John Burkholder

I managed to get booked in one of the nastiest motels in Maryland. The wall is crumbling behind the vinyl. The ceiling tiles are sagging in the unventilated bathroom. The room is dirty and I am not sure what that dark red spot is in the middle of the room. I hope that is spilled soda behind the bed. Maybe those hairs are embedding in the floor of the shower due to some resurfacing treatment. The hotels around the area are booked solid due to some accordian players convention I would imagine...so I am stuck here. The only saving grace is the Internet connection. As I have been sitting here, I have come to the realization it is time for me to face my demons. No, I am not talking about the small insects flying about the room, I am talking about my abandonment issue. It may be true that my abondonment issue was aggravated by the suicide of my Father when I was 6, the suicide of my Brother when I was 12, the suicide of my Wife and Mother of three of our kids (which I fear will have the same

The other day, I drank so much tea, I barely made it to the urinal without hydroblasting the frontside of my blue jeans. This doesn't happen very often because I have had the unfortunate circumstance of pushing people aside just to get to the toilet. Ref: The Dance . So the other day I was at the point of tears when I made it to the bathroom. Bathroom? Well, in my office there is a shower in our bathroom for the fitness center so I guess it is close enough. Maybe I should call it a showerroom. That looks and sounds funny. Isn't it amazing what part of the body is actually in control? Well...it seems they talked amongst themselves: All the organs of the body were having a meeting, trying to decide who was the one in charge. "I should be in charge, "said the brain, "because I run all the body's systems, so without me nothing would happen." I should be in charge" said the blood, "because I circulate oxygen all over, so without me you'd all was

Another tax day and again the government will continue to bend people over in order to get the money it so seriously deserves. We need to pay for the new infrastructure such as roads for our vehicles and city water services. We need to pay for our health care for the elderly and the very young. We, as a people, need to pay to ensure our defense against the evil tyrrany that threatens our way of life and our personal liberties. We need to pay. And we do pay. But apparently we do not pay enough. Right now, the United States government is running with nearly a $8.9 Trillion deficit. The entire 2007 federal budget is $2.8 Trillion (not including other appropriations for the war effort). How many companies would be permitted to run in a debt of three times the entire budget? Wouldn't they be severly scrutinized for cheating the stockholders like Enron? Or is it OK because they are telling us that we are spending money we don't have? We...yes we. We are paying the government to perfo

Last week, the Harvard School of Public Health released materials to the Motion Picture Association about the impact of smoking in movies on youth and the need to eliminate cigarettes in film. The cliff-notes version of the report is that children do not have the parenting and understanding to know that smoking is unhealthy. Therefore, the motion picture community needs to rectify the issue by demanding that any movie that has someone smoking in it be considered an “R” movie. Petitions have been created to demand the motion picture industry remove smoking. I have but a few unanswered questions about this before I make a comment on the issue. Who did they study? I seriously doubt in this day and time that any of the youth started smoking because they saw Audrey Hepburn smoking in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. How old is the data? 14 years old. What are the demographics of the smoking youth? What types of movies are the youth watching? Are they watching “R” rated movies to begin with? Do the