life in prison vs. death penalty

I got into a little debate one day with a friend of mine about the death penalty. Now im not completly against the idea of killing a murderer or a rapist. There is the single biggest problem of not killing the wrong person. This is so obvious that Im not even going to discuss that part. The next point I brought up was one that we are all interested in, the cost. I told him that it cost more to kill a criminal than to put them in jail. He said that it can't because of how expensive it is to keep someone in jail. Now we were having this debate in a bar and couldn't exactly prove it either way. Now I can see the logic behind assuming that it is more expensive to keep someone in jail for 50 years than to stick a little poison in his(or her) arm. So I looked into it real quick and of course theres at least one entire website dedicated to the costs of the death penalty. But for greater clout I am going to use the information from Amensty International, actualy much of it is the same info. According to these sites it is about 70% more expensive to kill a person than to put them in jail for the rest of there lives. Maybe there are places that claim something different, but I didnt have time to do a lot of reasearch. I think my friend was only assuming anyway. have a good one, Im goin to lunch.

Daily show tonight

Bill O'Rilley is going to be on the Daily Show tonight. Should be fun to watch. Its pretty sad that the only solid debate between liberals and conservatives will be on a comedy show. And it might end up not being much of a debate, O'Rilley usually just tells people that they are wrong and wont go any farther than that. But I can still hope for a good debate. And there is the big advantage of Bill not being able to turn off the other guys mike, we all know hes a big fan of that trick when debates dont go the way he likes. The other thing that always amusses me will be tomarrow when the liberal web sites will talk about making Bill look like a fool and then the conservative sites will say that Jon got his ass handed to him. I realise that everyone is bias, I know that I am, I try not to be but obviously Im going to watch with the hopes of seeing Jon make Bill look stupid. I have no reason not to admit, it I dislike Bill O'Rilley the few times Ive seen anything that he has to say it makes me sick. He made a comment one day about how unemployment was higher under Clinton at mid terms than with Bush. I took about two minutes to check the facts and while he wasn't lying he may have missed the point that unemployment was quite high when Clinton took office from Bush I and that it steadily declined durring his entire time in office. The unemploment then started to rise durring Bush's administration. While O'Rilley did not lie it is still an inacurate picture of the truth. It is things like that which make me dislike Bill O'Rilley. Oh well hopefully we'll get some entertainment out of this.

destroying a dream

My dream girl is back in town, of course I have no idea how long she's been in town and she hasnt called me. I'll be calling her soon. I should probably just give up on that whole idea already. When I was working with her I didnt have a chance so I'm not sure why I think I will ever have a chance. I had pretty much forgotten about her, well not really, ok I had pretty well put her out of my mind, and then I was racing around durring luch and I saw a car that looked like hers and oddly enough she was driving it. yeah so that may have resparked some interest on my half. Its funny I have some friends that make me feel very mature and proper and other friends where I feel like a downtrodden slob compared to them. Yet I have a good time hanging out with either group. Although I will say that I usually laugh more with the immature people. This girl I simply called my dream girl, which Im not sure if thats and exageration or an understatement? anyway dream girl always makes me second guess myself, not becasue shes doing or saying anything to make me seem inferior but simply because I always I am just trying to keep my foot out of my mouth. Im sure shes everybit as crude as the rest of us when shes with her friends, but I feel like ive offended her anytime I make the least bit of an off-color remark around her. The problem is thats my humor and I have often felt that my humor is one of the stronger points of my personality. If I am not comfortable enough around her to make an ass of myself then maybe she isnt right for me anyway. I need friends that I can laugh with, I laugh and have a good time with this girl its just that its always subdued, I need friends where I can just full tilt laugh my ass off. I have freinds that way, just not enough that are of the female persuasion (the basketball team doesnt count).
There was one other person I took an interest in this summer, shes very smart and she deffiniatly makes me laugh unfortunatly for me she lives to far away. I saw her for the first time in a long time this summer, and only for a weekend. But it was fun and I felt comfortable and easy going. Im sure it was nothing but I felt like there was a little chemistry there. Of course it always feels like theres more chemisty when you've been drinking. Like I said before shes far away so it doesnt really matter anyway. She cool and definiatly someone I hope to keep in touch with. Im not tied down, except to this job, so I can move to a new city if I want to. Probably a bad idea though to move to a new city just for a girl that most likely has no real interest in me any way. It would be kind of funny to just show up and ask if you could stay there, hey i think im going to move here mind if i crash for a while, oh and by the way uh, wana go outsome time? hell yeah now thats smooth. so back to the so called dream girl that doesnt make me laugh. I saw her today.
This blog has taken a decidedly un-political turn. Im not sure if thats a good thing. Im not sure that my personal life is anymore interesting that the lies of our leaders but theres a lot less information available to the general public about my life as opposed to the lies of the politicians, so this is a service to anyone who wants to write a biography about me.
And to anyone writing a biography about me, you should wait untill after I take over the world. But having backround is good so you can reasearch this if you want to.
wow this post was a hell of a rambling, it went on and on and didnt go anywhere. oh well.

