control.  No matter how reluctant I am most of the time to admit that fact, it is infinitely more satisfying to know that I don't have to cover my eyes with the fantasy that I have to be the grand protector of all.

What this is driving toward is simple: the same crack of thunder than made my heart skip one beat before pounding out a hundred more than it should have also woke Kaylee, scaring her to death.  As frightening as the known threats can be as an adult, it is undoubtedly the fear of the unknown threat as a child that is the worst thrill known to man.  In a span of time equal to the instant I became aware of the dangers outside my door, I forgot them, at least momentarily.  I was down the stairs and had her in my arms in a period of time that seemed so tightly compressed that it was almost as if I was transported instantly from beneath my own covers to her bedside. 

I am not my daughter's protector; God is.  But, to her, I am the physical manifestation of His loving hands.  I am the one she looks for at every moment of uneasiness, and it is my grasp that calms her again.  As the one she perceives as her protector, the urgency of "being there" brings what feels to me like an out-of-body experience.  When her fever spiked in November to over 105 degrees, I wrote here the next day that I stepped out of myself, out of "dad mode," and instantly separated myself from the emotion of the situation.  It was purely instinctive, knowing that I was going to be of best use to her if I was able to think as the rational protector rather than the emotional parent.  Again, tonight, I stepped outside myself momentarily and snatched her from the grasp of her own fears.

But then, as we sank into the couch, I became dad again.  I became a frightened, vulnerable man holding a frightened, vulnerable child.  In that moment, I felt for the first time in more than half my life the frightened longing for my own parents, who long ago calmed my fears just as I calmed those of my child.  And I came to the realization that my mother and father undoubtedly must have felt the same longings, the same fears, and the same incomprehensible feeling of being so infinitesimally small in a world filled with so many enormous dangers.  In that moment, I finally and truly felt like I had grown into an adult, but at the same time I became a child again.

Because, as I sat there comforting my daughter as she drifted back to sleep, my daughter laid there comforting me.