Current Projects

Posted on January 26, 2022 by Professor Taboo

For a few months now my blogging time has been at the mercy of situations at home, as many of you know. Some of you are probably grateful. Some of you may be ecstatic. Still others are perhaps undecided, contemplating if the world is a better place without my regular ranting, raving, and splendidness. And there are two or three I know are being driven mad without their weekly dose, their fix of my penmanship and sheer foolishness. 😉 I know, I know. But there’s only so much of me to go around! And a few have my best parts, others have the not-so-good parts (always yelling at me are those), and several have curiously returned other parts of me as defective, dysfunctional, or in need of some sort of ~~overhaul~~ major repair—your refund check is in the mail… if I had your address. If I didn’t and you want your refund, call 1-900-932-4668, or with the letters on your dial pad: 1-900-YEA-H-NOT 😁

Seriously, don’t call that number. I have no idea if it’s a working number.

*What tha hell have you been doing? GET BLOGGING Professor!*

To briefly let you all know what I’m working on, here’s a rundown of a few, oldest to newest drafts:

Cheating Death —
Aubry, Pat, and Terry —
Kinshasa-Leopoldville —
He’s A Cannibal! —
Black Underworld Inc. – Appendix —
Transparency: A Double-Edged Razor —
Marx and Nietzsche Today —
Heterosexual Humble Pie —
Christian Apologetics: Land of Oz – Pt I —
A Bright Future for Our USMNT —
Social Compassion, Plus —
A Newer Constitution —

It’s a bit of a laugh isn’t it, this list? This is only 12 of 37 drafts I have awaiting completion. Yeah, now you can laugh and joke. I deserve it. For more chuckling, ask me when I will finish these and the other 25 drafts. HEY! I am not a terrible procrastinator. Life has lots of curveballs, some of them miss you by millimeters, others hit you smack in the sack-ticles!

Besides, most all of my last seven therapists have all told me, A procrastinator? Nah, you are like fine wine with time. Just don’t lose the homing-device for my whereabouts, bring a jolly attitude and more Malbec, preferably from the Mendoza Valley, Argentina. That is my medicine, my go-go juice 🍷 …or a smooth tequila. 🙃

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Listen More – Learn Always

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Seven & Four

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Professor Taboo

Today I have around thirty (30) blog-posts piled up in my Drafts tab. Many of them are about one-third finished, many are two-thirds finished. Two of them are unfinished by guest-authors, never fulfilling their promise from 2014. Seven posts are in final stages, but awaiting my editorial and grammatical scrutiny/review, four of them are very close to finished and a few clicks away from final publication. However, I’ve had two of those last four ready, excited and eager to publish them immediately after some final touch-ups!

Then about 2-weeks ago, maybe more, WordPress pulled the rug out from under me… again! My latest nemesis against creative, free-flowing, easy-to-use blog-drafting is called the Block Editor, or Gutenberg Editor.

I not only feel like Charlie Brown above, happy and willing to run up to Lucy van Pelt with gusto, kick winning field-goals with my blog-posts (at least in my mind), but do it with limited, sometimes with little free-time, and publish posts 2-4 times a month with relative ease. Like many of us busy, busy bloggers juggling work, family, parenting, personal health, schooling, and a host of other required daily, weekly tasks—of which some/many get postponed due to only 24-hour days—we do not have time remaining for yearly, or bi-annual, time-intensive learning curves!

Hey, WordPress! News Flash: I NOR MOST OF US DO NOT and CANNOT WORK FOR WORDPRESS 40-HOURS A WEEK, 365 DAYS A YEAR LEARNING NEW SOFTWARE AND MAINTAIN OUR REGULAR LIVES!!!

Naturally, I have received all types of rah-rah cheerleading support and encouraging platitudes from Happiness Technicians at WordPress and some fellow bloggers as well. A few of the responses have been diversionary. From WordPress for example:

“Change can be hard, but we have you covered!“

“We understand how frustrating being moved to a new editing experience can be and we apologize for any inconvenience.“

“Technology is always updating. The Block Editor takes advantage of the latest technology to help you build media-rich, mobile responsive, and unique websites.“

By the way, I spent almost two hours just trying to find/learn how to simply bullet-point these above three quotes AND keep my left-margin. Obviously I failed and gave up. Otherwise, I would have spent an exorbitant amount of additional time wasted for simply three little dots in front of those WordPress quotes!

