The following sentence was found in an article on Foxnews.com:

McArthur says she just does wants to make sure nobody else meets the same end she did when she decided to indulging her sweetooth.  

Wow.

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I’ve never read the Wizard of Oz and I’ve always assumed that I knew the story.  It turns out, and this shouldn’t surprise me, that there’s a lot more to the story than what made it into the movie.  There are back-stories for the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. 

In church today our pastor told us about the Tin Man’s story.  Apparently the Tin Man was the son of a Woodsman who himself became a Woodsman when he grew into a man.  He met and fell in love with a young lady and asked her to wed him.  The girl said yes and the Tin Man set to work earning the money, preparing to take care of his bride.

The woman’s mother opposed the wedding and went to the Wicked Witch.  The Witch put a spell on the young woodsman’s ax.  Every time he swung the ax at a tree the ax would swing wildly.  Before long the ax took off one of his legs.  Refused to admit defeat, the woodsman went to the tinsmith who fashioned a leg for him.

The woodsman continued to work with his enchanted ax and took off his second leg and then an arm.  Each time, for each limb, he would visit the tinsmith and have a new limb fashioned.  It was only a matter of time until the ax cut into the woodsman’s chest. 

Now made entirely of tin, the woodsman took on a new moniker, The Tin Man, and continued to work, cutting down trees in the forests of Oz.  He no longer had a reason to work though.  His bride was gone.  With nothing else to do, the Tin Man worked even harder.  He didn’t even stop to oil his joints. 

And this is how Dorothy found him.  He was completely seized up with rust and within reach of the oil but unable to grab it.  He was unable to help himself. 

After Dorothy helped him the Tin Man said the following (and I’m paraphrasing):

The greatest loss I have experience was the loss of my heart.  For one cannot love who has not a heart. 

I’ve signed up for an AIM account.  You can reach me at:

sendmeyourmom

Last night’s episode of The Simpsons had one of the better exchanges I’ve ever heard on the show:

Bart: Why don’t you go pick on someone smaller and weaker?

Jimbo: Yeah.  Let’s go down to Sunshine Preschool and wail on some toddlers.

Kerny: We can sneak up on them why they’re napping.

Later, Bart and Nelson were sitting on a bluff together.

Nelson: I like to come up here and make fun of the sunset.  Hey Gas Ball; You suck!

At the end as Nelson rode away on his bike he turned around to Bart and said: “Ha Ha; I touched your heart!”

So today I discovered that another old trend has started to emerge from my past.  I am, it seems, that catalyst required for people to move on from their prior relationships.  This is not to say that people move on with me, it is only the prospect of moving on with me that makes girls ready to date someone they actually like.

When you get rejected you get to indulge in some self pity for a bit.  Lately I’ve even been robbed of that.  The ‘relationships’ I’ve entered into lately have ended before they’ve started and the girls’ moving on has either been hidden or so far removed from my circumstances that the relationship was nearly invisible to begin with.

Still, rejection does hurt, even when it’s indirect.  What hurts more though is that when something is hidden from me so I wouldn’t get hurt, it tells me that my feelings were considered and just didn’t matter.

My sleep patterns have been really off lately.  One day last week I went to bed at 930 in the evening and was up and ready to go at 400, some two hours before I even start getting ready to go to work.  Saturday I decided to lay back down at about 1030; I’d woken up not feeling very well at about seven.  I slept until my sister called me at 200 wondering why I wasn’t at my nephew’s birthday party.  And last night I was in bed by 900 and woke up at about 530.

Its not just my sleeping pattern that’s messed up though.  I’ve long been weird about eating.  I can easily go a day without eating, without even thinking about food.  I literally forget to eat some days.  The meals I do eat are usually in the mid-evening, around six or seven and then its often crap; fast food or frozen meals.  Lately I’ve been hungry at weird times.  I’ve eaten breakfast a few times in the past few weeks and even had a few days of three full meals. 

There’s more that’s been off but this isn’t the forum for all that stuff.  I don’t know what the cause of all this is.  All I know is that I want things to go back to normal.