Who Am I Kidding?

Most people who know me don’t know that I run a sports ministry in addition to being a PACS consultant. As incredulous as it seems I’ve been doing a soccer ministry for 10 years and have been involved in sports ministry for almost 15 years. So yes, for those who are thinking this out loud already, God does have a serious sense of humor if He can use someone like me to help further the goals of Kingdom.

About a quarter of the people who play soccer with us every Friday night are those who could be considered religious. Another quarter are spiritual but not religious, and the remaining half heathens. I’m not saying which group I belong to either but I can assure you it’s certainly not the first. I’m one of those who feel Adam was framed and became the fall guy for Eve’s screw ups. After all here was a guy who was sound asleep when God stole a rib from him and created woman. He wakes up, feel this sharp pain in his side says “What the..?” and then suddenly there is this woman God created standing in front of him to make his life so special. You all know the rest of the story. Adam is off somewhere tending to the garden while Eve is being tempted by and losing to the Devil by disobeying God. Adam comes back, sees she ate the forbidden fruit and says “Eve, what have you done!” Now were it me I would have said “Yo, babe, you blew it, you’re out of here- NEXT!” How much better would life have been for men if he had just said to God “Look, God, Eve blew it no me. I was somewhere else in the garden when this bimbette decided to disobey you. Here’s the deal from my perspective. You created me with 24 ribs then took one to create this disobedient woman, so either even it out and make a new babe for me and send Eve off to wherever You want and I’ll live with 22 ribs or give me my old rib back and we’ll call it even and I’ll live alone. I was doing fine before You made her anyway and I still don’t understand why You felt I needed a mate…. but hey, you are God and know better than me so…..” But did he? Noooo. And did God? Noooooooo!! Instead Adam caves in to her feminine wiles, they both get tossed out of the garden, and men have been taking the blame and living hell ever since. Someone needs to rewrite Genesis for sure…

The same can be said with David. Sure, David should have been on the front lines leading his men into battle but for reasons no one really knows he stayed behind. And what happens? Some shameless married hussy named Bathsheba, who knew exactly what she was doing, mind you, bathed nude within eyesight of the poor king tempting him to do what he did, sending off for her and then…...the rest is history. Now that doesn’t mean David was right but come on!! what 37 year old man can resist looking at a very beautiful nude woman bathing and not want her? And Bathsheba could have said no too even if David was the king but, alas, he was no Quasimodo either, having "beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance" (Read 1 Samuel to get the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say). . No doubt she wanted him as much as he did her…and with him being king and all well….being knocked up by the king was inconsequential feat here either. I;m sure she was thinking- “Hmmmmm- possible queen or wife of a mere solder with the name Uriah the Hittite?” (side note- I wonder if the 70’s hard rock band Uriah Heep were descendants of his). The fact that David had 7 wives already - picking up one after his victory over Goliath, two during his flight from Saul, four more while he was King in Hebron- was a moot point. Did Bathsheba care? Nope. Did David? Nope. David was just the average King who liked to part-tay…, and Bathsheba conveniently became wife number eight while he was King in Jerusalem- after he had her hubby conveniently killed of course. But alas I digress… now where was I? Oh yes….

I’ve always been in awe of the folks who work for Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). Not only do they all need be college graduates, but the interview process they go through rivals that of most major corporations. They require a written application, references and interviews, followed by an evaluation by their spiritual, personal, emotional and leadership abilities. There is not much difference between the CCC assessment and that at a major corporation, although most corporations could care less about your spiritual development restricting that to and end of quarter “Jesus Christ where is that contract you said would be here by now!!” If hired CCC candidates are responsible for coordinating weekly meetings, instructing Bible studies, leading outreach activities and helping student leaders to develop in a number of ways. Staff members also serve in a number of leadership capacities on the national and regional level utilizing skills in technology, human resource management, communications, finances and research and development. Sounds like a great job right- if that is your thing that is. Now comes the fun part. “Campus Crusade for Christ is a non-profit organization supported by donations from individuals, businesses, churches and foundations. Each staff member is responsible for securing contributions to cover his or her own salary and expenses.” Say what? Securing contributions to cover my salary and expenses? What kind of a job is this where I have to find sponsors before I can go to work…You guys are nuts!! And then I got to thinking….how am I any different?

