I enjoy my life.  There’s not much I have to complain about, aside from a pending divorce.  But of the few things about my life that I could actually say suck — and it’s generally a relative concept, as in, “relative to winning a million dollars on the same day a Belgian supermodel falls in love with me, not having a garage is kinda crappy” — there’s one that stands out and truly pains me every day.  It’s the fact that I can’t save the world.  By God, I’ll try my best, but I’m just me.  And the only man who can do it hasn’t come back yet.

But, yes, not being able to fix what’s wrong truly burdens my heart.  I see so much war, crime, bigotry and just general hate in the world, and I want to tell these people that it is the meek, humble and compassionate who shall inherit the earth, not the dictators and warmongers.

But there is something I can help fix, and I’m going to do all in my power to do so.  And you can help.

You all know I’m a single father, and we’re hundreds of miles from our nearest family.  My life revolves around that little girl, and I spend most of my time worrying about her.  When she has the sniffles, my heart aches for her.  When she cries for her “Dedo,” I want to cry too.  All minor, passing afflictions, to be sure, but she’s not just someone who depends on me; she’s part of me.

It’s that build-up that brings me to Katie Fitch, a beautiful little three-year-old from Florence, South Carolina.

See, Katie has hepatoblastoma.  Don’t try to say it, or you might wind up with your tongue in a splint.  But, essentially, it’s a cancerous tumor of the liver.  Cancer.  In a three-year-old.

My next-door neighbor and close friend is a pediatric nurse who deals with cancer patients all the time.  I have no idea how she can see this stuff on a regular basis and be anything more than a basket case for her entire shift — I merely read a story about someone and almost broke down crying in part because of the innocent child being afflicted with such a horror, and also because I can’t do anything about it.

Katie’s family is taking donations; you can contribute directly from the Web site they’ve set up for her.  I ask anyone who can give to do so.  Help make a future for someone who doesn’t even really have a past yet.  I implore you to find some way to scrape up a donation, even if it’s only a few bucks you scraped together by foregoing a cup of coffee, a Big Mac or a pack of cigarettes.  And please, tell your friends and family.

None of us can save the world.  But if everyone tried to save a small slice of it, we wouldn’t just save it — we’d make it infinitely better.

You can read all about young Katie and make a donation at KatieFitch.com.

Do I really look that old?
We often develop close relationships with the people around us at our jobs.  Those relationships, though (in Information Technology, at least) are usually tightly based on alcohol consumption, and not so much on actual personal knowledge of one another.  On my birthday a week ago, at a small celebration in my honor held by my manager and open to my coworkers, a friend speculated on my age.

He guessed 35.

D’oh!

I decided to let him live, but that wasn’t a decision I came to lightly.  I think it was based largely on the fact that there were several witnesses (if you so much as say “cake” in an IT department, you better have experience running with the bulls in Pamplona).

And They Partied On…And On…
I vowed this year that I would make up for last year’s birthday — the only way my 27th could have sucked worse is if someone had kicked me in the cajones, repeatedly, the entire day.  So, with that in mind, the party kicked off on Monday, August 11.  A trip to the beach — the Outer Banks is my new Favorite Place On Earth™ — launched the festivities.  A week of U.S. Olympic triumph, presumably in my honor, then ensued.

We won’t go into all the details — no, there was no debauchery, but there was food, music, general fun to be had by all, and even a $10 prize for finishing third in a beer pong tournament at a local bar.  I finally let the party give up the ghost on Monday, August 18, sometime around 11:45 p.m.  And, I’ve got to say, I think it ended a little too soon.  I had a semi-crappy 19th birthday too, so I still have a little bit of karmic make-up to do.

InvertedMind has, as recently promised, been completely overhauled.  But I’m sure you can see that already.

Here’s what it means for you:

• Archives are gone.  They’ve been replaced with a calendar.
• In addition to categories, posts are now organized with tags.  A “tag cloud” is now present at the top of the right-side menu.
• Design is cleaner and wider, reducing the amount of scrolling necessary to read a post.

There will be more changes in the near future.  Let me know what you like and don’t like.

