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.

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.