The lack of negative entries

Don't get me wrong - I definitely haven't stopped writing negative entries, nor do I plan to. For instance, the more I hear people speak of hellary clinton as though she's already president, the more I think, "I hate that bitch." Other things set me off too - if I posted everything that I had an opinion on, I'd have no time to work. And I'd probably feel miserable.

Which is why I haven't posted a lot of stories I've thought of writing about. Partially it's because I'm pretty busy at work. But maybe even more than that is because a lot of them are negative stories, and sometimes I feel as if wasting any time on negativity comes back my way. For instance, I think of someone doing something "asshole-y" and so I blog about it. Well great, if it helps me feel better. But if I'm still stewing about it, then I'm still in that space and I'm wrapped in the negativity of the story. Often, I'd rather not even waste the time to write about something that's irritating because I don't want to give it any more energy.

It's late so hopefully this post makes sense. I'm going to stop writing before I'm really redundant. :-)

Those damn holiday parties

So yesterday I looked in my mail slot and saw an envelope... addressed to me. I was slightly excited: "I wonder what it is?" That thought was soon quashed when a co-worker said offhandedly, "Those are the invitations for the Christmas party."

Oh.

So after feeling a little bit of disappointment that I wasn't special with a personalized card, it sunk it: Christmas-fucking-party. I hate those things. Hate 'em. Why? I'm sure you guessed it: because I'm the one there without a date. Ugh.

Last year, fortunately, was okay. A number of my co-workers were dateless, the place was packed, I was hit on all night (mainly by drunk guys, but hit on nonetheless), and the drinks mellowed me out enough that I wasn't completely self-conscious and anxiety-ridden.

But here I am, at another company, and in a couple months another fucking holiday party will be happening. I almost feel like hiding my head under a pillow. Haha. That'd be cute.

But I notice that, as is the case with most things, the feelings I'm having regarding this aren't just about this Christmas party, but also feelings that's apparently lingered from grade school (is high school grade school). The Valentine's Days without gifts (well, that's not true - my best friend used to bring me a card and balloons and flowers, bless her heart, so at least I could pretend they were from a secret admirer). In high school, I never knew who I'd go to dances with and it would usually be a last minute scramble - I'd ask a guy and maybe he'd say yes or maybe not. Maybe I'd end up going and I wouldn't even have a date. (Why go to a dance without a date, you might ask. Because, working in student government, I had to help out.)

Despite how that paragraph probably sounds, I'm not trying to stew in a pity party; rather, I'm trying to explain how those things from before carry on today and I feel the same anxiety/rejection/fear/resentment, etc.

There's always the route of trying to find a date. Oh, how horrible. Most of my guy friends have moved from the area, and the ones who are here... well, I'll skip that. I know for the next month and a half I'm going to look at guys as potential dates. "Hmm, does he look like someone I'd feel okay showing to my co-workers? Yep. Does he have a wedding ring? Nope. Ok, maybe I should try and flirt with him." (Which is a completely different thing - I give huge "don't bother me" signs - everyone tells me I'm very intimidating before they get to know me, but once they know me, they realize I'm pretty harmless.) My fear is that I'll end up talking to some old guy, which is ugh - somehow I often get along better with much older guys (old enough to be my dad, I suppose, but definitely not old enough to be my grandpa), but can you imagine if I brought someone like that to a work party? Holy shit! Or even worse, I won't find someone period. Aye. Even saying that makes my heart feel pained (or beat faster or something).

And to make it better, add having a crush on not one, but two guys at work - both of whom are married! It's not the marriage thing that is really bad - it's the having-to-see-the-wife-stay-by-her-husband-while-I-try-to-ignore-them. (Not like it's ever happened before...) (yes, my voice was trailing off at the end).

Ok damnit, I'm having a motherfucking pity party for myself. I should keep things in perspective - there are people dying in the world and the last thing they care about is a stupid party. But I'm here and I care. :-(

Here are my options:
- go with a guy
- go with a girlfriend
- go by myself
- don't go

Eeks. At this point, I'd possibly even think of finding some really cute girl to be my date (I can't believe I just said that, but there it is; plus, the company is gay-friendly so I don't think it would be perceived overly negatively).

And there is the essence of the fucking dilemma: I'm worried about others' perception of me. It's completely my fear of what people think about me. Ugh. Who cares what other people think?

I care.

I have some work cut out for me. It's not necessarily work to find someone to go to the party with (even if I didn't find someone, I'd more than likely still go). The work might just be to become more comfortable with just being me. Me. Me. Without putting so much credence into what someone might be thinking in their head because they raised their eyebrow slightly higher than they normally do or because the person didn't sit next to me in a meeting.

Whah. (That's not a wail; it's more of an exhale.)

Let's see what happens.

Skip the apologies, please

So, I'm doing my normal run-through of today's news. I see an article about James Watson, the scientist who, a few days ago, said that Africans were less intelligent than [us]:
Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted Watson as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

I do wonder who "ours" stands for. Is it Europeans? The British? Americans? People who descended from apes? I'm not sure.

I chose not to read the whole article yesterday when I saw it because I figured there was no reason to needlessly get pissed off about something.

Today, though, I ran into an article about him being suspended from his work. But the thing that made me laugh was his "apology":
"I am mortified about what has happened," Watson said. "More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."

Ok, let me break this down into two parts. I'm going to start with the most amusing:

1. He's mortified. He can't understand how he could have said what he was quoted as saying? So is he saying he never said that? That he was misquoted? That he's senile?

If you pay attention to what he said, you'll notice he clearly didn't apologize, nor did he recant what he said. He didn't say he was sorry (he said he was mortified). Didn't say that what he said was wrong (instead, he couldn't understand how he could have said so-and-so). Oh, he's a smart one, all right. His statement, the words he chose, were clearly intentional, and quite clever.

Nonetheless, it was an attempt to fake an apology. Which leads me to the second point:

2. Just skip the apology. It blows my mind how frequently this happens. Someone makes a statement, someone else gets pissed, then the first person apologizes. The first person isn't sorry. He (for the sake of this post, the person will be a male) might be sorry that it created such a fuss. He might be sorry that he got in trouble. But he's not sorry for saying or doing what he said/did. The first thing he said was how he really felt. The apology was to placate people.

It reminds me of being younger: girls, as you might know, can be quite passive aggressive (but to get into that is a completely different post). Nonetheless, I'd see girls make a comment, such as, "You're ugly - just kidding." The just kidding might be accompanied with a sweet smile, a slight tap on the arm, a joking eye roll. But usually the person wasn't "just kidding". The girl just wanted to tell the other person what she thought, but follow the accepted social unspoken social rules.

Similar to when someone makes apologies such as these. I'm tired of apologies. Feel the way you feel. Think the way you think. Believe what you believe. Say what you say. But skip the bullshit apologies afterward. It doesn't make it better. It just makes the person look ridiculous.

Watson, believe what you believe. You have every right to (it's a bunch of bullshit, but you still have that right). But save the apology for something that you really feel sorry about.

Had Watson, when questioned about the quote, flipped off the journalist and said, "Fuck 'em," I would've respected him more. At least he said what he felt. But the half-ass apology just... it's pansy-ish.

I think if people stopped saying what they believed and then apologized for it, maybe we'd be able to have better dialogue. Granted, if people were coming from places of hate, it wouldn't lead to better communication. But when people can be honest in love - or at least, in respect - doesn't it make it better. If I could sit down and talk to someone who I felt racism toward, or someone who felt racism toward me talked to me, and we weren't talking to put the other person down but instead to have a true, open conversation about our beliefs, can't that spawn something beautiful?

How can we solve anything if we pretend it's not there? How can we work on something when we pretend we didn't mean what we first said?

Idealistic? Or could it have some truth in it?

Intervention - or sensationalism?

I haven't thought of that aspect too much. Is Intervention playing on the sensationalism of people's obsessions with others' misfortunes? I know that I've found it to be a very compelling series. I know that, like Extreme Makeover (see yesterday's post), I often cry when I watch an episode (although quite possibly for different reasons). No - come to think of it, I think they're similar - seeing life and human emotions played out on screen, connecting to those people with their joy, their pain - it might be reality television, but sometimes, it's real.