The site issues put me well behind, but I have posts in the works.  So, while you wait impatiently for my next amazing piece of wisdom (if no one else will stroke my ego, I will), here's a little something for you to chew on.  It needs no build up, and no punch line.  Without further adieu (or hot air from me)…

Fail!

Sorry for the lack of posts the last week or so.  The site's admin section has been broken.  Posting to resume tomorrow.

As you were.

I've always loved the Olympics, because it's always fun being able to watch your country kick the snot out of another one without having to pick up a gun.

The Men's 4×100 Freestyle Relay (swimming) had belonged to the United States for considerably longer than I have been alive until the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.  We also lost in 2004.  Coming into these games, the French team was favored, and their athletes didn't take that position lightly, saying they were going to "smash" (their words, not mine) the U.S. team.

In the words of Bob Costas, "au contraire, mon amie."

The captain of the French team would have had plenty of reason to celebrate — he was part of the team that held the previous record, and their 2008 Olympic team broke it Monday morning in Beijing by nearly four seconds.  Unfortunately for him and his teammates, history doesn't care about second place when it comes to records.  What will be remembered from these games, much to the chagrin of our arrogant "allies" across the pond, is the fact that the United States came from behind in the final 25 meters of the event to take the gold in 3:08.24, just .08 ahead of the French.

All that got "smashed" was a record previously held by the Parisian team.

As a former swimmer (one season, but it counts, dadgummit) and a participant in several of these relays, I can attest to how difficult the event is.  The problem isn't normally the swim itself, but rather your dive for your leg of the relay.  Races can be won and lost by how well someone comes off the blocks (in my case, I didn't "dive" so much as I "smacked").  Monday, though, it was pure guts, as Jason Lezak came from half a body length behind at the final turn to win by about a knuckle, and turned in a leg of just 46.06 seconds — nearly .6 faster than the next best in the entire race, and a swim that ranks as one of the best single legs in 4×100 relay history.  This single event could be the national rallying point to unite two sides of a horribly policially-divided nation, even if just for two weeks.

And, since Bob Costas can turn a French quote around and smash it in their faces like a cream pie, I am going to do the same: Hey, you Frenchies — your mothers were hamsters, and your fathers smelt of elderberries!

Answer me this: how do you read that statement?

Do you see it saying, "any level of effort is good enough, as long as you are trying," or does it say, "doing nothing is not acceptable?"

To me, these two are mutual exclusive when it comes to living as a Christian.  While God understands we are fallible and we will sin, screw up, let him down, and generally not live our lives as we should, the simple fact of the matter is that everything we do should be done to glorify God.  Simply being a good person — i.e., "any level of effort, as long as you try" — will not find you favor with God.  First Corinthians 13:3 says, "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."  In other words, if we do not love God, and do not love our brethren as He loves us, all the good deeds we can do mean absolutely nothing.  Our deeds need to reflect God, but also need to be done directly, actively and clearly glorify Him.

It's not complicated.  All you need to ask is whether you are doing your deeds for God's gain, or for your own.  For, when you die, your deeds for yourself may be remembered on Earth, but are forgotten in the eyes of Heaven.  And if you've spent your life doing seemingly good deeds — giving to charities, working to eradicate disease or developing new technologies to improve the quality of life — and your intentions were never to extend God's reach into the community, your deeds are no better than the evilest of evil — and, therefore, are unacceptable.

The line is a fine one: it's not what you do, it's what is in your heart.  If you have a prideful heart that strives to bring glory to yourself, you will not find the tiniest shred of peace in the eternity you've dealt yourself.  But if you have a humble heart, that of a servant in a life where God is the master, your eternity will be one of peace and unimaginable joy.

It's not what you have done for man, but what you have done for God, that counts.  Because, by doing good deeds for man, you show that man can be compassionate.  By doing good things for God, and letting your deeds for God shine with the glory of the Father, you show that God is Love.

Some of us work stressful jobs, take care of children, head up the P.T.A., have bad golf swings or just generally walk around like we've got a roving pack of termites in our butt cracks.  All those things make us unhealthy.  It's a sad, sad thing that life has come to this, and that we think the only way to feel better is to spend money on things that make claims that they can improve your well-being rapidly.