missed a good concert

Just talked to my friend about the concert, in his words. I can die happy now.
thats pretty much all there is to say about that.
I cant believe i missed danzig and doyle. damn.

good weekend

life is odd. One friend from college calls me up a week or so ago and asks if I want to go to a Danzig concert, then he says Doyle is going to be there. I really wanted to go but there was no way I could afford it right now. In case you dont know Danzig and Doyle are former members of one of my favorite bands, The Misfits. So it was hard to, but I had to say no to that one. I bet it was a great show.

Then another friend from college says that herself and another girl from school want to go the Corning Glass Museum. I thought it was slightly odd that they wanted to go to a museum that much but thats fine by me. They both plan on coming in late saturady and going to the museum on sunday morning. So this sounds like a good time.

Then yet another friend from college says that hes heading back to germany for a while and that hes going to hornell to see some college friends and asked if i wanted to go.

So the weekend ended up like this, friday a few of us went to a new blues bar in town. The food was excellent and the music was ok. two of the people had been before and said the music was better last time but there was a cover that time. oh well it was a cool place, kinda pricy for bar food in Elmira but the food was easily on par with any resturant in town so the price was resonable if you look at it that way. That was an early evening.
Saturday I went up to hornell and hung out with some of the guys from college drank some beers played some poker had a good time. I had to wake up at 8am so that I could get ready and head to corning and meet the girls and their boyfriends at the museum. I drove 45 minutes and was there before they even left to hotel. oh well the hotel was only like 10 minutes away. We toured the museum and went and saw the live glass blowing demonstration, that part is always amusing. Three of us then went to luch and to my Moms store on market street. The other two members of our crew werent feeling so well after a late night and went to their car and took a nap. The three of us went and had a nice lunch at the Market Street Brewing Company. My friend from school got a beer sampler and found out the lager is her favorite. she also found out that her boyfriend just likes beer and it doesnt really matter what type. We then went back to the museum and a few of the others got to make their own glass objects. one girl made a bead for a necklace, another girl made an ornament, and one of the guys made a flower. The flower was pretty cool actually and I would recomend that to anyone interested in doing there own peice. They all had to leave fairly early in the day, one of the girls had to work that evening. So I went to see my basketball crew. We eventualy made our way over to the basketball courts for a little while. I was happy to hear that the one young lady that ive mentioned before is doing very well in her classes, shes said all A's as of now. I knew she had potential. Then another friend called and I went over to a bonfire for a little while. It was really windy though. All in all a pretty good weekend.

unlikely activist

Here’s a company that is supporting freedom of expression in a very forward way. The company is an infamous internet t-shirt company that produces some amazingly harsh social and racial commentary. Are most of the shirts offensive, yes, but many of them are also hilarious. This is a company that has been embraced by many magazines and celebrities and has been viscously attacked by opponents, i.e. people lacking humor. Oh and when I say attacked I don’t just mean simple death threats I mean one person actually poisoned the owner of the company at a party. These were death threats that someone followed through on. Oh in case you’re not into the offensive internet t-shirts the company I’m talking about is T-shirthell.com.
The activist side that this came from is that the company saw the person who got kicked off a commercial airliner for wearing an offensive shirt. I will say that this is not really a constitutional issue about free speech because the airplane is private property and so the airline does have that right.