That being said, I often feel at the very least uncomfortable while watching the show. I mean, it's not really sugarcoated. They show people shooting up, snorting up, making themselves throw up, cutting, bingeing, boozing, etc. It's intense. They show the old needles, the overused spoons, the clouded eyes, stuffed-up noses, everything. Sometimes I watch, almost with one hand covered over an eye. Sometimes afterward, I'm so disturbed, that I have to talk to a friend the next day to get it out of my system. And, like that crash on the side of the road, I still watch.

Well, that's not exactly true. First of all, I try not to watch crashes on the sides of the road because I know how pissed off I am with slow traffic and I don't want to make it any slower by looking also. Secondly, it's not like the crashes. It would be as if I was watching a crash, then watching the people go to the hospital and get better and then seeing them healed from their injuries.

I haven't watched episodes in a long time. One reason is because they changed the day of the week and I forget to watch Intervention on Fridays. The other part is I don't know how much I can stomach. I'm taking a break.

But as I said at the beginning, I did find this article interesting. And one of the two "subjects" they mention, Laney, was in an episode that I previously watched.

When Reality TV Gets Too Real

Jeremy W. Peters, The New York Times
Mon., Oct. 8, 2007

On a recent episode of “Intervention,” A&E’s documentary series about addiction, no one was stopping Pam, an alcoholic, from driving.

As she made her way to the front door — stopping first at the refrigerator to take a swig of vodka for the road — viewers could hear a producer for the show speak up.

“You have had a lot to drink,” the voice from off camera said. “Do you want one of us to drive?”

Pam was indignant. “No, I can drive. I can drive,” she mumbled. She then got into her car, managed a three-point turn out of the parking lot and drove off. The camera crew followed, filming her as she tried to keep her turquoise Pontiac Sunfire between the lines.

Perhaps more than any other program on television now, “Intervention” highlights the sticky situations that reality-show producers can find themselves in as they document unpredictable and unstable subjects or situations. In recent years, producers and networks have increasingly pushed the boundaries of television voyeurism in search of another ratings hit.

At times, this has proved problematic for television networks. There have been several lawsuits related to shows like “Big Brother” and more recently, CBS found itself facing accusations that it had created dangerous working conditions for children in its reality program “Kid Nation,” in which children aged 8 to 15 toiled in the New Mexico desert to build a working society on their own.

In the case of reality-TV documentary shows like “Intervention” and the various incarnations of “The Real World” and “Road Rules” on MTV, producers can be witnesses to crimes, raising the question of when they are obligated to step out from behind the camera and intervene.

Sometimes the crimes they film are relatively minor, like underage drinking or fisticuffs. But in other cases, like on “Intervention” and VH1’s “Breaking Bonaduce,” in which the star, the former child actor Danny Bonaduce, got behind the wheel after he had been drinking and bragged how a car crash would make great television, the program’s subjects can put themselves and innocent bystanders at great risk.

And legally, producers are treated like witnesses: they bear no responsibility to intervene.

“The law in the United States doesn’t require you to step in and save people,” said David Sternbach, counsel for litigation and intellectual property matters for A&E Television Networks. “And it doesn’t require you to stop a crime that’s in the works.”

Often, of course, they have good business reasons not to: people on the edge make for good television. “Intervention” is one of A&E’s top shows. This year it has drawn up to two million viewers on its best nights. The premiere of “Kid Nation” attracted 9.1 million viewers but slipped the next week to 7.6 million.

The first season of “Breaking Bonaduce” helped VH1 increase its prime-time ratings in 2005, though they faded in the second season. And a wide following for “Cops,” Fox’s police ride-along reality show, has kept it on the air since 1989.

A&E said “Intervention,” has never been sued. And legal experts said that making a case against it or other documentary programs like it would be difficult because the subjects were being filmed in their own homes, engaging in activities that they would be pursuing regardless of whether a camera crew was there.

“This is their life with me or without me,” said Sam Mettler, “Intervention’s” creator and executive producer. The program takes other steps, like requiring potential subjects to undergo psychological evaluations and keeping a family member of the addict on call 24 hours a day during filming, to avoid being negligent.

To make a case for negligence, legal experts said, the accusing party would need to prove that the reality program created a situation that put its subjects in jeopardy. A “Big Brother” cast member sued CBS, for example, in 2002 after another cast member with a criminal record held a knife to her throat. CBS settled the case for an undisclosed amount.

When the sister of a woman who appeared on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover” committed suicide in 2004, the contestant sued the network for wrongful death and other charges. The contestant, who was competing to win free plastic surgery but lost, claimed that her sister had felt so guilty about mocking her appearance on the program that she killed herself. ABC settled the case for an undisclosed amount last year.

But if a subject on a show like “Intervention” or Fox’s “Cops” series were to injure someone while engaging in illegal activity, a case for negligence would be more difficult to make because producers are merely observing.

“Television producers are not policemen,” said Michael J. O’Connor, whose firm White O’Connor Curry in Los Angeles, Calif., has represented reality shows like “Survivor” and “America’s Next Top Model.” He added: “On a moral level, you get to the point where stepping in seems like it would be something you’d want to do. But from a legal standpoint, third parties causing injuries to other third parties is not something a television program is really responsible for.”

Being absolved of legal responsibility for his documentary subjects, however, does not make shooting the program any easier.

“I’ve had children of alcoholic parents there watching their mother in a drunken stupor, watching their mother pass out, watching their mother throw up,” Mr. Mettler said. “Those innocent children as casualties of their mother’s addiction was just emotionally heart-wrenching. The trauma of that is horrible, just horrible.”

“Intervention,” which ends each episode with an actual intervention, has arrangements with substance-abuse rehabilitation centers across the country that provide free in-patient treatment for addicts on the program.

“Morally and ethically, none of us can feel good watching someone hurt themselves or hurt someone else. And I’m not going to stand by and have someone who is drunk get behind the wheel of a car and kill someone,” Mr. Mettler said.

Mr. Mettler himself has had to step out from behind the camera on a number of episodes to prevent someone from driving drunk. In one case, he followed a crack addict named Tim through a swamp. Tim had crawled into a drainage pipe and threatened suicide, so Mr. Mettler had to talk him out.

And in another episode, Mr. Mettler’s field producers called paramedics after an alcoholic they were filming overdosed on the sedative trazodone. Laney, a wealthy divorced woman who drank half a gallon of rum a day and traveled long distances in limousines because she did not like putting her cat on commercial jets, swallowed the pills while the cameras were off. She told producers what she had done after they saw her chugging a bottle of juice to wash the pills down.

“Our first position is that this is a documentary series, we are there capturing real people in their real lives,” said Robert Sharenow, A&E’s senior vice president for nonfiction and alternative programming. “If there was an immediate danger, that was sort of our line. If the person was putting themselves or anyone else in immediate danger, then we’d cross the line.”

He added: “It’s a very, very delicate balance.”

Sometimes what other people have to say is so much better than me

I have to forewarn: I haven't read all of this article yet. So far, though, at the very least, regardless of whether I agree or don't agree, it's interesting.

Nobody Knows the Lynchings He’s Seen

Frank Rich, Op-Ed Columnist
The New York Times
Sun, Oct. 7, 2007

What's the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.

Pity Clarence Thomas. Done in by what he calls "left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony" — as he describes anyone who challenged his elevation to the court — he still claims to have suffered as much as African-Americans once victimized by "bigots in white robes." Since kicking off his book tour on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, he has been whining all the way to the bank, often abetted by a press claque as fawning as his No. 1 fan, Rush Limbaugh.

We are always at a crossroads with race in America, and so here we are again. The rollout of Justice Thomas's memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," is not happening in a vacuum. It follows a Supreme Court decision (which he abetted) outlawing voluntary school desegregation plans in two American cities. It follows yet another vote by the Senate to deny true Congressional representation to the majority black District of Columbia. It follows the decision by the leading Republican presidential candidates to snub a debate at a historically black college as well as the re-emergence of a low-tech lynching noose in Jena, La.

Perhaps most significant of all, Mr. Thomas's woe-is-me tour unfolds against the backdrop of the presidential campaign of an African-American whose political lexicon does not include martyrdom or rage. "My Grandfather's Son" may consciously or not echo the title of Barack Obama's memoir of genealogy and race, "Dreams From My Father," but it might as well be written in another tongue.

It's useful to watch Mr. Thomas at this moment, 16 years after his riveting confirmation circus. He is a barometer of what has and has not changed since then because he hasn't changed at all. He still preaches against black self-pity even as he hyperbolically tries to cast his Senate cross-examination by Joe Biden as tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan assassination of Medgar Evers. He still denies that he is the beneficiary of the very race-based preferences he deplores. He still has a dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but, and not merely in the matter of Anita Hill.