Every day I secure contributions from individuals to cover my salary and expenses. True, I provide- or at least hope I provide- value for the compensation sent my way, but that’s not much different then what my friends at CCC do. People believe in them and their mission and send them money to support . People believe in me and my mission and send me money to support me. The only difference is that if I don’t provide the services I say I will I can be terminated or, God forbid, sued, but I’d rather be dropped by a client than have God be on my bad side because one of my sponsors felt I wasn’t living up to his or her expectations of what they had in mind for me to do- or worse what His expectations were of what He wanted me to do.. They don’t call the man upstairs a Higher Power for nothing you know…

So know that I could leave the PACS consulting world any day now and preach and prostilitze with the best of them at CCC since I have practice raising my own funds and all that. I even have the Pope’s mitre ready as well. Now if I could just pass the spirituality test….. but you have to make it past “In the beginning…..” and well, I’m just not there yet…

Dominus vobistcum

When I got ready to start my own blog site I looked up how many blogs there were worldwide. I smiled when I saw numbers that varied about as often as the KLAS PACS rankings where someone somewhere is always number one at some point in time. One site said 50 million, another 60M, but who really knows? Several studies also indicated that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation- 60% to 80% are abandoned within one month, depending on whose figures you choose to believe. So that basically means I have about as good a chance of someone reading this blog as I do in winning the big prize in the Florida Lottery- about 14M to one. But do I care? Nah….

I was the better (or worse) half of the PACS-aholic blog site that ran on an Imaging Technology News-sponsored site for a few years with my good friend Crissie Bolan at my side. While it was a blast doing it with Chrissie most of the time, the reality of always having to watch our backs in what we said frankly got old. More than once we had to “modify” a post or “set the record straight” when an advertiser or special interest group took exception to what we put up even though what we said was both accurate and how we felt. Thankfully I won’t have to do that here.

So what is this blog all about? It’s a given there will be some discussion about PACS since PACS plays such a large role in my life. Every single day there is always something or some one I can comment on. I also plan on spending a fair amount of time sharing my “world” with you as well. Many of my friends and admirers have been goading me on for years to do this so…why not?

So what’s in the blog name? The PACSMan is a given reflecting my involvement in PACS technology. PACSMan is my “nom de plume” I adopted back in the early 80’s when I first wrote for Diagnostic Imaging. This was back in the days when DI’s RSNA edition looked more like a Gideon’s bible than the latest copy of Watchtower handed out door to door by Jehovah’s Witnesses (a group that while I don’t necessarily agree with their religious philosophies I greatly admire for their tenacity). Unfortunately since then everyone and their brother has been stealing my nickname or using variants thereof like some sick version of Mini-Me and getting me in trouble in the process, Believe me, I don’t need help getting in trouble by any means.

The pontifications part is a tribute to my Roman Catholic upbringing. I was altar boy from age 6 through age 13 and could say the Mass in English, Latin and Italian. That’s a real babe magnet if there ever was one- if you are into overweight Italian grandmothers with moustaches that is. Eight years post divorce and dealing with the vast dating wasteland that exists out there, the Italian momma’s are starting to look good any more…and at my age the way to this man’s heart is through his stomach, not points further south. Priorities ya know…

According to Merriam Webster the word to pontificate means “to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way”. Pompous? Moi? Banish the thought! None of the synonyms for pompous come even close to me- “self-important, arrogant, haughty, affected, ostentatious, portentous, pretentious, snobbish, exaggerated, grandiose, vain…”. Well maybe a few….OK most depending on the day, but still. And dogmatic!! Let’s see.” opinionated, arrogant, assertive, arbitrary, emphatic, downright, dictatorial, imperious, overbearing, categorical, magisterial, doctrinaire, obdurate, peremptory” Again, moi?! So maybe my wordsmithing came up with the perfect word for this blog so pontifications it is.

This marks the start of The PACSMan Pontificates. I hope you find it informative, humorous, reverent and above all politically correct, And if you do know you probably have the wrong blog because on here the bear is Catholic and the Pope does indeed shit in the woods.

So now it’s time to bless you all as we embark on this journey into blogging together:

“Dominus vobistcum.” (and you reply) “Et cum spiritu tuo”.