http://www.tshirthell.com/traveloffer.htm
So T-shirthell has announced that if any of their customers are refused a seat on an airline then they, T-shirt Hell will provide them with transportation. Oh and they aren’t talking about a bus ticket either. They said that if available they would use their own corporate jet and try to get the person where they were going on the same day.
I’m sure that it is mostly a publicity stunt, If you haven’t seen their shirts, lets say their are a few that probably should get you kicked off an airplane. They probably assume that some else will get kicked off a plane, they will send a jet to pick the person up and some level of media will pickup on it. Not a bad plan from their side. They say that there doing this to protect freedom of expression, which I’m sure is true to an extent and for those reasons its pretty cool. And its nice to see a company that feels that strongly about there product.
So go buy a t-shirt and offend someone today.

a bit 'o shit

Well no update on the serious matter, I guess no news is good news sometimes.

Just saw that Cingular has pulled millions of dollars of advertising away from FOX. They didn’t really say why other than political reasons. Hey that’s good enough for me. Faux news is simply despicable.

I also saw an article about how Bush may have committed one high crime and two misdemeanors when he stated that one of the reasons that he chose Harriet Miers was due to her religious convictions. For a supposed constitutionalist you would assume that he would know that using religion, as a reason for employment is illegal in this country, possibly on several levels. Impeach Bush now. In the article he accidentally wrote article IV not VI oops.


Article. VI.

Clause 3: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

I think that breaking any law in the constitution is a high crime and definitely grounds for impeachment.

Another update

once again don’t read this if you haven’t read the "serious not politics" and the two "updates" then don’t read this.

I told the girls that I had talked to my boss and another person that I work with about the whole situation. I told them that I was strongly advised not to hang out with them any more. I told them that I had not made up my mind for sure but that I had to do some serious thinking about the matter. I am going to tell them that they can call me anytime they need and I’m still their friend. They understood where I was coming from when I said that I could get in very serious trouble and could possibly fuck my life up for a long time if they were caught drinking around me. I haven’t entirely made up my mind. I know that my boss is right and that there is just to much risk. But there is still the lingering fact that I do enjoy hanging out with them and I do feel like I can help them out with a lot of little things in life. Actually the one girl gave me the second nicest compliment that I’ve ever had. She told me that I was the happiest person that she knew, and that she was just happier when I was around. I thought that was sweet. still the greatest compliment I’ve ever received was from the girl I worked with this summer. It was actually very similar; she told me that I made her feel better about herself. I really can’t think of a much nicer thing to say about some one than what these two people told me. I guess my way of dealing with depression is to compliment others. Its amazing how much difference you can make in a girls day just by saying, hey that’s a nice shirt or just that they look good today. The important thing is to mean it when you say it. If you don’t think they look good then don’t say they do. But on those days that they are looking nice then tell them. Guys like being complimented too, but it doesn’t have as great an affect. just some simple compliments and then just be a good friend and soon they will make you feel better about your self. But start by giving and you will always receive. That is another reason why I don’t want to lose these friends. They make me feel better too. I see that big ol' smile shining at me and I just know that I’m bringing a little joy into the world. Is that so wrong? Probably not, but there is a great risk involved with them. And its not that I disagree with the law in this case the law is there to protect young people from negative influences, or worse. And the sad truth is that there are probably a lot more people with bad intentions than good. Well that’s probably not true. I say probably to much. I don’t like to make definitive statements about things I’m not sure about. Maybe I should stop thinking about this as if I’m out here trying to save these kids. They’re basically all right, I’m not going to change their whole lives around. I might be able to convince one to go seek counseling and I might be able to help a couple of them do better in school. I can try to convince them to wear seatbelts and stop littering. The littering drives me crazy cause its just laziness, there’s usually a trash can with in reasonable range. But I’m not very likely to make any really big changes in any of their lives. Well the one girls life could be changed pretty dramatically in the future by whether or not she seeks counseling. Hell even in that case I don’t know how much difference it will make. She seems pretty well adjusted, but then again it may just be defense in action. I still want her to go to for help from a professional. This friend ship has been far and away the oddest I’ve ever had, but that doesn’t mean its any less of a friend ship. I think I’ve been able to help them out with a few typical teenage questions and hopefully helped with one major issue, and in return I’ve been exercising and laughing. Im not sure why I think of this now but yesterday one of the girls was telling me that she might be put into special education classes. I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. I knew she had a learning disability and that she had to get help taking tests. I just figured it was ADD or something like that. Although now that I think about it she doesn’t act ADD. She said she’s slow, not exactly a medical description but I suppose that maybe she is just low IQ. I’ve never really been friends with someone who is “slow� so I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that statement. I just asked how she felt about being put into those classes. She said that its easier to graduate and she wont have to take regents and that type of reaction. I’m not really sure how to feel about that one. She definitely isn’t a genius but she seems intelligent enough. She doesn’t seems stupid, I’m trying to come up with a way to say that nicely but I can’t. I just worry about chances of getting into colleges and getting a job, beyond McDonalds, with that diploma. I assume it’s a different diploma, maybe not though. Oh in trying to rub my morals off on these girls I had to yell at one of them for skipping school yesterday. Her older sister finally got her drivers license so they drove around all day. I was pretty disappointed with her for skipping. The problem is that her mother lets her do this shit all the time. I’m not trying to say that I’m a perfect person or anything even close to it. I have my problems just like anyone else, but I do have a few positive morals that I would like them to have as well. I know what I should do and I have feeling I know what I’ll actually do, and as usual they aren’t exactly the same. I should tell them that I cant see them but to call me if they ever need to. What probably will happen is that I will still see them but I will be more careful, I’ll probably see them less and less until we just kind of drift apart. We’ll still run into each other from time to time but it wont be very often. I’m not really sure that it’s a good plan but its realistic. I know myself fairly well and that’s just what I foresee. As long as I just watch my ass and don’t do anything stupid it should be ok. I don’t know the other idea really does make more sense, its just seems kind of cold. She tells me about the most traumatic things in her life and I turn around and say that’s cool, but I gotta go cause I don’t trust you not to get me in trouble. This shouldn’t be this hard of a decision. I do care about these girls and I want to guide them, to help them reach the potential that I can see in them. At the same time I could squander all of my own potential if any thing happened. I hate the idea of just looking out for myself though. Do the ends justify the means? If I can help someone does it matter how its done? Yes it does matter, fuck Machiavelli.