This could be seen most vividly on "60 Minutes," when he revisited a parable about the evils of affirmative action that is also a centerpiece of his memoir: his anger about the "tainted" degree he received from Yale Law School. In Mr. Thomas's account, he stuck a 15-cent price sticker on his diploma after potential employers refused to hire him. By his reckoning, a Yale Law graduate admitted through affirmative action, as he was, would automatically be judged inferior to whites with the same degree. The "60 Minutes" correspondent, Steve Kroft, maintained that Mr. Thomas had no choice but to settle for a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974 dollars) in Missouri, working for the state's attorney general, John Danforth.

What "60 Minutes" didn't say was that the post was substantial — an assistant attorney general — and that Mr. Danforth was himself a Yale Law graduate. As Mr. Danforth told the story during the 1991 confirmation hearings and in his own book last year, he traveled to New Haven to recruit Mr. Thomas when he was still a third-year law student. That would be before he even received that supposedly worthless degree. Had it not been for Yale taking a chance on him in the first place, in other words, Mr. Thomas would never have had the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start his career and to ascend to the Supreme Court. Mr. Danforth, a senator in 1991, was the prime mover in shepherding the Thomas nomination to its successful conclusion.

Bill O'Reilly may have deemed the "60 Minutes" piece "excellent," but others spotted the holes. Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who now directs the National Urban League, told Tavis Smiley on PBS that it was "as though Justice Thomas's public relations firm edited the piece." On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin, the author of the new best-seller about the court, "The Nine," said that it was "real unfair" for "60 Minutes" not to include a response from Ms. Hill, who was slimed on camera by Mr. Thomas as "not the demure, religious, conservative person" she said she was.

Ms. Hill, who once taught at Oral Roberts University and is now a professor at Brandeis, told me last week that CBS News was the only one of the three broadcast news divisions that did not seek her reaction to the latest Thomas salvos. Mr. Kroft told me that there were no preconditions placed on him by either Mr. Thomas or his publisher. "Our story wasn't about Anita Hill," he said. "Our story was about Clarence Thomas."

In any event, the piece no more challenged Mr. Thomas's ideas than it did his insinuations about Ms. Hill. As Mr. Smiley and Cornel West noted on PBS, "60 Minutes" showed an old clip of Al Sharpton at an anti-Thomas rally rather than give voice to any of the African-American legal critics of Justice Thomas's 300-plus case record on the court. In 2007, no less than in 1991, a clownish Sharpton clip remains the one-size-fits-all default representation of black protest favored by too many white journalists.

The free pass CBS gave Mr. Thomas wouldn't matter were he just another celebrity "get" hawking a book. Unfortunately, there's the little matter of all that public policy he can shape — more so than ever now that John Roberts and Samuel Alito have joined him as colleagues. Indeed, Justice Thomas, elevated by Bush 41, was the crucial building block in what will probably prove the most enduring legacy of Bush 43, a radical Supreme Court. The "compassionate conservative" who turned the 2000 G.O.P. convention into a minstrel show to prove his love of diversity will exit the political stage as the man who tilted American jurisprudence against Brown v. Board of Education. He leaves no black Republican behind him in either the House or Senate.

While actuarial tables promise a long-lived Bush court, the good news is that the polarizing racial politics exemplified by the president and Mr. Thomas is on the wane elsewhere. Fittingly, the book tour for "My Grandfather's Son" began just as word of Harry Dent's death arrived from South Carolina last weekend. An aide to Strom Thurmond and then to Richard Nixon, Mr. Dent was the architect of the "Southern strategy" that exploited white backlash against the civil-rights movement to turn the South into a Republican stronghold.

Mr. Dent recanted years later, telling The Washington Post when he retired from politics in 1981 that he was sorry he had "stood in the way of rights of black people." His peers and successors have been less chastened. One former Nixon White House colleague, Pat Buchanan, said on "Meet the Press" last weekend that it was no big deal for Republican candidates to skip a debate before an African-American audience because blacks make up only about 10 percent of the voting public and Republicans only get about a tenth of that anyway. It didn't occur to Mr. Buchanan that in 21st-century America many white voters are also offended by politicians who snub black Americans — whether at a campaign debate or in the rubble of Hurricane Katrina.

Republicans who play the race card may find that it has an expiration date even in the South. In 2000, Mr. Bush could speak at Bob Jones University when it still forbade interracial dating among its students, and John McCain could be tarred as the father of an illegitimate black child in the South Carolina primary. No more. Just ask the former Senator George Allen, the once invincible Republican prince of Virginia, whose career ended in 2006 after his use of a single racial slur.

Mr. Thomas seems ignorant of this changing America. He can never see past his enemies' list, which in his book expands beyond his political foes, Yale and the press to "elite white women" and "paternalistic big-city whites" and "light-skinned blacks." (He does include a warm mention of Mr. Thurmond, a supporter in 1991, without mentioning that the senator hid away a child fathered with a black maid.) Always eager to cast himself as a lynching victim, Mr. Thomas is far more trapped in the past than the 1960s civil-rights orthodoxy he relentlessly demonizes.

The only way he can live with his various hypocrisies, it seems, is to claim that he's the rare honest, politically incorrect black man who has the guts to tell African-Americans what no other black leader will. Thus he asserted to a compliant Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News last week that everyone except him tiptoes around talk of intraracial crime and out-of-wedlock births.

This will come as news to the millions of Americans who have heard Mr. Obama, among other African-American leaders whose words give the lie to this bogus claim. But the fact that America's highest court harbors a justice as full of unreconstructed racial bitterness as Clarence Thomas will prove more eye-opening still.

Putting it in perspective

So I watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Ever watched that show? I probably watch one or two episodes a season. I only saw bits and pieces of this episode, and what happened wasn't the point. What is the point is that it helps put things in perspective. It helps put life, love, family, God, everything in perspective. It definitely helps me get over some bullshit like wasting energy on what someone does with the locks in their cars.

Really, I mean, really, who cares??

Let me put energy in the things that matter.

:-)

Congo - will it be the rape or the gorillas?

Methinks it'll be the gorillas.

Pardon - I might feel kind of cynical (read 'Things that make me go ugh').

I just read this article that says "[Congo] Rebels seize habitat for endangered gorillas".* Earlier today, I saw an article, "Horrific Rape Epidemic Devastating Eastern Congo".** Which do I think will get more coverage? Well, I doubt neither will get much. (C'mon, y'all, it's Africa - who wants to cover Africa?) But between the two stories, which will get the most coverage? I would bet it will be the gorillas. Why?

It's that part of us that feels sorry for animals. Makes us sympathize with animals, particularly baby animals, but will keep us from feeling the same thing with people.

I would love - love, love, love - to be proven wrong. We'll see. I'll check in in a couple days.

(as I'm sure the articles will not be posted for long, but I don't want to post the whole articles, I'll post an opening paragraph from each):

* Rebels have seized an area in eastern Congo that serves as a wildlife habitat for endangered mountain gorillas, threatening one of the last known populations of the animals, conservationists said Sunday.

** Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.
“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Things that make me go ugh

So not more than twenty minutes ago, I went to deposit money at the bank. I'm about to cross a street, but obviously I needed to wait until cars weren't coming so I didn't walk in front of them. This driver in this car, this maroon-colored VW Jetta, seemed to hesitate, as though not sure whether to be polite and let me walk across the street or whether to keep driving. He chose the latter. Cool, no worries. I start crossing the street so he would pass me before I got up to his car. I'm sure many of you have done it - time your walking so you don't hit a passing car. If you're in a city environment, cars are used to it - they know you're timing when you walk to how fast their car is moving. When you're in towns, people sometimes don't know what you're doing - they're wondering if you want to cross in front of them, if they're supposed to stop or continue.

People might have different reactions, but one that I have never received before is someone quickly locking their doors.

Now, let me stop for a moment. First, why would someone lock their doors if they're in a car - obviously if they sped away, I would never catch up with them. Secondly, there was nothing in my demeanour that exhibited threat. Assertive, possibly, but not aggressive. I wasn't even looking at the guy and his chick - I was looking across the street at the bank.

I just heard the click - and the first feeling that went into my head was irritated dismissal. "Fuck 'em."

