Having met the love of my life six months ago, Chris, I think the stability of my blog will return and will mainly consist of positive experiences and influences in my world.  Not to be debbie downer, but it really has been a miserable few months when it comes to friendships.  This is the final bit of negativity from me and I’m starting fresh.

I’m sad to say the few people I have brought into my life and trusted the most have proved to not be trustworthy, honest, or even good friends.  Even my closest girl friend has been keeping things from me.  Things she deemed hurtful.  But she continues to do them, knowing they will continuously hurt me, and in turn hurting herself whether she knows it or not.  I’ve been ripped off by another person I considered a friend.  And I’ve been betrayed and hurt by someone, I (a few months ago) could talk to in the worst of times.

The only thing I’ve learned this year about people is, you can’t help them.  They need to help themselves.  And until they do that, they are absolute deathly hazards to those around them.  If you are one of these people, you should step back and take a nice hard look at the things you’ve done and if you can seriously justify the things that I’ll see whenever I look at you, then you’re pro at this.  And you will probably never change.  Remorse isn’t getting anyone off anymore.  I’m done playing the “Ooo I’m sorry. My bad.” I’m weeding out the losers in my life that really don’t give a shit; and as long as I live, I will probably wonder where you ended up and if you proved my never-changing-theory wrong.  But that’s because I give a shit about people who have had places in my life and in my heart.  I didn’t end our friendship over scarring words or being a whore.

You did.

I’m a stronger person after being taken advantage of for so long.  Never again will I judge someone off the bat, “this person seems pretty down.”.  I will make a point to analyze every single person trying to pry into my life and make sure they meet every positive influence requirement.

I was a forgiving person.  But the first time you fuck me over, shame on you.  Second time, shame on me.  It’s a lonely road, but someone’s got to draw a line between right and wrong.

April 27, 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500

Mr. Obama:

I have had it with you and your administration, sir.  Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally.  You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America.  You are responsible to the citizens of the United States.  You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth.

I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world.  Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe?  Are you brain dead?  What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about?

Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century?  Where do you get off telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country?  Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States?  This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage.  Do you not understand this?

Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans.  Our President does not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia.  You don’t show Great Britain, our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia.  How dare you, sir!  How dare you!

You can’t find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don’t want to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey.  You offended our dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the German people from themselves.  What’s the matter with you?

I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you.  You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses.  What do you intend to do about them?  Anything?  I seriously doubt it.

What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members — on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves?  I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus.  I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer.  You haven’t said anything about that.  Who authorized that?  I surely didn’t!  Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that’s $45 million more than the AIG bonuses.  In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million — not a bad take.  Who authorized that and why haven’t you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now.

I resent that you take me and my fellow citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do. We are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed up with all of you.  I also want you to know that I personally find just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of my sensibilities.  I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my beautiful country.

Sincerely,

Every Real American

Ms Kathleen Lyday
Fourth Grade Teacher
Grandview Elementary School
11470 Hwy. C
Hillsboro, MO   63050
(636) 944-3291 Phone
(636) 944-3870 Fax

It is a law of the mind that what it focuses on it eventually becomes.
— E.B. White

That quote has come to symbolise something very important to me lately.
You see, for several years — if not for most of my teenage and young-adulthood life — I lived on what I always think of as “autopilot”. I focused on nothing in particular, therefore I was nobody in particular; I was a blundering, sluggish lump, plodding through every day without any focus, any sense of direction, any real awareness of myself and who I was. I was only living for and in the moment.
I’ve wasted so much of my life doing that. And though I’ve somehow managed to become the person I am — and I’m very slowly reaching the point of liking who I am — living on autopilot is no longer good enough.
So I make up for lost time by focusing, perhaps obsessively, on who I’ve been in the past, who I am now, and who I want to be — trying to turn the whole damned fog into clay that I can mold and shape. I’m tired of just drifting on the currents; I want to be in control of where I’m going.
I have a vision of myself that I want to be — physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually (in ascending order) — the best that I can be, the most that I can achieve, the highest peaks that I can reach, in those areas. The qualities that I see in others that I admire, are simply aspects of that vision of myself that I want to be?the vision I haven’t fulfilled and will probably never fulfill … but the vision I want to continually be on the path towards. (If I keep repeating that whole motif in many of my entries here, it’s because I’m trying to keep myself focused on it — the first person I write any of this for is myself.)
But to do that — to be on that path — requires something very difficult, something I’ve barely begun to get a hold of, namely…
…conscious choice.