Also, more rah-rah encouragement from WordPress worth sharing:

A Note on Support for the WordPress Classic Editor

While you do not currently have to learn how to use the new WordPress Gutenberg Blocks, you will eventually need to. The WordPress team will keep supporting the Classic Editor plugin until the end of 2021. But, starting in 2022, the new Block Editor will be the only editor officially supported by WordPress.

Early last week I had my latest and next blog-post ready to publish. The week before that the post was close to finished with just a few more visual touch-ups needed, but the last paragraph needed cleaning up and I also wanted to add a relevant image/picture. I spent the following 5-6 days trying to figure out how to do that while screaming at my computer screen, raising my blood-pressure higher, taking 2-3 shots of tequila or vodka to calm back down, and in the end simply giving up in sheer frustration.

It seems this delay will continue indefinitely until I have spent approximately 60 semester hours at WordPress University and I’ve earned my post-graduate degree in Gutenberg Editing & Software Engineering… fingers crossed, Magna Cum Laude. 🤬 I will, however, try to endure, carry on with shaky, weakening patience, and finalize my “ready to publish” next post: Christian Apologetics: Land of Oz.

P.S. I began this very simple post early yesterday afternoon, picked it back up today at 12:30pm CST, and have just now finished it and published it at 4:28pm CST. HOLY JEBUS H. CHRISTMAS, I cannot spend that amount of time on what has been up to early September 2020… a pleasurable hobby since early 2011. This learning curve is unfeasible and frankly unfair of WordPress to demand that kind of time without paying me an excellent wage, especially changing the Editor so frequently!

Cyber-status: Self-Reminder

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Professor Taboo

Surprise! This is a quicky shorty.

In my previous 4-part series Games of Unknowledging, one of the general classifications of ignorance, or in this case so much information ready, available at your fingertips or just a mouse-click away, practically every hour of every day is a prime example of Time and Mental Constraints. It means that given how quickly information is available in our high-tech modern world, we online users, computer geeks, iPhoners and Androiders “cannot possibly study and understand all things. We must leave some alone, select what subjects deserve our needs and attention. As a result, this form of ignorance is a product of inattention and can be lost for a period of time or forever.“ Being the eternal student and lover of broad education in as many areas of life and disciplines as possible, I really struggle with these constraints! After almost 8-years of blogging here and 40+ blogs I’m following, one of my recurring restraints is now my inability to keep up in a timely fashion with all the WordPressers that post/publish every 1-2 days, or sometimes multiple posts per day!

Should I feel negligent, a sense of remorse? Have I committed the horrible offense of biting off more than I can possible chew, let alone digest? Do all our fellow bloggers go through similar questions, doubts, and feelings of disappointing? Do hyper-frequent bloggers expect every single follower to have 20-, 35-, 50-minutes per post multiplied by whatever number they follow — in my case 43 for a total of 43 x 35m = 1,505 minutes, or possibly 25.1 hours — if all 43 posted a new post per day!? When would I write and compose blogs? When in the hell would I sleep? Is this the avant-garde definition of internet obesity? 😵

Back at ground control, there is a problem
Go to rockets full, not responding
Hello Major Tom, are you receiving
Turn the thrusters on, we’re standing by
There’s no reply

Que the perfect song for this insanity…

Earth to Professor. Come In Professor!

Now of course, more realistically and suspending my incorrigible tendency for satire, all our bloggers we follow do not publish every single day, I know that. Why not? Because they do realize (correct?) that all regular bloggers that not only write and post, but also READ other blogs, can’t possibly be in front of the monitor or on their iPhones/Androids 14-hours, 18-hours, or 25-hours straight per day, right? After all, WordPress is NOT setup like that popular, non-stop, 25/7 social-media platform with only a 140-character limit that even the President of the United States uses tweeting international and national headlines, and political, legal, religious, sporting, or scientific personal opinions that aren’t original from his half-functioning brain, right?

No, WordPress isn’t like that. WordPress is for intelligent, well-considered and planned blog-articles of more than 140 (or less) kindergarten characters that have good original stimulating content from various genres of life, right? These types of blog-posts illicit (demand? require?) quality valuable time and attention from their readers, yes? Thus, my struggle to manage well even my fond favorites of 10-12 blogs, much less 40+ blogs! Hahahaha, who am I kidding? My head and body scream at me if I sit in front of my computer monitor for 3-hours straight a day! There have been times when I pushed that beyond 4-hours — I won’t share details what bodily function became painful before I realized the time spent! I can get very, very focused when in that mode. My personality is such that I try hard to give someone my undivided attention. I was raised that way.

