Being Bruno

Unto the point of shaking.

(Reuters) – A former British soldier killed himself after losing his life savings in an alleged $50 billion fraud run by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff, the dead man’s son said

Madoff, is free! living in luxury, protected by the government.

Madoff is FREE! 50 billion dollar scam. Sending jewelry to friends.

Madoff is FREE!

He may get a slap on the wrist, I bet he gets to keep his home and jewelry and cars, Ruin doesn’t touch him.

Madoff, smiles.

http://www.1010wins.com/PETA-Uses-KKK-Imagery-at-Dog-Show-Protest/3818935

AKC = KKK

Hmmm.

Where in our founding documents does it say we are a democracy?

Declaration of independence?

Articles of confederation?

Bill of rights?

anybody,,, anybody?

A couple of days ago I had a bout of the snippy means. I didn’t like it at all, I was out looking to be offended then to defend myself in as biting a way as I could. There was a desire to devastate, not complete total destruction, but to leave a whimpering bloody mess, emotionally. I think I was successful in combating this urge, and Thank You God, it only lasted about one day. What has come out of this illness though was an observation / realization that we have become a society that views the snippy means as a valid form of communication and indeed a normal, bold, truthful, witty way to live.

We hear these “witticisms” from everywhere around us, these childlike blurts of power or position posturing phrases are spit out from our government leaders, are blurted out from the pulpits of our religious institutions, are ubiquitous in our newspapers, literature, television, music, and film.

These “witty” attacks on our fellow humans are so pervasive I doubt that we even notice them. I would dare to say that we no longer notice our own use of them and indeed would find it hard to have wit without them.

My mother has had a case of the snippy means ever since, well occasionally since menopause (more specifically during), but more specifically since my sister in law got ahold of EST and “honesty”, more specifically “just being honest in how I feel” itis. This case of snippy means has gotten real strong in the last few years since she became addicted to the television, and I suspect getting older and becoming a widow. Now I suspect her fears are adding to this illness, and as I write this I suspect that many of us use the snippy means to lash out in our fears of rejection or being alone or different or uncared for. My question really though is how does one respond to the snippy means, not our own, but the snippy means that are directed toward us? In a world where these responses are not just verbal but happen in stores on the roads, everywhere in some way or other. Retaliation is a built in response, when I was younger I would often find myself giving in to the desire to retaliate, to bite back, to say, essentially “oh yeah, well then take that!” in a battle of wit, word, action, to prove myself a better, or “I am not going to be taken advantage of” mentality.

I don’t think there is any one answer. 

I wish we still had heros though, Superman, The Lone Ranger, Jesus Christ, the simple heros who lived an example that led toward a kind caring civilization that embraced justice over rightness. But alas the newer versions of these heros are more concerned with rightness than justice, but justice and just behavior has changed meaning in our lexicon, from a quality of being fair and reasonable, or a concern for peace and a genuine respect for people, to one of revenge, making sure I get mine.

Peace

Bruno

Finding Peace

The end of the rainbow, Finally getting there, arrival. There is no there, there.

I don’t know if peace can be found as a destination, I really doubt that it can and am beginning to get glimpses of it on the journey. Yesterday was a trying day, the paint wasn’t flowing from the brushes, my arms wouldn’t do what I wanted, I hadn’t slept well (haven’t slept well in ages really) the day took longer than I expected, in everything. I kept running out of time,, or felt like I was running out of time, I was feeling pressed by everything about and around me. There were several times I just said “cancel everything, I can’t cope” to myself, and I am glad I only said it to myself. Because.

I found moments of peace, As the day was drawing to evening and I was rushing to get dinner ready, really feeling pressed and a failure. Rushing about the kitchen, wanting quiet, something that seldom (read never) happens when mom is home because the TV is always on, I heard “you old poop” come from the TV. “On Golden Pond” was on TCM. Immediately a ray of light forced its way through the dark clouds that obscured peace yesterday. This is far from what I would call a happy movie, it is full of trauma, and full of victories. But it is full of life, and I realized as I was getting supper ready, how blessed I am, not in the very real way of being able to prepare a nice dinner for my family, but in having people around me that I love and care for. I sat, when I could, and watched snippets of the film, I saw myself growing older with all its problems, and I saw my beloved with all his problems as he grows older, and I loved every one of those problems with and for him. I loved them because I saw, that no matter those problems or his feelings of insecurity or being unsure, he is still the man I love, and how blessed I am to have him in my life for whatever time I get to have him in my life. And, I realized that there is a completeness in my life because of him. Completeness not in the sense of arrival, but the journey, the rough difficult journey of life, with all it’s bad moments and troubles, is okay, because there will be times when I can see his smile break through, when he doesn’t know I am watching him and not the TV. When I look through the furrowed brow and troubled exterior, and see in the depth of his eyes the great beauty of his soul, of who he is and was made to be. My beloved unfettered gives me great joy and peace. I know that life has layered him with all the other stuff, but I am blessed because I can see, and do see, and will always see the clarity of his soul. The journey is complete not because it is done, but because I get to love.