There is a lot you can do to make yourself feel better without pawning off your first-born, as long as you can accept that it won't happen immediately.  And, of course, there are things you can do for free.  Dumb Little Man has compiled a list of 11 things you can do to feel better without breaking the bank.

This list is a little outdated — it's from way back in April — but there's no expiration on good health.  Well, unless you expire.  Then you're pretty much about as unhealthy as it gets, and then these tips will be of no use to you.  So get to it!  If one of my readers dies, I take a 20-percent traffic hit!

I got out tonight.  It doesn't happen often — the last time I recall getting out with friends was no more recent than early June, if that — and that's fine by me.  First of all, I'm a father now.  No, scratch that…I'm a daddy now, and that more than fulfills my desires in life.  Aside from an impending divorce, things in my life are wonderful.  But it's always a good thing to get out of the house with people whose vocabularies extend beyond the monosyllabic.

We went to a fancy-shmancy place downtown in the state-famous Glenwood South district.  Think of Amsterdam's red-light district, but without the illicit debauchery.  Okay, so if you take away the debauchery, you're pretty much left with the top floor of a college library.  Scratch that comparison.

The place was called The Red Room.  As far as I know, it's still called The Red Room, but I haven't been there for about an hour.  Crazier things have happened.  Anyway, it's one of those places that is as far from a Texas steakhouse as you can get: modern decor, dim lighting, no stuffed animal carcasses on the walls and portions that make Weight Watchers' meals look like a Thanksgiving feast.  The guy sitting next to me ordered — I kid you not — roast duck with bananas drizzled with chocolate.  Thus the name of this post; get your heads out of the gutter, you sick freaks.

We hung around until about 10:00, then went downstairs to a place called Hi5.  Again, a nice place.  A beer, one drunk guy who clearly had passed "three sheets to the wind" right about the time we were placing our food orders upstairs, and 30 minutes of dancing later and it was back to The Red Room — which had transformed itself over the course of half an hour from a modern, high-priced restaurant to a typical college-town bar.

One member of my entourage (we'll call it that because it gives me a significant ego boost) was meeting a friend at Hi5, and he came along with us back to Romper Room.  I mention this not because that part was significant, but because I realized this evening the fine line between a guy dancing because the women are, and dancing waaaaaaay too much.  It's okay for a guy to dance in public given the following conditions: 1) the hands stay below the shoulders at all times unless he is "raising the roof" — and this has to occur at precise times and only during a select group of songs; 2) there must be a beer in his hand at all times; and 3) he must never, never dance to the point where he breaks a sweat in an air-conditioned room. 

Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because we were there with the best-looking women in the place.  Sometimes a guy has to break the rules to please the gals.  But I've got to deduct a point or two based on the fact that the group had dwindled from about nine women and four men to six women and one man (me); when this new guy joined the group, I no longer had the inherent appearance of the ladies' gay friend.  But the testosterone-charged scales were in a precarious balance that was teetering on the edge of over-estrogenation, and it collapsed spectacularly about the time it became obvious to anyone within a 20-foot radius that he had broken a sweat.

I would like it to be known that I think nothing less of him, and he seems to be a pretty cool guy.  Sometimes, in the presence of women, you've got to bite the bullet, put your testicles on a shelf someplace and dance the night away.  Mind you, I refuse and my left knee does too.  You just have to be careful not to cross the line, and all will be well.  But there's a rule here that needs to be remembered in the future: men sweat; women and dancers "glisten."

Other Ramblings

In computer programming, circular dependencies create catastrophic results.  In the District of Columbia, they're called "Democratic Stump Speeches."

Brilliant.

That is how I describe Barrack Obama.  Yes, you are reading InvertedMind and, yes, you read that right.  He is a brilliant, brilliant man.  No one on earth is as clever at distracting Americans from his inability to do anything but pander to the people.

Here's an example: Obama has proposed a second round of tax rebates, $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families, to offset the cost of rising gasoline costs through the end of the year.  Sounds like a good idea, eh?

Slow down, Speed Racer.