But as the seconds and the minutes went by, I went from irritation to this weird, irrational type of fury. "See, things like that explain why people want to kill ---." "Things like that make me want to kill ---." "They're scared; I should give them something to be scared of."

Time to let that anger go. No need to be angry at an imbecile. A little scared, pussy-ass bitch who reacts to his own irrational prejudices by being a punk.

FUCK!!!!

Apparently I might need to take some more time to have this anger out of my system.

Thoughts of the day

I'm pretty sleepy, so I'm not going to expand on these. I'll try to get to all of them tomorrow. The thoughts ruminating through my head today (in no particular order):

- Democrats are PUSSIES
- Hellary - I hate that bitch
- once again, the government tries to get in too much of our damn business
- and other little treasures

Despite the overall (overwhelmingly) negative tone of this summary, I feel pretty damn good. Not that you necessarily care how I feel, but all the same...

Until next time...

Flaring Neck pt. 2

... continued...

I was stressed because I found myself (I love how I phrase that - "found myself" - as though somehow I had a passive part in it) having a crush on this guy at work. Married guy. At work. Please tell me in how many ways that is wrong!

I think I'm feeling a little calmer regarding that because I've come to the point where:
a) I'm not going to do anything with him. We get along fairly well, and if anything were to happen, besides the inappropriateness of it and the fear of others from work finding out, at some time (whether immediately or, more than likely, somewhere down the line), I'd have intense remorse. Really deep remorse. Do I screw up? All the bloody time. But I try to keep myself from doing things that I regret (not frivolous, unimportant regrets, like eating too much, but weighing-on-my-heart regrets). I definitely try to avoid situations of remorse. So that being said, I've been able to say to myself that nothing will happen between us because I seriously doubt he would pursue anything and I'm not going to.
b) I've decided I need to start dating. I've been really hesitant (because sometimes I don't pick the best people), but I'd much rather date some random dude than spend time even thinking about hooking up with someone from work.

Here's hoping my neck isn't sore this week. If I remember, I'll try to report about it.

George Michael and speaking the truth

I pass by this article: "Michael says trying to smoke less marijuana"and immediately, before reading it, I have an idea what it's about. (I'd rather not paste the whole story, but you know how it is - stories only remain on a page for so many days).

LONDON (Reuters) - British singer George Michael is trying to reduce his consumption of marijuana, the pop star told the BBC on Sunday. "I'm constantly trying to smoke less marijuana. I'd like to take less and to a degree it's a problem," Michael told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs program.

"Is it a problem in my life? Is it getting in the way of my life? I really don't think," added Michael. "I'm a happy man and I can afford my marijuana so that's not a problem."

Previously Michael, who has sold more than 85 million records with hits such as "Careless Whisper," has admitted to a dependency on prescription drugs and has called marijuana much less harmful than alcohol.

Britain relaxed its laws against cannabis in 2004 but warned the country's estimated 3.5 million users the drug remained illegal and possession of even a small amount could still lead to arrest.

Michael infuriated mental health charities last year by smoking a cannabis joint during a television interview and saying, "This stuff keeps me sane and happy."

In June the 44-year-old Michael was banned from driving for two years and sentenced to 100 hours of community service after admitting driving when unfit due to drugs.

Police had found Michael slumped behind the wheel of his Mercedes at a road junction in London in October and the prosecution said he had a cocktail of both legal and illegal drugs in his system.

Michael revealed in Sunday's interview he has completed 50 hours of his sentence, helping people with mental health problems as well as drug addiction.

"I've also scrubbed down some very dirty rooms", added Michael, "and make chicken fajitas for some homeless people. I was quite good apparently."

Michael ended years of speculation about his sexuality by announcing he was gay after he was arrested in 1998 for engaging in a "lewd act" in a Los Angeles public toilet.

"In a strange way I've spent the last 15 to 20 years trying to derail my own career, but it never seems to suffer," said Michael, who completed a 25th anniversary tour earlier this year.

"I suffer like crazy. I've suffered bereavements and public humiliations, but my career always seems to right itself like a plastic duck in the bath. In some ways I resent that."

Now I suppose some people - moralists, I call them, would be upset about this. Dirty man, such a mess, blah blah blah. I've never followed George Michael's career, but in the past few years, I've heard about his problems with the law. The thing is: he admits it, he tells the truth, there you go. To me, it's not even an issue about whether he's trying to work on not doing drugs; then again, the Libertarian in me believes drugs should be legal.

The thing that I love is, in this space where "celebrities" always lie about themselves and what they're doing (scratch that - celebrities have been lying about this as long as there've been celebrities), it's so refreshing to see and read about someone who just tells the truth about what's going on in his life.

Once again, what goes on in "celebrities'" lives isn't wouldn't be any of my or other people's business. As it is, these people purposely thrust themselves into the limelight. Once they're there, though, and they fuck up (as all humans do), they start lying about it. I really don't have a lot of sympathy for them. They put themselves out there - willingly - and then get angry with the media when their shit hits the press. If you don't want your business out there, I think, then get the fuck out of showbiz.

And then there are people who just tell what's going on then. Their weaknesses. Their struggles. Their - gasp - humanness. I'm not talking about the people who live their lives ducking cameras and lying through their teeth and then years or decades later, when they decide they want to make a few million, they come out with a biography. I'm not talking about the "yeah, this happened at one time, but I'm not there." I'm talking about the people who show themselves for who and what they are when they are that, when they're in mire, when life kind of sucks, at times like that.

Nothing more to say, but major props to George Michael for his honesty.

Flaring Neck pt. 1

yeah, this is probably not the most exciting, but it's pertinent to me right now.

My neck is flaring. The left side. I really want to put Bengay* on it (*who the fuck named that product), but it's too strong-smelling (I'm still at work). My back hurts too. I've been trying to contort my body into all kinds of positions (you should've seen me twisting whilst on the balance ball; that was nuts), cracked various... whatever it is one cracks, but still it's irritated.

The funny thing is, if I'm not mistaken, my neck and back - particularly at the same time - haven't been really sore in a week or week and a half. I thought it was because I was trying to mix time on the balance ball with time on my new chair (which I got to rectify the back/neck/shoulder pain).

More than likely, though, it's a stress thing. Woo, crazy thought. Bu here it is (see: I told you it's not that interesting):
I was feeling pretty stressed at my job because I felt I wasn't catching up as quickly as I should and had a lot of backlog to do. Still really enjoyed my job, but enjoying doesn't necessarily take away the stress.
So what am I stressed about now? *Cough* to be continued...

frivolous subject that I didn't read but have an opinion about

I think that's better than calling it "Britney's Bodyguard" because, quite frankly, I don't want to see her name, over and over again, in the previous posts section.

Also, I haven't read any articles regarding the situation w/ bodyguard. There are certain topics/people I don't want to see again and again, so I don't click on those stories, hoping that if enough people also don't click on the stories, the sites will look at the (lack of) traffic and decide not to post articles about said topics and people anymore.
Take, for instance, that one dyed-blond girl who recently spent 23 days in jail (ugh, tired of that person) - other people say they're tired of her too, but at the same time they click on articles about her. Maybe they don't realize each click is recorded, so even when people don't like something, their clicks onto the site seem to suggest otherwise.

What a boring topic. Let's get back to the fluffy topic above.

I start seeing all these articles: "Britney's bodyguard tells of near overdose, drug usage", "Bodyguard says he saw white powder on Britney's nose", "Bodyguard speaks of Spears' drug habits".

Okay.

There's one thing we can surmise: bodyguard is money-hungry, fame-hungry, and (from the size of him) food-hungry. He's not telling these stories to help her; he's telling them to get in the limelight.

Two - "near overdose" - I have seen several headlines mention this. So how do they know it's a near overdose? Can't someone have an overdose w/out dying? In other words, someone can have an overdose and still live? So if she didn't have an overdose, how does someone know it was near overdose? Could it possibly have been 'drug binge'? Media sensationalism is irritating, but when they lie for the sake of sensationalism, it totally crosses ethics. Granted, ethics and Britney might seem odd to mention in the same sentence. I'm just wondering how all these other people determined it was a "near overdose".

Third - "white powder on her nose" - Assumedly, that meant drugs. Either that or leftovers from the powdered donuts. Methinks the former, though.