That is where peace lies, in the journey, when it all doesn’t fade away. It is all there, still, will always be there, and I love, The troubles, the traumas of life will still be there, the injustice and wrongs will be there, the illness and pain will be there, but so will the occasional smile, exuberance, discovery, tenderness, joy, victory, and most of all love. Life will go on, and what a gift that can be. The cool morning air calls me, I think I will dance today, probably not, but maybe, just maybe, I will get to step outside of the failures of what should, and revel in the joy of what is, and find peace on the journey, together.

What silliness life is, what a joy to see it.

Language

The importance of language has been thrust upon me lately, well actually over the past several years. The root of words, where they came from, what they meant, what they are believed to mean now, what they are currently accepted as meaning. It as if I am watching the tower of babel be reconstructed.

In politically correct (a term and belief system I hate) circles language has taken on the form of mine fields to be carefully wandered through, but, I believe, serve mostly as barriers to the goals hoped for. That is unless the goal is to fall through the looking glass and spend eternity being led by the March hare in a game of absurdities in language translation.

We as a culture have taken on a relativist position on language, setting the bar of definition on some bizarre sliding scale determined by,, well by who knows what. Popular culture sets what words mean and the education system, for the most part, in its desire to be relevant and prove it’s “cool” is accepting the terms of the lowest common denominator of
language use, and promoting these definitions as valid. And, well language isn’t the only place we have taken these liberties, these liberties without responsibilities run rampant throughout culture. But today I want to focus on language, one of the means by which we communicate with other human beings. The particular area is one of the language of offense and “correctness”.

Offensive language has taken on a new vastness of meaning of late. This is one of those looking glass moments, where truly offensive language is used and considered to mean nothing more than an accepted slang descriptive, an exclamation, the “reclaiming” of a previous derogatory term as one of pride, etc,,, what ever we want it to mean by whom ever we are communicating with. I have heard this is valuable because it takes away the “taboo” of the word and renders it harmless, unable to cause offense. However the reality is that this is a fluid situation, it all depends on who, or what group is using that particular word, and in what context, or situation, etc. The rendering harmless of the offensive word or phrase is false, the word is still able to cause hurt or pain if used by the wrong person, in the wrong situation, in the wrong sentence. The word has not changed universally and so becomes a weapon of division. If one group uses the previously offensive word and claims it as “affection” (a gentle feeling of fondness or liking) but takes “offense” (1. A breach of rule or law… 2 annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one’s standards or principals..2 an attack) when someone outside the accepted group uses it, then an Us vs. Them situation is set up and defended without logic. This is one of those minefield moments, It becomes impossible to openly communicate in a valuable fashion when the parties are on different playing fields were language and language usage is concerned. The changing of the meaning of words becomes a way of hampering progress, of setting up mazes, of taking power over an opponent. This is especially true when the words that are taboo for one party to use, are observably used by the other party in affectionate or positive terms.

Political correctness has set a new standard of taboo (a social or religious custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or association with a particular person, place, or thing) on language. While I am all for “inclusive” (not excluding any section of society or any party involved in something) language (inclusive language,,,,deliberately non sexist, esp. Avoiding the use of masculine pronouns to cover both men and women) I feel we have fallen through the looking glass again. There is some strange feeling that rewriting history (yes there was a time when in university when you could hear herstory used to replace history) to include parties who we do not know were involved in something, or to eliminate facts that we think, in our superiority, might bring offense or might disturb the hearer of such history. Words such as “history” and “human” are being removed from texts because of the gender similarity of parts of the word. Human is being replaced by “person” or “person-hood” (look it up). Now I can accept person when used as a neutral in descriptives such as ‘salesperson’ ‘chairperson’ etc, but when used in stead of human, I do think we are getting quite queer, and way off the mark of meaning. When we start rabidly changing poetry, history, literature to create some genderless gelatinous mess, we begin to expose the mad tea party we willingly have gotten involved in. A world were up is down, nothing means anything and everything means nothing, and all history and language is cut loose from any point of reference. We expose our feelings of superiority, and drag ourselves down to the muck of meaninglessness when we refuse to teach and learn.