further update

once again if you didn’t read the first one called " this is serious and not politics" and the second one called "update" then don’t read this one.

Well I just talked to my boss who is very well versed in working with children with problems. His advice was quite simply that I have already done as much as I can and that I should just avoid the entire situation and simply not see any of the girls anymore. This is probably good advice and really it is what I should do just to cover my ass. But then fear of the law has never really had much of an influence on my decisions. I just don’t know if I could abandon them like that. I know that they look up to me and ask me for advice and help with homework and things of that nature. And I am quite sure that none of them have any crushes on me. He warned me as the other co-worker had that young people in bad situations will go into survival mode and are generally willing to implicate anyone to get out of trouble. I don’t know any of these girls well enough to say that they wouldn’t do that. I worry about them and I fell that I can help them out. My boss worded it eerily close to my feelings that it is a very natural and normal feeling to want to reach out and help and protect young people in a time like this. He also echoed my feelings that I have pretty much done what I can in directing her towards services that can help, and that I am not a psychiatrist and should not try to counsel her directly. I am having a hard time with the idea of just leaving them, I can’t imagine what I would say, I cant see you guys because you have issues. I know I would just say that due to the age disparity that it is just to great a legal risk for me to be around them. But I just cant see myself doing that. It is good advice and I'm sure that for my own safety I should just cut all ties and wash my hands of the situation. Damn.
My social worker co-worker just came in and asked what my boss said. She pretty much agreed with his advice and said that it will be tough but I need to stop seeing them. They’re right I do. Damn. I’ve lost friends before but never like this, where I had to make a conscious effort to stop being friends with a person, or people. I’m sad. I haven’t even said good-bye and I miss them. Damn. Society sucks. I want to help these kids out and I cant, I mean maybe I have helped them but I know I could do more. This is just a terrible situation. I know I could get in very serious trouble though if one of them wanted to get me in trouble. It was such an awkward friendship as it is. Maybe its all for the best. I can’t not do some thing just because its difficult or awkward, I don’t want to say no just cause there is risk and no reward. But the risk is real and could be serious.
Damn.
I really did have a good time hanging around them too. I suppose going to jail would pretty well negate those good times though.
Damn.
Why is it that whenever I ask for advice I hear exactly what I knew I would, and exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
Damn.
I guess it’s for the best.
I don’t have many friends, I wish I didn’t have to lose them just because of age. Why couldn’t they be a few years older? It doesn’t matter. I can’t see them anymore. I know this is what I have to do. I feel like I’m abandoning them in a time of need.
It’s a good thing that no one else reads this crap, cause I probably sound like a schizophrenic right now. Oh well. Its probably for the best this friendship has been kind of a pain in the ass from day one. Its really weird trying to explain to someone why you are hanging out with a bunch of kids who are so much younger than yourself. For the millionth time there were no inappropriate intentions but it is still odd trying to explain why a 23 year old is hanging around high school girls. That makes me think of the line from “dazed and confused� “I love high school girls I keep getting older, they stay the same age�. The problem is how to explain that this is not the case. Oh well I guess I wont need awkward explanations anymore. Leaving them is the best thing I can do, it just doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. Err… this sucks. Oh crap I might have a doctors appointment soon.