Now, I could be completely fooled. You might thing, "well, if you'd read the article, you would know that..." I'm taking a gamble though. I'd rather not read this article and be wrong than click on it and give more fuel for sites to publish subsequent Britney stories.

lame post

Yes, I admit it before I even start - this is a lame post. Why? Because I said that I would say something positive in my next post and I figured I'd better get this out of the way as I always want to talk about more serious things.

Ok, yesterday and the day before yesterday, I spent some time outside. Now this wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that I don't like to spend time outside. I'm absolutely a homebody. It's easy for me to stay inside for days at a time. But when I went outside on Saturday, what the hell did I find? Doggonnit - the fresh air was nice! I felt sort of revitalized! It was like a plant opening up after getting some much needed water. I actually walked around for awhile, sat somewhere and wrote in my journal (talk about an exercise in mental gymnastics), watched the cars go by...

Speaking of cars going by...

I notice that I watch cars like I watch chicks. For instance, I might look at a woman/girl/female/whatever and think, "look at her legs," "look at her butt," "look at her chest," and so on. I'll look at cars labels the same way. The label that a car sports on its back is equivalent to legs or a butt. A car can either get more points for looking nice and fairly new or lose points for looking dirty and slightly beat up *cough*likemine*cough*. But it's that same comparing thing. Where does that car (that person) line up next to mine (next to me)? Compare always always always equals despair.

Okay, maybe not always always always, but almost almost always.

Wow, this post is getting lamer by the minute... :-p

What's the Appropriate Torture?

So I go onto Fox News' web site yesterday and see the feature that every news site has - O.J. Simpson. By chance, I also see another article:

U.S. Prosecutor Accused of Seeking Sex With Girl, 5.

As we all know, these stories stay up for about a week, so I'll post it below:

DETROIT —

A U.S. prosecutor was arrested in an Internet sting operation after flying from Florida to Michigan allegedly to have sex with a 5-year-old girl, officials said.

John David Roy Atchison, 53, appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Detroit on a charge of interstate travel to have sex with a minor. He is an assistant U.S. attorney in northern Florida.

The arrest followed several weeks of Internet conversations between the prosecutor and a detective posing as the mother of a 5-year-old girl, authorities say.

The prosecutor is charged with using interstate communication to entice a minor to have sexual contact and with traveling across state lines with the intent of engaging in illicit sexual contact. The charges carry a possible sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Atchison, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., was arrested Sunday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport as part of an undercover sting operation by the Macomb Area Computer Enforcement Team.

"There wasn't much reaction from him at all," said Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel, whose department runs the team. He said Atchison was cooperative with authorities.

Atchison brought a Dora the Explorer doll, hoop earrings and petroleum jelly with him from Florida, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Click here to read the Detroit Free Press report.

According to court records, Atchison initiated an online chat Aug. 29 with an undercover officer posing as a mother interested in letting men have sex with her daughter.

In several conversations, he said he wanted to have oral, vaginal and anal sex with the woman's fictitious daughter, Hackel said.

"I'm always gentle and loving; not to worry; no damage ever; no rough stuff ever ever," Atchison said at one point, according to an affidavit filed in court.

"I've done it plenty," he said.

Hackel said his department brought in federal authorities after it became clear that the case involved an out-of-state suspect.

The arrest has come as a shock in Florida, where Atchison is president of a community sports organization, the Gulf Breeze Sports Association, where girls as young as 4 can participate in the soccer program.

Teresa Hawthorne, the organization's youth sports coordinator, told FOXNews.com no one from the association would comment on the case.

Atchison was a soccer and baseball coach, Lt. Rick Hawthorne of the Gulf Breeze police told the Detroit News.

Click here to read the Detroit News report.

"I'm shocked," Edwin "Buz" Eddy, the city manager of Gulf Breeze told the Pensacola News Journal. "That's about all I can say. I hope this is something that can be cleared up by some explanation. What that might be, I don't know."

Eddy told the paper that he had known Atchison for more than a decade and considered him a "pillar of the community."

Click here to read the Pensacola News Journal report.

Atchison's wife is a science teacher at Gulf Breeze High School.

The couple have three children high school age or older, according to the Detroit News.

The fact that an Internet child sex suspect is a law enforcement official shouldn't be unexpected, Hackel said.

"The people who are doing it come from all walks of life," the sheriff said. "It doesn't surprise us anymore."

Atchison asked for a court-appointed lawyer. A detention hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.

I didn't know what to do. The part that sickened me was when it mentioned that he brought her a doll, some earrings and petroleum jelly! And then the bastard says, "No damage ever." Are you shitting me? There is permanent damage with anyone who was touched by this fucknut. And the parents who would put their children out to this?

People are talking about O.J. and his robbery issue. What about this?

I don't consider myself a big fan of capital punishment, and only believe the people who get it should get it for horrible crimes. In those cases, I don't believe people should use lethal injection and other things like that - whatever the crimes are, the punishment needs to somewhat suit it. This person deserves serious punishment.

Okay, next post has to be positive - I need to change this energy.

Busy Bee, and Being P.C.

First of all, I had planned to write more frequently than I currently have, but it looks like work is busier than I anticipated (I've been up to my elbows in projects this week), and I don't have an internet connection right now at the house, so lunch times is about as blog-y as I'll get for a couple weeks.



I can feel that struggle between whether to say what I really feel or to temper it for the sake of not offending people. The truth, I think, is that many things that I think, or at least many "somethings that I've got to say" (what a mouthful of poor English) would be offensive because I'm fairly blunt, admittedly often too emotional, sometimes self-righteous (ouch) and controversial. I also try to tell the truth, which I think my friends can attest for. So while I would call someone out for an issue and want to truthfully express my opinion about things, I also believe that I have to be honest with and about myself. That makes skipping around topics for the sake of being less divisive, less rude, things of the sort, more difficult.

On the other hand, I can look at things from the other side and see that if I felt I was on the other end of someone's vitrol and thought s/he made a huge misstatement, it could piss me off. To the point where I'd say, "Why is it that people can say this stuff online?"

The last thing I'd like to be is controversial for the sake of being controversial - that's lame. That's really lame. Nor would I want to alienate people. But trying to honestly express views, thoughts, opinions, I think that's okay. I do believe open communication is one of the best ways for people to move past their differences to commonalities.

So I'll try to be honest while also trying to be respectful.


That is 'try'.

Wow - lot to catch up on

There's no way I'll be able to catch you up on everything that's happened, but let me summarize (it would be weird to not post for a year, and then start posting as if nothing happened).

Two days after my last post, I started a new job. I was swamped. Didn't have anytime to post while at work (which I suppose is understandable; it is, after all, a job and I had work). But on top of that, I was so tired by the time I'd get home that I'd go to sleep. That and being depressed. So, job that sucked ass, overworking, being depressed, being busy, not making it a priority, quitting job, looking for work, starting new job, being much happier in job and not nearly as overworked.

Oh yeah, and I've moved three times within the last year. Moved --> place near work --> [quit job] --> moved back to original place --> [got new job] --> moved to place near work.

Add to that not being able to remember my password for here, then not knowing which gmail account I connected with this blog, so not knowing where to receive my password hint (you gotta love gmail).

Anyway, the point is I'm finally here, and ready to post again.

Hi all - let's get started! :-)

today's successes

i just thought of the call and response that people sometimes did at church:

"God is good."
"all the time."

i'm having that kind of moment now.

ok, so the interview that i went on last week, the one that i was late for and that i had to make an unfortunate pitstop for, has blossomed into a job offer. right now i'm in the process of negotiations. this is my first time ever negotiating salary, so the first thing i feel is bad, guilty, selfish - all those things. i was talking about it w/ some women on saturday, and one of them said to me that companies expect that. ugh, i still feel pretty bad, but i think i would've felt worse had i not asked. i would've wondered, "what if..." and i definitely don't feel like having any more 'what ifs' than necessary.

so i'm not moving across the country. i'm staying pretty close to where i am now. i'm planning on moving to where i'm working, though, b/c even i, who likes to drive, do not want to make that commute everyday.


what else? my brother and i went to see... snakes on a plane yesterday. i know, cra-zy, huh? i don't recall seeing a movie all year (oh wait, i did see a movie, akeelah and the bee, w/ my mom b/c she wanted to watch it. so the second movie theater movie i go and see is soap. that's weird. even weirder is that my brother enjoyed it (he was the one at first who didn't want to go b/c he thought the concept was ridiculous). it was okay. i enjoyed it. but i'm too frugal/cheap to spend movie theater money on a regular basis.


um, what else? at this moment, life is good. one thing i am seeing more and more is that i do put too much confidence in myself. that's why when i feel that i'm not doing what i'm supposed to or i get into my head that i'm a 'failure' in some way, i get really hard on myself - b/c i often determine my worth in myself and how i act or what i do. if i'm looking to myself for... perfection or whatever, i'll always be disappointed.

ok, i'm either going to work on my novel a little more or read for a little while.