Perhaps I am an old codger, but queer does not describe my sexuality, I refuse to eat or watch anything that is “the shit” and I am a person in some situations but strive to be human in all.
Peace

“Terrorism” is all the rage these days. Terrorism is designed to inflict fear and damage were necessary to get a desired result.  While the country throws vast resources fighting terrorism at home and abroad, something akin to terrorism is legal in these United States of America, but it is being performed by a corporation, and usually against citizens who don’t have a great amount of resources to fight back.  Here’s my story of a corporation inflicting “fear and damage to get a desired result.”

In my experience TRS Recovery Services of Houston TX, a division of TeleCheck, appears to be a great practioner of  the art of striking fear and terror into those they, by their self-created definitions, deem to be the enemy.  They are inflicting it on me. Linens N Things is also part of what appears to me to be this campaign.  There appears to be no end; it goes on and on.

TRS Recovery Services of Houston TX, is threatening me with affecting my ability to write a check at over 300,000 TeleCheck member stores, unless I pay this debt in full. Now I did not incur this debt, my names were on the check, and Linens N Things accepted these checks, without my ID, without verification that the account was valid or open or even existed. Now Linens N Things wants their money for checks they accepted from someone, not me, and they want it from me. TeleCheck the service they hire to guarantee checks are good, obviously, is coming after me and they want it done their way,, ,no other way, THEIR WAY! That is what I was told on the phone, “You will have the affidavit signed and notarized on TRS affidavit or we will continue to proceed with collection activity for this debt and limit your ability to write checks or open checking accounts” Sounds like a threat to me. Now lest you say just prove your innocence and all will stop,, they can’t be that bad!! Ah dear reader how innocent of you. I have sent them the documents at least 3 times now, that have been accepted by all other reasonable companies. The letter from the bank, the police report on the stolen checks, the affidavit for the bank’s fraud department, the FTC report number, in fact the last faxed communication with them was 15 pages of documentation But not the affidavit on their specific little form. Just do it you say, how many affidavits does their need to be? How much should I pay for their refusal to make it easy to report stolen checks. I have already spent over $1,000.00 on responding to the theft of checks, TeleCheck does not make it easy,, try finding a number to call, try talking to a human,, not easy if at all possible, and the time sink this is, is amazing.

You see, I had ordered checks and they somehow along the way got stolen. I NEVER received them. When I saw that Wall-Mart had processed two electronic checks (verified by TeleCheck) , I immediately informed the bank and put a stop on all activity,, that should stop the acceptance of checks. NOT! The next day I saw that a check had been accepted at Target in Bakersfield CA. (I live a couple hundred miles from there) and this was a paper actual check, I immediately called the bank, closed the account (again that should stop the criminals) and filed a report with my local police department. I then had to sign an affidavit with the bank that I did not authorize the use of the account and did not in any way benefit from the transactions. The bank then did their investigation and found, indeed, I did not write these checks. I then followed the advise of the Police and the Bank and my congressional office and filed a report with the FTC, and the credit reporting agencies. Then being the person I am, I then looked up check approval companies and tried to call them to let them know that this account had stolen checks and had been closed, I asked for a do not accept on these checks for the two companies I was able to get to and talk to a human. Well dear reader you will be dismayed to learn, that one told me this was not possible,,, and the other was quite nice and told me they would do so. I could not talk to a human at TeleCheck, I got a mechanical loop of pressing numbers referring me to their web site, or press # to hear instructions by voice. When going to their web site,, the fraud reporting site was not working!! I TRIED FOR 3 DAYS to get on the web site and get the information, I tried to call back and pretend I didn’t have touch tone phone, to see if I could cycle to a human,, ,no just hung up on. It appears TeleCheck is a company that believes the public exists to serve them. One time on calling (mistake never call a collection company thinking you are doing the right thing, their people are out to make life miserable for anybody that contacts them) I tried explaining that I had no access to the account as it was closed for over a month and it was not my account and that the law in California stated a police report was proof that I had filed a theft of checks, only to be told they were not in California and that in TEXAS it was not good enough! That I had to do it THEIR way.