 
At every moment of every day.
To constantly fight the autopilot instinct. My soul tends toward that; my mind constantly regurgitates a hundred thousand images, sounds, words, thoughts, like being locked in a room with a hundred thousand television sets; my heart continually wrestles with a hundred shapeless, often overpowering emotions, like simultaneously being a guest on a hundred talk shows. And I tend to want to slide numbly through it all, being carried passively by the undercurrents from this moment to the next moment.
But if I want to be on the path — then I must choose to be, at every waking moment — from the moment I first open my eyes at the beginning of my day, to the moment I close them at the end of it. To remember, refine and perfect my purposes.
Or to reduce it to the essentials:
to live as fully and completely in love for the world around me as possible;
to never allow myself to be my own worst enemy, in any way, shape or form;
to never allow myself to be controlled by any negative, self-destructive instincts/emotions;
to face every experience, however good or bad, as an opportunity to learn and to grow;
and to constantly look for, and pursue, any and all ways to become the person I want to be — which encompasses all of the purposes I listed before, and is the essence of all of the above.
Yeah, it’s much easier said than done — to make a conscious and continuous choice to be on that path (or any path, for that matter) is perhaps the hardest thing anyone can do, because it’s the most contrary to the “autopilot” nature of the basic human condition. But to grow and evolve — to become a better human being — requires trying to be, at every single moment, of every single day.
Even if it’s an absolutely impossible ideal, why strive for anything less?
I don’t want to just “get by” in life — I want to get somewhere.
It’s just a matter of knowing where you want to go…

The opera is over
Singers have all gone home
Seats are empty
The kitchen is closed

The sidewalks are sprayed down
The blinds are pulled down
The foundation’s unstable
The wrecking ball is back
Quiet business vacancy
Quiet business vacancy

Rents are rising
Our lease is up
Culture is down

Symphony’s concluded
The instruments are all cased up
The notes are silent
The music’s still apparent

Rents are rising
Our lease is up
Culture is down
Spirits are jaded

Art is dying
Is art dead?
Art is dying
Is it dead?
Believe it
We need it to move on

A one track mind in a one way town
Let’s go ahead and gentrify
We let art die with robot minds
Steal the brush and paint boundary lines

A stale kind the people we’ll find
Walking in single file line
I think its time to finally rewind
Lets go ahead we might as well

Rents are rising
Our lease is up
Culture is down
Spirits are jaded

~Dredg, El Cielo 2002.

OUT OF AFRICA AND ASIA AND INTO CHAINS

• Most Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey elephants were captured in the wild. Those born in captivity were still babies when they were cruelly taken from their mothers.

• Kenny, a baby elephant, died after Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus forced him to perform while sick.

• Benjamin, another baby elephant, drowned as he attempted to escape from a handler chasing and prodding him with a bullhook.

• Two frightened baby elephants, Doc and Angelica, were painfully injured when they were dragged away from their mothers and tied up with ropes.

• A Ringling trainer shot and killed a caged tiger.

• Ringling trainers have been videotaped viciously gouging and hitting elephants with sharp metal bullhooks.

Circuses and animal exhibitors leased by Shrine temples have deplorable records of animal mistreatment and neglect. Shrine-sponsored circuses have been cited and fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for failing to provide veterinary care, shelter, exercise, nutritious food, and clean drinking water and for endangering animals and the public. Animals in circuses don’t perform because they want to, they perform because they’re afraid not to. Bullhooks, whips, and other cruel devices are used to force animals to perform confusing and difficult “tricks.” When the animals aren’t performing, they are kept chained or in cages. And people should know that Shrine Circuses raise funds for the temples’ administrative costs, not for the Shriners’ children’s hospitals.

Shrine Circuses put people at serious risk by exposing them to dangerous and diseased animals. Some of the many Shrine Circus-related tragedies include the following:

• A circusgoer was bitten on the face by a chimpanzee.

• Numerous elephants used in Shrine Circuses have rampaged, causing injuries to circusgoers and killing handlers.

• Elephants used in Shrine Circuses have become sick and even died from a strain of tuberculosis contagious to humans.

• A tiger who had been walked on a leash near children during Shrine Circuses attacked and killed two handlers.