lighter side

A couple of old friends from college,April and Shandra, are coming to town this weekend. should be a good time. They want to go to the corning museum of glass. it is a fairly interesting place but im still a little suprised that that was their plan. Oh well I dont really care what the reason is it means a night or two hanging out with a couple of girls from college that I havent seen in a while. Big sis if your reading this dont get to excited they both have boyfriends and live to far away. But I always had a good time with them and thats all that really matters. peace.

Back to politics, and science

I haven't been paying as close attention to the trial of Intelligent design in PA as I would have liked. But in doing a quick little research I found a very persuasive argument, one that I had not heard before. Id like to state that while im not a religious man, I have never felt that it is impossible for there to be a god. Maybe there is a god I don't know. But if there is I bet hes(or she) got a great sense of humor, I mean just look at a platypus. I also think that if there's a god then god got bored and created the universe as his own reality show to watch, hey can you blame him, who wouldn't get bored. Anyway the argument I just saw the start of and had to write something about is this. If we were designed, or better yet if we were engineered by this omnipotent being then why do we have an appendix? Why do some animals have vestigial limbs that they don't use? Why would god engineer in things that are not necessary? I would be very interested to hear the counter to this one.
The Article then goes on to name the top ten useless limbs. So here's there list.
10. Wings on flightless birds
9. Hind leg bones in whales
8. Erector Pili, these are what give you goose bumps, or make your hair stand up when frightened
7. The human tailbone
6. The blind fish, but has eyes
5. Wisdom teeth in humans
4. Sexual organs of a dandelion, they reproduce by cloning
3. Whiplash lizard sex, the whiplash lizard also reproduces by cloning and there are no males in the species, but the females try to have sex anyway from time to time.
2. Male nipples
1. The human appendix, useless but if it ruptures you can die, now why would an all powerful god engineer in such a device?

This is an interesting argument and I will be curious to see if it comes up in court, and if it does what ID will have to counter it with.

Lets teach religion in the home and in the houses of god, any religion. It would be a great injustice to the religions to have science teachers teaching about god. For obvious reasons a science teacher is the wrong person teaching your child about the creation story. I would think foe this reason that the religious right would hate the idea of science classes teaching their creation story. oh well whatever.

Update

If you haven’t read the last post don’t read this one.