We’re Only Human

Well “informed” or overkill? A bed of roses or hate-cultivator? The debate has been presented before and raged since 1991. Is a hyper-library of all imaginable information-on-steroids good or bad for society? It is a never before seen colossal-version of our U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Free-speech is a legal right here, sure. But it does also involve concurrent responsibility, that is to say that the speaker/writer has as much accountability for their content as the listener/reader has to understand, filter and scrutinize before judging its value. When the topic is serious, impactful, or even life-saving or life-risking, I believe this interchange should NOT be a fly-by-night 5-second operation. With the advent of internet this accountability has exponentially swelled and it’s only growing in size as billions upon billions of people are given a microphone or camera to a global audience. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, naming only two, lit up the Pandora Paradox™ that perhaps outshined (and outburned?) the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.

My round-about point with all this is to say I have been having a difficult time kindly and responsibly following all your blogs I’ve liked and selected to read and follow. I think maybe 15-20 could be better manageable; anymore than my current 43-45 I just simply cannot get to everyone if several publish daily. “I’m only human“ afterall — as he hums The Human League song — and only capable of limited time to read, comment, and willingly indulge in WordPress conversations or parleys, while simultaneously finding some limited time to compose and publish my own blog-posts. Hah! I have a total of 13 drafts, unfinished posts currently going back to February 2015! What tha hell? 😲

What does help my time and mental constraints for keeping up with all of you is that over the 8-9 years I’ve been blogging, numerous blog sites I selected, for whatever unknown reasons, have vanished, been deleted/deactivated, or have become lethargic. I see these cyber-deaths as a positive for the living! Their end provides the opportunities for new or active, yet to be discovered and exciting blogs and bloggers. A fluid circle of life! These song lyrics from one of my all-time favorite bands, lyricist, and drummer, have been slightly modified to protect the slightly heathen innocent:

No, followers are not for rent
To any god, site or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren’t permanent –
But change is

(paragraph break)

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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MIA

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Professor Taboo

Where have I gone you ask? Let me see how to briefly answer 😉 without sacrificing the most relevant points while still making sense.

As the school year drew to an end and closed for the summer June 6th, I fully expected to have the free time to comfortably and earnestly blog. I was looking forward to completing about 2-3 posts per month! I have about eight posts started and outlined a dozen more topics I’m excited to get posted… in all of my categories.

But as I settled in my summer home in the Hill Country, my own wishes and plans went quickly out the window. Unless you’re an island unto yourself… life, family, and career sometimes have little regard for one’s petty personal desires. HAH!

Life

If I choose to keep writing my blog-posts, I will have only short 30-60 minute windows early early in the mornings when no one else is up. This is honestly a welcomed peaceful quite-time ritual: a wave of the flower garden’s watering-wand brings showers to Black-chinned hummingbirds, infrequently the Ruby-throated or Rufous hummingbirds, buzzing down darting in and out of the spray… often no more than 3-feet away from my nose. Four out of five of these mornings have the cool southerly or southwesterly breezes blowing through our hilltop oasis. As I’m writing this (and not outside) I notice our nearby roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) family trots from one end of the yard to the other. This is the prelude of a day in nature’s front-row that is never the same from previous A.M. shows. This is the “life” I would give up if I were to focus on my blogging and all of you. Hmmm, the quandaries. 😉

Family

For two weeks I’ve had my 14-year old son with me. It has been great and rejuvenating rekindling our relationship, again. I haven’t seen him since Xmas 2014 and then before that Spring Break 2014. We talk on the phone biweekly, sometimes more. It isn’t the same though; touching, seeing each other’s expressions, hugging, mean so much more with more lasting impressions. But the landmass of Texas is more than huge — which did allow he and I to talk the drive back, and talk, and talk, and talk five hours, the entire return trip. However, despite that immeasurable profit, traveling expenses are higher when hotel rooms must be included with food and fuel costs. For the last 13-years I’m the one that must and has foot the entire bill if I want to see my children which has made visitations difficult.