• A bear bit off the tip of a child’s finger. Circuses attract unsavory characters, too. A Shrine Circus clown was arrested on charges of molesting three girls, ages 6, 7, and 10, he met at the circus, and a transient traveling with the Shrine Circus was convicted of second-degree murder for beating a woman to death.

Elephants in circuses aren’t volunteers. It is standard practice to hit, beat, shock, chain, and whip them to make them perform pointless and sometimes dangerous tricks. Baby elephants are prematurely torn from their mothers, tied down, and beaten. Several baby elephants have died. Elephants spend most of their lives in chains. They are often forced to sleep standing up in cramped, filthy trucks,must perform while ill, and are under constant threat of punishment with bullhooks, which are jabbed into the sensitive skin behind their ears, under their chins, and around their legs.

BEATINGS UNDER THE BIG TOP

Elephants don’t perform because they want to—they perform because they are afraid not to. The head elephant trainer at Carson & Barnes Circus was caught on tape attacking elephants with a bullhook and electric prod and instructing other trainers to hurt the elephants by ripping the hook through their flesh until they scream in pain. An animal handler with Sterling & Reid Bros. Circus was recently convicted on three counts of cruelty to animals for beating an elephant bloody during a performance in Norfolk,Va. The Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus paid $10,000 to settle federal charges of wounding its elephants with bullhooks. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ animal-care record is riddled with tragic animal deaths and USDA investigations. In one case, a baby elephant drowned while fleeing from a handler prodding him with a bullhook.

When animals in circuses are not on display, their miserable lives consist of cages, chains, and, often, beatings. They have no mental stimulation, privacy, or exercise. Those animals who naturally roam in family groups are chained or caged alone. In the ring, the whips, muzzles, and bullhooks remind us that these animals are forced to go against their nature and do senseless “tricks.” After years of traveling, circuses kill, dump, or abandon unwanted animals. Many countries and states have banned or severely restricted the use of animals in entertainment. And Sears, Roebuck and Company, Visa, and MasterCard have terminated their sponsorship of the Ringling

Animals belong in their natural habitat so they can be with their family like in the picture above, not in some cage being abused and forced to entertain humans.

“Don’t support the enslavement of any living being—boycott circuses that hold animal slaves.” — Dick Gregory

“We watched in horror as he swung a stick with all his force and struck the elephant in the back of the leg. This must have hurt because the elephant let out a scream that could be heard throughout the pavilion.” —Parent who chaperoned school children to a shrine circus.

“Hurt ‘em…Make ‘em scream…Sink that hook into ‘em…When you hear that screaming, then you know you got their attention.” —Tim Frisco, Carson & Barnes elephant trainer

YOU CAN HELP: Please attend only animal-free circuses.

]]> http://iguessicanfly.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/slave-trade-is-alive/feed/ 0 Noodle http://iguessicanfly.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/im-so-sick-and-tired/ http://iguessicanfly.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/im-so-sick-and-tired/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 08:05:11 +0000 iguessillfly http://iguessicanfly.wordpress.com/?p=114 ]]> Really, what’s wrong is that I despise my setting. Everyone and everything around me is eating away at me because I know every god damned fucking thing in this valley. And I’m so sick and tired I can’t change it because I’m completely drained. Drained of everything, really.
Money.
Inspiration.
Love.
Passion.

I feel like its all been sucked out of my body, leaving me a drone. I’m overwhelmed with how much I’ve had to revert back to… Reverting back into my dark spot of depression and defeat has settled and I feel completely helpless to do anything about it. But live each day for each day. Try to see life as a twisted joke instead of seeing the fucked up reality of it all.

My state of ‘okay’ness is gone. Something has to change.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fans of The Beatles who have always wanted to sing alongside John and Paul, or rock with George and Ringo, will finally get their chance on September 9 when the band’s much-anticipated videogame hits the shelves.

Apple Corps, which handles the affairs of the group, and Viacom Inc’s MTV Networks on Thursday set the sale date and announced the software would be priced at $59.99. Fans can spend another $99.99 to buy instruments similar to those used by the groundbreaking rock and roll group.

“The Beatles: Rock Band” will be available simultaneously at locations in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand on 9/09/09 — a date picked to acknowledge the significance of the number 9 for the band.