SoaP

like i said before...

stream of consciousness

doesn't the white house abhor the new york times? that is the same new york times that judith miller previously wrote for - the same judith miller who the white house released classified information? the same judith miller, previously of the ny times, who this morning was having breakfast w/ white house u.n. ambassador nominee john bolton?

ah, how refreshing to see that america never seems to learn from its mistakes. profiling everyone who is not-white, from native americans to african americans to asian americans (specifically chinese and japanese) to latino americans (specifically mexicans), and now it's time for arabic americans. i don't seem to recall them profiling caucasians during the reign of the ku klux klan. nor do i recall them profiling german americans during world war 2. but asswipe peter king suggests we do just that w/ people of middle eastern and southern asian descent.

isn't it ironic? (and no, i'm not laughing:) 2,973 people died on september 11 as a result of the attacks in new york city, arlington, virginia [d.c.], and shanksville, pennsylvania. 24 people were never recovered. so as a liberal number, 2,997 people died on 9/11. 2,597 u.s. soldiers have died in the iraq war. um, let me say this again: 2,973 - 2,997 people died on sept. 11; 2,597 american soldiers have died in the iraq war. does anyone besides me find this not only disturbing but tragic also? what have they died for? are we still going to sit here and act as though the iraqis were involved in 9/11? i don't doubt many of them wish we'd be killed, but if that's the basis for involvement, a majority of the world might be involved in 9/11. all these people died in new york, dc and virginia, and because of the president's personal vendetta ("[saddam] tried to kill my dad"), we've dishonored their memories by allowing almost 3,000 more american troops to die in iraq. and for what? i, for one, don't feel a damn bit safer. mark my words - more americans will die in iraq than died sept. 11. i hope i'm proven wrong.

but don't worry, i have words for the democrats too. they make me sick. look up democrat and next to the definition is the word "pussy". b/c that's what they are. put them all together and there's barely a ball between them. they're so worried about trying to win elections that they have a rubber back (no backbone) and you know what? they keep losing elections. it's not a surprise. i think there are some intelligent people who struggle w/ whether to vote for democrats and republicans and stick with republicans b/c they say, "at least if pubs are wrong, they're very convincing that they're right. dems don't even have the nuts to defend what they know is true." when i think of the democrats, i don't think flip-flop, but i do think wishy-washy. there are a few exceptions: feingold, for one, seems to be pretty right on and resolute; so does murtha. i've always had a decent amount of respect for maxine waters and there's a couple more. but most of them - *buzz* - i can do without. diplomacy is one thing; stating things that they know aren't true, just so they can stay elected makes them not deserving of the power they do have.

on a personal note... i was watching dr. phil yesterday and it was about this mother who raged on her kids. they'd set up cameras in her house and it showed her going balistic on her kids - screaming, using every swear word at them ("you're an asshole," "you're a fucking bitch"), slapping, choking, kicking one of her kids, even though he was limping... it was in-tense. oh, and by the way, the kids were 10, 9, 3, 3, and 7 months. i was very uncomfortable. i could feel myself tense up as i watched it. i don't know what part of the show it was, but for some reason i burst into tears. serious, deep, loud crying. i can tell you i wasn't expecting, nor prepared for, that.
later in the show, the dad, who was supposed to be semi-calm came on the show. of course, come to find out he'd sometimes kick them (the son tried to pacify it by saying that he didn't kick them really hard and even though he wore steel toe boots, he did it with the side of his shoe). the dad also brought home a "thou shalt not" stick which he or his wife would sometimes use on the kids; understandably, the kids were terrified of it. it immediately reminded me of how even now, years and years and years since i'd last gotten a spanking, i still tense up and get fearful if i go in my parents room and see my dad's belts on his bed. so of course i started crying again.
then they spoke about one of the 3 year old kids, who's started biting himself when his mom rages. dr. phil was talking about how kids do this b/c they have so much anxiety in a situation that they'll try to do anything, even hurt themselves, to distract themselves from that situation. then, of course, i burst into tears again. i was thinking of how, when i was young, i used to pick my face until it would bleed and how i made scars on my face that lasted probably four or five years. how i used to pull out my eyebrow hairs. how i used to bite myself. yes, i understand sometimes people do things because of an ocd. and while this could be part of what drove me, i think it was mainly b/c i often felt very fearful and unsure at home. then i thought of how that stopped for years at a time, but how i've spent many years of my life hurting myself in some way. how i've done all kinds of things to myself and how even now, even today, first thing i did when i woke up was went to the bathroom and picked at my body for about thirty minutes, getting excited when it bled, having the blood get all over my fingers and inside my nails so i had to clean underneath the nails to get all the blood out, how frustrated i was that i couldn't pull off this one piece of skin on my body so i frantically searched for a safety pin so i could poke and prod and tear off the skin. how even though i know that that isn't a nice thing to do, that i really enjoy it. and it made me say, "i don't know what it's like for people who get spankings or people who have a raging parent. but i can say, watching these kids and from my own experience, that it definitely affects us."
i usually don't want to say anything like that b/c i feel almost as if i'm being fucked up toward my parents, as though i'm saying they're bad parents. i'm not. the truth doesn't make someone bad; it makes them human. i can justify it and say they were nowhere near as bad as that mom was, but it still affected me to this day. and those decisions they made had a negative affect on me. and i still love them profusely, but it doesn't change the facts.

i've also been thinking, despite the negative tone of this note, that i want to demonstrate more love - to everyone. that there's this acceptance of hatred in our world, and i don't think about how hurtful, mean and hateful i can be until i see myself in someone else. how, just like i believe one negative act spurs a succession of negative acts, i also believe one positive act can spearhead more positivity. i'm going to try and share the positive.

and now, i'm going to either read some news, exercise, or take a nap. ;-) until next time, take care.

morning thoughts

1. i was thinking about how i make an effort to not offend people. i mean, i do try a lot of the times. particularly, i guess, when i write. yet, i still seem to offend people left and right. sometimes i understand it (i have some non-conformist views), but other time it hits me from left field.

it makes me think: why do i make such an effort not to offend people? why tiptoe gingerly around issues? why try to be diplomatic? if i feel a certain way, maybe i should just be bold, shout it from the rooftop, and if i offend someone, too bad so sad. it wasn't my intention, but oh well.

i'm too ____ for that, i think. (the "____" is because my mind's a little mushy and i couldn't think of anything to put there.

2. crazy situation yesterday! i was driving to a city about an hour away. only thing was it took me 2 1/2 hours. and it was for an interview. so needless to say, i wasn't happy about that. but the crazy thing is i had coffee and water yesterday morning and coffee flies through my bladder. i knew, whilst on the road, that i would not make it to my destination unscathed. i sped off the highway, drove to the back of some parking lot, ran to the bushes (behind a dumpster), and emptied my system. i was trying to hold my skirt up so nothing would splash on it (the dry leaves on the ground were causing a slight problem). but in the process, i realized i had my skirt all the way up in the back, so if someone was looking through the woods, they'd be able to see my bare ass. oh my gosh. i was slightly embarassed. ok, probably more than that. but i jumped back on the road again.

3. i feel like i'm in an uber-sensitive mood right now. i don't like that. i do wish i was a lot more callous and non-analytical and not so concerned with what other people think of me.

4. i probably drove 4/ 4 1/2 hours yetserday and i only had a couple flashes of road rage, which is super for me! i was very glad for that (the lack of it, that is).

5. i've got to take a nap. i'm ex-bloody-hausted.