Well the funeral went ok, no real problems. The guy was there. I didn’t even want to know which person it was. I still want my friend to go seek help but I was able to get her to talk about it. she said that she can talk about it but just doesn’t like to because she had to talk about it all the time when it happened. I can understand that. She told me more. She told me details that I am sure not going to share here. The funeral was on Saturday, after the funeral I went to my grandparents for my grandfathers birthday, cake ice-cream the usual crowd. I was looking at my cousin who is (I’m fairly sure) only one year younger than the youngest girl. I realized just how innocent she is, I’m very glad that my cousin is not like my friends. As I’m writing this I’m thinking about what my uncle would do if my cousin was caught hanging out with guys my age, wow that would be an ugly site. The youngest girl told me that she has always had older friends and that she’s hung out with 20+-year-old guys for a long time. While I don’t like questioning other peoples parenting skills, this does concern me a bit. Admittedly she is a pretty good kid so they must have done something right, and I have seen her with her parents and its definitely a house with plenty of love, which goes a long way towards keeping a child on the right path. Ok well I say she’s a good kid but she definitely does a lot of bad things. But just because you do bad things does not always make you a bad person. My small victory this weekend was getting them all to wear seat belts, at least in my truck. I can speak both from first hand experience and from experience working at a racetrack, seatbelts are your friends. So that was my little victory, baby steps here. My co-worker was giving me ideas about how to get they to stop drinking, while I agree with her and her plan is fairly good. The problem is that if it came right down to it and said its either stop drinking or stop hanging out with me (she had a better plan but that’s basically what it comes down to) I am not all that confident of which way they would go. Actually I think one or two of them would be on my side, one would definitely stick with the alcohol. But she is the oldest of the group and I’m not sure that there is anything I can do to help that one. You may have noticed this already but its the youngest one of the group that I have become closest friends with. She's both the one that I think needs the most help and the one I see as having the most potential for great things. Oh well there is one other one who might need more help, but she is a much tougher case. I think if i can help the first one then maybe the second would be that much more willing to listen to my advice. Obviously I’m not an idiot I realize that I have no training to help some of the very serious problems that some of these girls have, but I am able to help by finding out what some of these problems are and getting them to seek help from appropriate places. The girl who was raped ( i just want to scream and cry and maybe break shit just at the thought of that word, and some one so young... ) for instance, I would never dream of trying to help her directly with the mental repercussions of such an event, but I have given her the phone number of the rape crisis center, and I am now going to try to persuade her to actually call them. She also told me that she had contemplated suicide in her past. This scared the hell out of me. She told me that it was a while ago, that she didn’t like who she was, she didn’t like who she was hanging out with and hated school and everything else, she went on to say that she has changed and that she likes the people she’s around now that she actually enjoys school right now and that she loves who she is now, and she has goals and dreams. That made me feel better. But it is something that I will always keep in the back of my mind, because she did say that when she felt that way she didn’t tell anyone at the time, except her mother, eventually. What a weekend. I did hang out with two of them for most of Saturday, I at least kept them away from alcohol for that day. And seeing as the other two went to a party with guys that I went to school with where one of them ended up getting drunk and having sex with a guy my age, the other girl at the party didn’t drink and didn’t have sex. The one that did get drunk, she’s the one who has serious depression issues. She is having a hard time figuring out who she is. Which reminds me, the youngest told me that she was trying to figure out who she is, she then said "does that make any sense at all" I kinda laughed and said yes that’s extremely normal everyone goes thought that, you grow up being what ever your parents told you to be. Then you start to realize that that’s not who you are, its then up to you to figure out who you really are. I told her that it takes time, many people try being many different things until they find out which one feels right. I’m really not sure where I’m going with this post but there’s just some things I need to say and I find it easier to write how I’m feeling than to say it. This is rather cathartic (thanks Darcy) for me. I can’t over emphasize how odd of a friendship it is with these girls. I also cant state it strongly enough that there is nothing romantic with them. And that’s saying something when I’m not interested in a girl, cause damn I generally fall in love with ever girl that’s willing to give me the time of day. Wow that’s pretty sad. I’m looking at this in a few ways, one is still the simple playing of basketball because I need the exercise. There is also this friendship, which by having none of the usual sexual distractions is giving me new insight into the world of women. It’s sort of like researching history. By studying younger girls I might be able to piece together what is going on in the mind of women my age. Then there is the trying to make a difference in the life of a young person aspect. Which goes hand in hand with another aspect, which is that my co-worker keeps telling me that I would be a great social worker, she says I have great EQ. I’m not so sure about all of that, but this might be a sort of trial by fire to see if I have any interest in such work. I will also say that while I become concerned about helping friends with problems I’m not sure that I want to deal with the problems of others on a regular basis. That and I know that an important part of an effective social worker is being able to clearly define what is work and what is not, and never take your work home with you. This has not been the case for me, these are my friends and after hearing some of the things they had told me I did not sleep for several days, even when I did sleep I could not stop thinking about them and what I could do to help. Maybe in a professional environment it would be different and I would be able to go home and not think about the clients, but this is not a professional environment that I am in and I can’t just leave and not think about it. I don’t think that I want to be a social worker; I had never even considered it until my co-worker said I would make a good one. I don’t think it’s a job for me, but then again I don’t really know what I want to do so I’ll keep it as an option. Well this has been rambling on quite well. I could probably keep going if I wanted to. Oh the last aspect of my friendship with these girls is a fairly critical one to any friendship, they amuse me and I laugh when I’m with them. That and when she looks at me with that great big smile I just feel like I’m doing some little part to make this a better world.