The videogame is based on MTV’s popular “Rock Band” and will “allow fans to pick up the guitar, bass, mic or drums and experience The Beatles extraordinary catalog of music through gameplay that takes players on a journey through the legacy and evolution of the band’s legendary career,” the companies said in a statement.

“The Beatles: Rock Band” will be compatible with Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360, Sony Corp’s Playstation 3, and Nintendo Co Ltd Wii entertainment systems. Existing Rock Band instrument controllers can be used to play the game.

Since the initial announcement last October, few details have been released about the game and the companies have yet to disclose some specifics, such as which songs from the library will be included.

But once released, the videogame will mark the band’s first leap into the world of digital music. Beatles’ songs are still unavailable on Apple Inc’s iTunes, for instance, as surviving members of the group and their representatives have closely guarded the distribution of their music.

Other major rock and roll bands, such as Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, have made their music available for sale online and have licensed music to “Rock Band” or Activision Blizzard Inc’s competing “Guitar Hero” game.

The Beatles have sold more than 600 million albums worldwide. While “Abbey Road” was the last album they recorded together, “Let it Be” — recorded before “Abbey Road” — was the final album released.

(Editing by Andre Grenon)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

March 3, 2009

BY STEVE HUNTLEY
Its budget meltdown has California taking a look at legalizing marijuana as a means to revive its depleted treasury. But common sense, not economic need, should persuade Americans it’s past time for a sober look at our mad “reefer madness” laws.

The Golden State legislator pushing the idea, Tom Ammiano of — plug in the appropriate joke — San Francisco, says licensing and taxing legal marijuana production and sales would earn California $1.3 billion a year. His bill would legalize marijuana possession and use for adults 21 or older, license commercial farming of it and tax it at $50 an ounce.

A big problem: California can’t do this on its own. The federal prohibition law would have to be changed for Sacramento to impose and collect the licensing fees and taxes. Given all the controversial financial and social engineering bills on its plate, Congress likely isn’t eager to take on this contentious issue. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll found only 41 percent of Americans favor legalization. That’s an improvement over the 34 percent in a 2002 CNN/Time poll, but still 52 percent are against it.

It would be best if Washington could leave this matter in the hands of states. Thirteen states have to some extent decriminalized marijuana. Massachusetts is the latest. Its voters last month eliminated criminal penalties for possession of small amounts.

A like number of states have humane laws allowing marijuana smoking by people with chronic or terminal diseases to combat pain and nausea. New Jersey could become the 14th since its state senate has approved a medicinal bill. In Illinois, medical marijuana legislation failed in a close vote last year; bills already have been introduced in both houses of the General Assembly.

And, in a bow to state discretion, the Obama administration says it will not continue the Bush administration’s policy of having U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officers raid medical marijuana dispensaries. That reflects the simple fact a huge part of America thinks a medical ban is cruel and prohibition in general is silly.

Marijuana, however undesirable some might view it, is not much, if any, different in its effects than alcohol and should be treated the same. And Ammiano has a point: A 2005 study endorsed by the late Milton Friedman and 530 other economists found legal regulation would save the nation $7.7 billion in enforcement costs and bring in up to $6.2 billion in taxes.

Beyond that are the issues of the terrible crime drug prohibition inflicts on mostly minority neighborhoods in big cities and the narco-terrorism raging in countries where criminals and poor people simply produce a product in huge demand in America.

Narco violence and corruption along our border threaten to make Mexico a failed state. Drug cartels issued an ultimatum to one police chief: Resign or see your officers killed. After several were murdered, he quit. Other officials have joined the cartels. One former police chief smuggled a ton of marijuana into Texas. Cartels extort protection money from businesses and even forced teachers in one town to hand over their Christmas bonuses. Six-thousand people were killed in drug-related violence last year. The U.S. Justice Department calls Mexican gangs the “biggest organized crime threat to the United States.”

The day may not be far off when Americans conclude, as they did with Prohibition in the 1930s, that violence associated with the marijuana ban is worse than the drug’s social ills. Some will raise the slippery slope argument that legalization opens the way to decriminalizing hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. Maybe we would have that discussion if legal marijuana works out, but saying yeah to one doesn’t mean saying yes to the other.

Marijuana prohibition no longer makes sense, if it ever did. For the record, my recreational chemical of choice is alcohol. After the sun sets, I like to enjoy a glass of wine or scotch. Why shouldn’t my neighbor, if so inclined, be able to relax with a joint?

Comment at suntimes.com.