"your mother was a lizard"

that has to be the perfect retort to any insult. and boy, are there a lot of those on the internet. it reminds me of the adage:

"arguing online is like competing in the special olympics... even if you win, you're still retarded."

i guess it's nice that even the most ignorant of people are able to spread their venom. i think, though, the less credence i give to retards, the better.

i don't know if it's going to church every sunday and hearing the pastor speak about love, or hearing that silly bank commercial on tv that plays the beatles' "all you need is love" jingle, or just all the shit in the world right now, but i'm thinking, if someone wants to be idiotic, why am i going to let it get me bent out of shape? why would i waste energy being pissed at someone? i mean, are there really enough hours in my day to get angry at people who i don't even know? particularly people online?

we (as in people) really seem to be a hateful bunch. i'll hold my hand up first on that. i certainly have anger issues. and it's amusing how much vitrol people spew online - it doesn't matter if i go to a dem site or a pub site - everyone's spending so much time knocking other people down.

don't get me wrong - i can knock down with the best of them. but then what? do i get an 'online special olympics award' for schooling someone who's not even worth my breath? have i made some point because i punked a punk? it's not worth arguing with a retard because the only way to beat a retarded person is to be more retarded.

better just to look and laugh. observe it with one brow raised, the way i'd observe a bratty kid who's having a temper tantrum in the store. or better yet, maybe i just won't look at all.

dead presidents

despite how it sounds, i'm not pumping out a wish list. i'm speaking of the movie. i watched part of it a few days - this vietnam war scene. wow. i just looked at the imdb page and it mentioned "strong graphic violence". um, yeah. in this one scene, an american soldier went off to use the bathroom in the bushes w/out telling anybody because he didn't want anyone near him when he did his business.

when the soldiers realized he'd gone off, they went running, looking for him, and found him - i kid you not - with his stomach slashed completely open, some of his intestines spilling out on top, and his dick in his mouth. ok, even just typing this makes me want to stop. that was definitely the most disturbing scene i've seen in a long time.

oh, to make it better, the guy wasn't dead yet. i hoped that the thing hanging out of his mouth was just his intestines. i'd hoped that the vietnamese soldiers had just cut off part of his small intestines and stuck it in his mouth. no such luck. the soldiers gave him some morphine and tried to cover his stomach so they could rush him back to the compound. i started yelling, "what's wrong with you?! kill him! he's in pain!" the soldier begged anthony to kill him and eventually anthony did (by overdosing him on morphine). i was pissed off that they didn't kill him right away, to put him out of his misery. i was pissed off that they had that graphic of a scene in a movie. i mean, there's a huge difference from night of the living dead zombies eating intestines versus realistic war movie guy w/ his intestines hanging out.

war is a crazy, crazy horrible thing. it's amazing that more people who go to war don't end up com-plete-ly fucked up. it would be understandable if they did. i mean, i was upset and i was just watching a movie; i can't imagine actually being in the midst of it!

it seems as if there should be some law that states before a leader sends his soldiers off to war, he has to have at least fought in a war himself, so he has a clearer picture of what hell he's sending them to.


there is something interesting about people who complain, "you don't care about the troops!" i never see those people make a peep about veterans. are the troops only important while they're at war? isn't it our responsibility to say, "you risked your life for your country. now we're going to take good care of you"?

just a thought.

monkey business

i ran across this video, courtesy of boing boing, courtesy of you tube. it's funny. check out (what i have dubbed):

monkey business

lamont rocks on!

i'm so glad lamont won!!! take that, pubs and liebs! too bad the lieb won't just get the hell out. what an egotistical idiot.



and on a completely different subject: i hope people don't watch 'world trade center'. geez, i sound like a hater, don't i? :-p
i miss writing on here on a regular basis, but my days seemed to be packed with looking for jobs and trying to write my story. i hope to get back on here and post meaningful stuff. :-)

peace to all!

wait, let me explain!

i really would have liked to invest more time on here - so many national/international/life things to talk about. but i'm working on (and doing a poor job of) finishing my book, so almost all of my writing attention is there. i'll leave it at that or else this'll turn into a looong post.

no global warming

... or so says good ole roy.

now, believe me, there has been much more exciting news than this since i last posted. but i just happened to be reading this article and had to post it.

you see, i've never been a big global warming type of person. i mean, i had no doubt that it was real, but i wasn't really concerned about it and i had that selfish perspective of "well, it won't fuck me up in my lifetime."

that is, until the heat wave. i don't know if i've felt anything like it. i would say without a doubt i have been in the hottest and the most humid part of the country in summer, and this heat wave was more intense than any of them.

so now that i am personally connected to this, global warming is taking a slightly bigger place in my mind. issues like poverty, racism, conflicts in africa and the middle east, ...... [all the topics that go there that i'm not thinking of at the moment], and even finding and getting a job take precedent over global warming. but at least gw is in my top, say, 100 concerns (maybe), instead of not really being an issue for me.

Majority Whip Blunt: If I Stay In Charge, Congress Won’t ‘Do Anything Meaningful’ On Climate Change

soap

need i say more?

the game that spurred it all

late, but worth the wait... (kinda like me!)

At 94, Buck O'Neil Plays in All-Star Game

July 19, 2006

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) -- John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil never got a free pass in life. The grandson of a man brought to this continent a slave, O'Neil moved to Kansas City to avoid racial persecution in the Deep South. He played baseball during an era of segregation, and earlier this year was denied entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special 12-member panel.

It figures that on Tuesday night, when the 94-year-old O'Neil stepped into the batter's box during a minor league All-Star game, nobody could quibble over an intentional walk.

Except maybe O'Neil and a few thousand fans.

"I just might take a swing at one," he said before Tuesday night's Northern League All-Star game.

Leading off for the West in the top of the first inning, O'Neil argued with the umpire after the first pitch from Kansas City T-Bones pitcher Jonathan Krysa sailed high and was called a ball. After another high pitch that narrowly missed his head, O'Neil took a called strike before being walked, as planned.

O'Neil ambled to first base, then took a lead off the bag as if he were going to stay in the game before being pulled for a pinch runner.

After the top of the inning, T-Bones owner John Ehlert announced that a trade had been brokered to bring O'Neil to the T-Bones, allowing him to also lead off the bottom of the inning.

In his second at-bat, O'Neil took three balls - all of them high and greeted with a chorus of boos from the crowd - before swinging at a pitch and almost spinning off his feet. Possibly lost in the novelty of the inning, the umpire gave him two more balls before sending him down to first base with his second walk of the night.

The T-Bones signed O'Neil to a one-day contract, making him the oldest man ever to play professional baseball. He surpassed 83-year-old Jim Eriotes, who struck out in a minor league game in South Dakota earlier this month, by more than a decade.

"This is special, very special," O'Neil said after his second at-bat. "I've been in baseball 70 years. This is how I made my living. And here I am at 94 with a bat in my hand."

Clad in a red-and-white Kansas City Monarchs jersey, O'Neil said he thought the last time he had swung a bat in a game was in 1955.

Asked if he remembered who he was facing in that last at-bat, he replied: "I don't remember yesterday and you ask me who the pitcher was in 1955?"

Nobody disputes that O'Neil's involvement in the game bordered on a gimmick. But O'Neil's supporters hope it also provides more ammunition in their quest to get him into Cooperstown.

In May, 17 people from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues eras were voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On a day that was to be his crowning achievement, O'Neil quietly sat at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., and accepted that his name wasn't called.

"It was a roller coaster for everybody except him," said Bob Kendrick, the museum's director of marketing. "Certainly he was disappointed. But he taught us how to handle disappointment. In the scope of things that have happened in his life, not getting into the Hall pales in comparison."

Since the ballot was cast, the T-Bones have become the unofficial champions of Buck O'Neil.

The club has been passing petitions through the stands at all home games, asking commissioner Bud Selig or former commissioner Fay Vincent to intervene. T-Bones officials say they've already collected more than 10,000 signatures.

"The Negro Leagues were the original independent baseball," Ehlert said. "And Buck O'Neil is the patriarch of independent baseball."

Standing in the shade at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, John Park labored Tuesday to gather signatures, already sweating through a white T-shirt that read "Sign the petition. Get Buck in the Hall."

"He's a legend in his own time," said Park, 59, from Kansas City, Kan. "I don't know all of the statistics. I'm just saying how I feel."

Across the stadium, opposite O'Neil's name emblazoned on the outfield wall, Abbey Evert marveled that the sinewy, old right-hander was stepping to the plate on a day when temperatures in Kansas topped 100 degrees.

"It's pretty crazy," said Evert, 17, from Shawnee, Kan. "That's someone who really loves baseball."

But O'Neil dismissed concerns about the heat.

"This is Kansas City weather," he said. "We used to play doubleheaders in this weather with wool uniforms."