This is serious, and not politics

and acctualy that title isnt sarcastic.
Im not sure if I really want to right about this. This is an extreamely personal subject, Big sis if you read this you will probably end up calling me when you finish.

Should I just say it all?
why not no one reads this crap but me, and maybe my sister.

Ok so a while ago I was hanging out at a friends house, hes in a small little neighborhood where everyone knows each other. A few of his neighbors came over one day, this little pack of highschool girls. They were chill and pretty cute, but after bullshitting with one girl for a while I finialy asked how old she was. lets just say way to young to be hanging out with a bunch of people who were drinking legaly. So I ran into them a few more times and someone mentioned that they hadent play basketball in a long time. So myself and one of the other guys started playing basketball with them on a pretty regular basis. I was excited about the idea becuase I could really use the exersice. The girls ammuse me they're just silly highschool girls. One on them clearly has some depression issue though. Then one day I kinda of figured out my role in this friendship, because lets be honest it was an akward friendship we all had. I am litteraly 50% older than the youngest girl. now I know that there is no inapropiate intentions but when I meet the girls parents it was glaringly obvious how odd of a friendship it was. I realised that these girls dont have a lot of positive role models in their lives, i decided that I wanted to try to help them. Sorta an unofficial big brother kinda thing. The day that I realised that they needed a mentor was the day that the youngest girl told me that a friend of theirs was riding a 4wheeler at over 50 mph and hit a tree head-on, no helmet. Their friend was in a coma. I expressed my sympathy and gave her a hug, she then tells me about watching her grandfather die. I'm not sure how long ago this part was but her grandfather was very sick in the hospital for a long time and decided to sign a DNR. The family watched as he died. I was heartbroken to hear these stories out of such an innocent young person. The guy in the coma died a few days later. I acctualy knew threw an outside source that the guy was only being kept alive for organ donation. But his heart was given to a young boy. This is when things got very akward. she kept telling me that she was afraid to go to the funeral because some guy was going to be there. I kept saying that, dont you think whatever the problem is that this guy will be civil during a mutual friends funeral(note: the guy was the cousin of the kid who passed away), she just said that I didnt understand. She was right, i didnt. she had one of her friends tell me the story because she couldnt do it. The guy was her older sisters boyfriend at the time. aparently the guy was violent (although i dont think towards any of them) and just generaly a not nice person. the girl, her sister, and her usual other friends had a little party and they were all pretty drunk. the three friends went and passed out in one room and the sister and her boyfriend went to the other. They then did what drunk boyfriends and girlfriends do. The guy left the room and went to the other room where the three girls were. he said he needed to talk to the younger sister and asked the others to leave. the younger sister was still asleep, she woke up with this guy on top of her, kissing her with her pants arounf her ankles. she screamed and her friends rushed in, the girls parents came and beat the kid up a little bit (to make this even more evil, aprently the guy was smiling at her as her mother puched him in the face, he never stopped smiling). Im under the impression that it was stopped before any acctual... well you get the idea. I couldnt even speak after i heard the story.
I talked to a social worker that I work with and she gave me plenty of great advice. I want to help this girl, shes a sweet caring young girl who really needs a little bit of guidance. Im going to give her the # for rape crisis intervention, this is something that she is going to need to talk to someone about. I am not that someone she needs to see a profesional. But hopefully I can help be getting her to seek that help. This is a new role for me. Ive been the strong guy, Ive been the guy who listens, Ive been the shoulder to cry on, Ive given friends advice about stupid shit, but this is a whole new level. I feel like I am already involved, if only at a minor level, but I dont know how i could look myself in the mirror if I didnt do something to help. my co-worker keeps telling me that I would be a great social worker or something in that field. I dont know about all that but I do think that I must help my friend in this case. The fact that I work in an agency so closely tied in with helping teenage girls that are in trouble just makes me feel all the more obligated to do something. I think she has a great family but Im not sure they grasp the severity of the situation. maybe they do. This is not a situation I ever expected to find myself in. hell a year ago my biggest concern was getting a race car put toghether so that we could leave work and go tear it up at the bar. What a world.
Big sis if you read this, um well.. Im in an odd spot.
Its was a really odd friendship anyway. I knew I had no bad intentions with these girls but its still really weird hanging out with a pack of girls that are between 5 and 8 years younger than I. in case you havent done the math that makes the youngest one 15. this whole situation is just crazy.
For a while I was thinking that I probably shouldnt hang out with them anymore, because it was just too akward but now I feel like I must stay involved. I dont know. Ill update this as I am able.