This is the same man who has already stated he would raise your taxes.  And don't think it's just your income taxes, either; he wants to increase the "death tax" — if your loved one dies, you get taxed even more on the inheritance, and just because the money changed hands!  So let me get this straight: Obama wants to give out money to the people, who he wants to tax more, so they can foot the bill for the government, an entity that will — if B.O. gets his way — increase its own budget shortfall by $50 billion with the proposed tax rebate.  To simplify things further, he wants to pay you so you can afford to pay him to cover the cost of his original plan to pay you.  It sounds complicated, so it must be a good thing!  Friggin' brilliant.

Oh, and one of the main points Obama has been pushing is balancing the budget.  In a recent independent analysis of his proposed tax changes, the deficit would increase by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years.  People, I implore you: stop being caught up in his charisma and recognize the constant contradictions in what he says.  Our nation depends on it.

InvertedMind's Other Works
Note to all fellow Steelers' fans: The Steel Tradition, which I write for at MVN.com, is moving to www.SteelTradition.com.  Update your bookmarks, and visit regularly.  Your visits will help pay toward Her Cutness's college fund!

That's all I've got for this week, folks.  It's 1:25 a.m.  Maybe you'll get some bonus posts in the next few days.

Cool Crap of the Week is back! I'm hoping to actually do this every week now, so feel free to complain if I don't keep up with it (at least not without a halfway believable excuse).

We've all seen things that were so incredibly pointless — yet entertaining — that they managed to dumb our thoughts down to nothing more than, "that guy has too much time on his hands."  Those sorts of things are the bread and butter of Cool Crap of the Week — this segment is all about highlighting those absolutely nonsensical wastes of perfectly good time that, nonetheless, make you wonder how someone could develop such an amazingly useless skill.

What I came across in the last week does exactly that: Star Wars ASCIImation.  I'm not going to explain; you've just got to see it.

I was having trouble coming up with a good topic for the first weekly installment of The Journey.  Then, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with one of my favorite people, and as I passed along some advice on life, I thought about something my mom once said to me: you can't be happy with anything else until you're happy with you.

The problem most of us face isn't the desire to be happy.  Few people, aside from the unlucky minority who have just totally given up, could ever honestly say that they don't want to be happy.  The hard part is finding out how.  And, the longer you search in vain, the harder it becomes to find the path to your happiness.

Having been through years of depression, and having found my way out of it by no means other than my own overwhelming desire to laugh until I cried again — to live this life, rather than just move from one work day to the next — I feel like I'm at least remotely qualified to say this.

We all think, because of this world we live in today where everything is available instantly, that there is some magical way to find happiness.  Maybe there is, but don't count on it.  The big-ticket item probably isn't going to give you an ounce of long-term happiness.  A vacation, a new house, a new car, having a child…they may bring you happiness now, but they aren't going to fix you.  You're treating the symptom rather than the disease..

Okay, so I haven't mentioned God up to this point, and The Journey is all about my spiritual journey.  So here goes.  God's timing almost always means one thing: the big fix is going to take a long, long time.  God wants us to find happiness in Him, but he also wants us to learn from what valleys we walk through.  Chances are good that he's not going to put a Big, Red Button™ in front of us.  Instead, we're going to have to take baby steps.  He'll reveal a piece of the puzzle here, and another one there, and at the same time he'll make us look back at all the pieces we've already put together to remember where we are.  In the end, it's just foolishness to expect the home run from God when we need to find a way to make a major change in ourselves — in this case, being content with who we are.

Which brings this whole thing around, full circle.  When we're looking for instant happiness, that's something we can buy.  But the moment — the glory — is fleeting.  It's the lessons learned through struggle that will stick with us and continue to bring us happiness for the rest of our lives.  And, to stick with the analogy, no one remembers the home run forever.  They just happen way too often to be worth remembering.  But, when you're down by one run in the bottom of the ninth, you have a runner on third, and the pitcher is stepping up to the plate, everyone will remember the little tap down the first-base line that gave just enough time for the runner to make it home.

Much in the same way, keep this in mind when it comes to learning how to be happy with who you are: legends aren't made with dime-a-dozen home runs.  Your best choice isn't always swinging for the upper deck.  Sometimes you've got to bunt.