A lifetime .288 hitter and two-time Negro League batting champion, O'Neil became Major League Baseball's first black coach with the Chicago Cubs. He went on to discover Hall of Famer Lou Brock and countless others as a scout, and now works tirelessly with Kendrick to keep alive the story of the Negro leagues.

His exclusion from the Hall of Fame caught nearly everybody by surprise. Players including Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Brock took aim at the selection process, and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Kansas City, said the vote had left "a community in tears."

"He should be celebrated in baseball," said Kansas City T-Bones manager "Dirty" Al Gallagher, a former San Francisco Giants third baseman who met O'Neil in the late 1960s. "Why the commissioner hasn't put him in the Hall of Fame, I have no idea."

By DAVE SKRETTA
Associated Press Writer

biking for buck

awesome article!



Please allow me to ask a favor. Three kids and their high school teacher are biking halfway across the United States to spread the gospel of Buck O'Neil. Early on, they lost another rider when he passed out, mid-pedal, in Oregon, and then they soldiered on through 130-degree heat in Death Valley, and now, 1,300 miles from their destination, they are almost broke.

Which is really throwing a wrench in their plans to spend the next 10 days as they've spent the last 12: Retracing the path of a Negro Leagues barnstorming tour from their hometown, Seattle, to Kansas City, Mo., where they expect to present Buck with 10,000 signatures from fans who believe he belongs in the National Baseball Hall of Fame for his role as the present-day emissary and pied piper of the Negro Leagues, among many other contributions.

Five of those signatures come from the group at Chief Sealth High compelled to partake in this bike-for-Buck idea. Yuto Fukushige moved to the United States five months ago from Japan. Chunda Zeng emigrated here from China two years ago. Jasdeep Saran came to Seattle from India five years ago. All of them play baseball for Gary Thomsen, and none of them knew about Buck until taking Thomsen's sports-marketing class. Amanda Zahler, the 18-year-old organizer of the trip, was also in the class, and she is anything but a fifth wheel, even if she does spend her days in the 30-foot truck that rumbles a short distance ahead of the bikers, spreading word of their journey.

So join me in doing a good deed for Buck, still very much alive at 94 years old and eminently deserving recognition leading up to this week's Hall of Fame inductions.

Help the kids make it to Kansas City.

Go to their Web site, www.thanksbuck.com. Read their diaries. See their mission. And then donate some money, either through the link on the page's left side or through PayPal with the e-mail address paypal@thanksamillionbuckthetrip.com. I chipped in $100. If another 65 people pledge that, it will be more than enough to fund the rest of the trip, and any excess money will go to the Buck O'Neil Education and Research Center, a $15 million project being undertaken by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

"People think it's so tough what we're doing," Amanda said. "It's nothing compared to what these men went through to play a game. We're not doing much."

They are biking more than 3,000 miles, through seven states, lauding the man who half the group has never met.

"I am tired," Yuto said. "I am hungry."

He paused for a second. He's still learning English.

"And I am having a great time."

There was no mistaking his genuineness. He wants to tell everyone that Buck O'Neil deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and that the 12-person special committee screwed up when it excluded him from a group of 17 Negro Leagues players, managers and executives who will be inducted Sunday and that nothing will stop them from telling his story, not even the worst kind of bad luck.

"We were in Grants Pass in Oregon," Jasdeep said. "We were sleeping in the back of the truck. Chunda was sleeping at the end where the door was open. I was sleeping right next to him. And he started yelling at me. He thought I was grabbing him. A cat had jumped into the truck."

It was black.

---

In the 1930s, traveling exhibition teams played some of the world's best baseball. Satchel Paige would find the places that promised the most money and take his All-Stars from city to city on barnstorming tours.

Buck O'Neil spent those days with Paige, the great pitcher, learning and laughing. They traversed the country to play in front of sold-out crowds, giving Buck years' worth of tales, like the story behind Paige calling him Nancy.

When in South Dakota, Paige met an Indian woman named Nancy, and he invited her to Chicago. Paige's future wife, Lahoma, showed up, too, so Paige sent Nancy to the hotel room next to Buck's. Before they went to sleep, Paige wanted to talk with Nancy. He banged on her door and said, "Nancy, Nancy, Nancy." And right as Lahoma came out to see the ruckus, Buck jumped out of his room and said, "What, Satchel?"

People know this story because Buck tells it at least twice a day. Unless they saw Ken Burns' brilliant 1994 documentary "Baseball" or have visited the Negro Leagues museum, they might not know much more about black baseball before Jackie Robinson.

"It's frustrating when you're at a high school like ours, which is largely made up of minorities, yet the only available resources when it comes to baseball are on white baseball," Thomsen said. "The black baseball experience is completely forgotten. Mainstream America hasn't looked at the contribution these black ballplayers have made."

Particularly in the Western United States. The best Negro Leagues teams played east of Kansas City, so research on the West was sparse. To help fill the gap, Thomsen's sports-marketing classes in 1999 and 2000 researched the subject and put together an even more ambitious itinerary: 22 kids rode more than 5,000 miles over 71 days, stopping in cities where the Negro Leagues were most popular to play a game.

Thomsen had kept in touch with Buck and planned some kind of celebration in anticipation of his Hall of Fame induction this year. He seemed a shoo-in: decent player (a Negro Leagues batting title), excellent manager (five Negro Leagues championships), superb scout (he signed Ernie Banks and Lou Brock), the first black coach in the major leagues and now an ambassador for black baseball who's so busy he must be cloned. The snub, from a group of academics, shocked Thomsen, commissioner Bud Selig – who always says he believes Buck deserves to be in the Hall – and everyone else in baseball.

And it helped build consensus among Thomsen's students that they would do their part, however small.

"It was one of those nice teaching moments where you had all of the kids engaged," Thomsen said. "And by the end of the week, they were going, Well, this isn't right.'

"It wasn't just what Buck did for black baseball. It was what black baseball did for Buck."

To find that out, students strained their eyes reading microfiche. They went to Bozeman, Mont., and Medicine Hat, Alberta, interviewing Negro Leagues players and stumbling upon the unknown, like baseball cards. Really, some players had baseball cards, which were actually used as business cards.

"You learn that the guys who played baseball, who proved that baseball has nothing to do with race, were the Negro Leagues players," Chunda said. "I should somehow appreciate them."

Every time Chunda pedals, he does. He's getting one step closer to Buck and one further from all the strangers he taught about Buck. He hasn't told the Nancy story because he doesn't know it. Soon enough he will.

"When I see him, I will not know what I say," Yuto said. "But I'm going to thank him for sure."

---

There is something very old-fashioned about this bike ride. A group of kids felt an injustice. They wanted to remedy it as best they could, and being that the Hall of Fame's policies allow barely a sliver of hope for Buck's enshrining, they pedal in silent protest: heads down, biting their tongues, pushing, kicking, grinding for a greater good, much like Buck himself did as a player during segregation.

"I want to be a part of something big," Jasdeep said. "I'm not a quitter. If I committed to something, I want to finish. And no matter what I'll do, I'll get it done.

"I want to show people what someone can do for the love of baseball."

Originally, they were supposed to leave on July 2. The support truck arrived 10 days late, throwing off their entire schedule. The leg to San Francisco was canceled. Mayors who were supposed to sign 6-foot-tall bats no longer had time. Spencer Gray, the fourth rider, went home because of lingering effects from his crash. Media appearances dried up. The heat in Death Valley, which felt like a blow dryer held to their cheeks, made them want to return to Seattle.

However bad it got, they thought of Buck. They saw him shrug off 100-degree heat and stifling humidity last week in Kansas City to appear at the independent Northern League's All-Star game. The stunt worked two-fold: Buck got his publicity and a nice chunk of change from the Northern League for the education center.

And Thomsen also told them a story about the class' trip in 2000. They had spent two years planning it and were still $7,000 shy of their budget. In the two weeks leading up to the trip, the kids made the money.

Which makes it a safe bet that Aug. 4, four bikes and a truck will pull into the 18th and Vine district in Kansas City. Buck, fresh off delivering the first speech on Hall of Fame weekend, will take them out for dinner at the Peach Tree restaurant for the first good meal they've had in three weeks and thank them.

"We'll make it," Chunda said.

"They don't know what defeat is," Thomsen said. "They don't know impossible. Because they haven't seen that. And they're not going to."

By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
July 26, 2006