Now let me tell you how TeleCheck does their check approval services, as I was told by one humanoid. They report on the basis of checks that they get that are refused, not based on bank information, not based on credit reporting, but on bad checks they receive, This is the good part for those that use the service and for those out there who are unsuspecting about fraud. They report on account numbers and drivers license numbers, The account number used was closed at least 12 days before Linens N Things accepted one of these checks, due to ,,,,, ready ACCOUNT CLOSED! The drivers license used if any (I don’t know as I have no access to the checks as the account is not mine,, ,it was,,, CLOSED) were not mine, they were false ID’s,, do you know what your drivers license number is being used for, or reported against? One would think that this would get the attention of TeleCheck and Linen’s N Things, but NO they continued to accept and approve these checks on at least two further occasions! One 5 days later the next a full week after the first!! Sounds like a good system to me, especially if you want to encourage fraud. One would think, that if the first check was returned account closed,, that should be a sign,, but I guess not. So Linen’s N Things accepted the first check on June 25, 2007 the account had a stop put on it on June 11, 2007 and was closed by 10:00 am Pacific Time on June 13, 2007. Subsequent checks for the amounts of just under $200.00 dollars were accepted and approved by Linen’s N Things on June 30, 2007 and July 2, 2007. Now the first I heard of these transactions was on July 12, 2007 with a collection notice that demanded payment with late fees added be mailed to an address in CA. Payments only were to be sent to this address, all other correspondence was to be mailed to an address on the back. You guessed it,,, no address on the back. So I mailed a copy of the police report, a letter from the bank, and all other info with a letter explaining that I did not own the account and that there had been stolen checks and here is the police report, the FTC report etc.. To both Linen’s N Things and an address I found for TRS Services on line, and a copy to the address for Corporate Offices of TRS in TX,, all by certified mail,, oh and the ones to Corporate in TX for TRS were returned as undeliverable. Upon return of the undeliverable mail I looked up more address and mailed via certified mail to another address and that was accepted. On July 20, 2007 I received a “nice” letter asking for more information from both TRS and TeleCheck, that they had received the information I had sent and that they needed additional information to “update your file to a forgery issue”,,, okay,,, they needed all reference numbers listed on TRS recovery service correspondence and,,AND a new forgery affidavit NOTARIZED!
On August 16 and 17, 2007 I received more “correspondence” from TRS Recover Services, Inc. Saying (now remember I had received notice saying they HAD received information and wanted further information)

“We have not received a response to ANY of our previous correspondence or efforts to reach you by phone” “This debt will not go away unless it is paid in full. In addition, your ability to use checks at over 300,000 TeleCheck member stores may be affected.” “The decision is yours, PAY THE BILL or you leave us no choice except to proceed with further collection activity.”

Now I don’t know if they tried to contact me by phone or not, my phone number is/was not on the checks, I did however send them a number to contact me on the correspondence I sent them with all the other info, big mistake, I see now) but they did receive previous responses from me,, they said so on July 20!!

It goes on, but basically they want the money they threw away by not being responsible and not taking timely action to avoid the acceptance of checks that had been stolen.

No more than 2 checks got through before my putting a stop on the account and reporting the fraudulent activity to my bank, no more than 3 transactions got through ( a visual copy of the check helped to determine that it was a check and not a fluke in electronic accounting) before my closing the account, filing a report with the police and the FTC, calling credit companies and trying to report to check approval companies. I feel I did my part as rapidly as could be expected to stop the fraud, I filed an affidavit with the bank, swore to an officer of the law, providing what evidence I could, did research and attempted to go beyond what should be accepted. TeleCheck says this is not enough, to TeleCheck I am a criminal, a thief, and I am to be punished for having the gall to be a victim of a crime. I am to spend more of my money to prove my innocence, I am to spend more of my time to prove to them, beyond what is deemed sufficient to others, that I am not responsible for their failure to protect their client from accepting bad checks. TeleCheck wants their money for not doing their job!

Here is my failure, I responded in good faith, I called them, I am grateful however that I did not leave messages as requested so they could call me back (you never speak to a human if you are trying to do more than make payment) I responded to their collection notices, I sent them what I thought would have been helpful to stop a crime from being committed. I should have just said, the account isn’t mine, the ID isn’t mine, and it seems to me that TeleCheck is less interested in stopping the passing of bad checks and in stopping fraud than they are in badgering innocent people to make good an error they allowed through their lax systems.

An other blog an other day. Or something like that. Life goes on, the birds are singing, the traffic is whirring, life is going on,,, and on,,, and on.
In all of this though, I have the opportunity to be Bruno and all that that implies. I am not sure what this journey brings, but life goes on.
I guess that is the theme of this particular blog, in the end life goes on, and living life as if it will go on is a courageous act in itself. Having the courage to be bold in this living is the challenge. So how to live with joy (happiness not my partner or creatures I share my existence with) is the question. I am not at all sure we do have the answer to this question and those that do,, well good for them, and here is a secret, their answers, my answers will most likely not work for the rest of the world. So here it is, my perspective, don’t look for consistency, it won’t be there.