The time with my son is precious and highly needed, if not at least for my sake and sanity. And my newly married 21-year old daughter and her husband came to visit last weekend for 2-nights, 3-days! You couldn’t chisel the smiles off my face I was so thrilled! As I wrote a couple of months ago in my post And It Begins, my relationship with my daughter was put on hold 13-years ago when she, her brother, mother and step-father moved from the DFW area to Houston. My face-to-face time with my kids becomes, has become even more priceless. This is the current positive side of “Family.”

I was not told that my sister — an addict, recovering & relapsing the last 35+ years NEEDING to be either in a halfway house or inpatient dual-diagnosis hospital — moved into my mother’s home last December. I am not going to go into the many problems this lumps onto my widowed mother of 76-years living in her 3,000 sq. ft. ranchita on 13-acres and all the daily weekly chores, tasks, and projects a property that size requires… FROM RELIABLE helpers/workers/family members!!! I guess I did go into it a little detail, huh? This is why my Mom never told me she moved in. Instead of being upset and irate last winter, now I’m even more upset and irate when upon my arrival I assessed and determined how horribly behind all the chores, tasks, and projects have fallen and some not even started the last 7-months! Yet, that’s not all of it!

She wants to put on the market and sell the house and property by the end of August… of 2015! *large exhale*

Wonderful, beautiful, fun, responsible family! 🙂

Unreliable, unpredictable, over-weight & smoking, clinically depressed family in dire need of professional help, not resort accommodations! 😦

Family.

Career

The last two years the Texas Board of Education along with their conservative legislative constituents in Austin, will have their specialized curriculums implemented this 2015-16 school year. The most significant changes in the state-wide curriculum will be in the science and social studies/history textbooks and standards (visit New Texas Curriculum Standards and New BOE Chairman for more info).

The Professor’s circus will return!

These social conservative changes force me to reevaluate my personal conviction of “let the PARENTS aid their children in deciding religious and political debates.” My job responsibility is to offer the various perspectives, that information and data, monitoring student’s performance and proper objectivity. Unfortunately, now that the Texas GOP remains in office with more conservatives seated in our state Congress along with continued conservatives appointed on the Board of Education, as a Freethinking Humanist my convictions and conscience are increasingly challenged putting my performance-reviews further under the microscope by my supervisors and superiors. It doesn’t help either that I’m only a 5-year experienced teacher… easily replaced by a biased Christian-conservative teacher with 10-15 years experience. This past spring I’ve begun considering a career change, more like a career return to the psych/A&D field of therapy, crisis management, and guidance. In 1989-91 I was in the field and doing exceptionally well.

Hence, the tedious, enormous task of job-searching begins simultaneously with everything mentioned above. HAH!

What It All Means

It means simply my enjoyment of writing and blogging will be suspended, or very infrequent until further notice. It has taken me almost 2-weeks just to finish this post! I know all of you are crying and mourning my absence and thought-provoking posts. It is hard, I know. I’m sorry. But this shall one day pass. 😉

Meanwhile, please feel free to read and/or visit my other posts, both old and recent. Comment if you’d like. I will log-in two or three times a week to check for new comments and suggestions for my Us and Them page.

Until then…

(paragraph break)
Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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Summer Time

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Professor Taboo

At last the school year has ended and once again I find myself with a bit more free time. More free to recharge batteries. More free to reflect on what has been done, what needs refining, and what needs more attention in the future. Free for more time to do things I enjoy doing for myself, like more blogging. One summer project I am very excited about and looking forward to this June is watching every single game of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, cheering my two national teams: USA and Brazil!

It is my hope that during these short two and a half months I will be able to post much more often than once a month. With that said, I’d like to ask my followers — if they have not already and understandably forgotten about me — what they would like to know, or what subjects you would be interested in me writing about. The floor is open, the mic is open; let me hear your suggestions or questions. I shall do my best to accommodate… within reason naturally.

I will also do my best to catch-up with my many other blogging friends and their posts who I have unwillingly been absent! My sincere apologies. If anyone knows of a way to add MORE hours to a mere 24-hour day, please, I beg you tell me! I have really missed blogging and reading and commenting with all of you this past school year. Let’s reconnect!

Therefore, of my followers, is there or are there any subject(s) you would be interested in me writing about or discussing? Anything at all. If not, I should be posting with my next topic shortly.

Have a fantastic summer! I plan to!

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