waiting...

I ordered a few books from a local bookstore and I am now stuck waiting for them to get here. That was taking a little while so I ordered more books online. Now im stuck waitng for five books to get here. My paticence has run out because I finished my last book a few days ago. I dont nessasrialy read every day but its nice to know that I can. I am particularly looking forward to the new Kurt Vonnegut book, Its Vonnegut so I would have bought it as soon I found out it was available but when I heard that the title is " A Man Without a Country" I raced right to the bookstore, but they didnt have it yet. I probably could have driven to barnes and noble and bought it that day but id rather support the local store. Although I might change my mind if it doesnt get here soon. i also ordered the new book by the Dali Lama, I had never read any of his works so that should be interesting. It is supposed to be a very inteligent look at the evolution vs inteligent design ideas. I also ordered a new Chomsky book. New Chomsky 'nuff said. I also got an older Zinn book. I dont need a reason to buy Zinn. Then there was one I saw on Buzzflash, Un-fit Commander. I wanted to but it from buzzflash but im kinda broke and i just bought a bunch of books and if I ordered it where i did I would then qualify for free shipping, and the book was selling for 5 bucks. Ok now im rambling about being excited about books being delivered. Damn im a dork.

Al Gore

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/10/ale05154.html
One hell of an article. Read It NOW!!
I wish all gore had won the election in 2000, oh wait he did. I wish the Supreme Court had appointed Al Gore President in 2000.
This is an amazing statement about how the media conglomerates are destroying democracy. Ill give a quick overview but please read the article, as Al Gore is a far more eloquent writer than I.
He states the when this nation was founded almost any literate person could be politically active. Printing presses were widely available and inexpensive enough that anyone of reasonable means could have their ideas printed. In this fashion the general public was educated about the world and politics. The best writers advanced to become famous; it made little difference if they were rich or poor.
With the advent of the radio and later television the individuals could no longer influence the News. The media suddenly held all the power. Once again read the article Al Gore gives a far more thorough analysis of how this all happened. It was not an over night shift but it has happened fairly rapidly. The media outlets are now simply divisions of huge corporations whose goals are profits. It is of no advantage to them to keep the people informed, it is to their advantage in most cases for the nation to be at war and for the people to but the products that the parent corporation sells. They have no desire for muckraking news, unless it can earn them profits.
The lack of public interaction in the news is going to be the downfall of our society in the coming years, how long it will take is anyone’s guess. Unless China buys our nation first. But why would they want all that debt?
Ok I got off on a tangent there and I haven’t even finished reading the article that I’m telling you to read.
The United State is proud to have the 27th freest press in the world. Yippy. That’s almost as bad as our education rankings. 27th freest press, maybe they should add an amendment to the constitution calling for a freedom of the press, oh wait ITS THE FIRST ONE!!!
He ends by saying that we must keep the Internet open, there must not be limitations placed on it. He says that the Internet at this moment is still not as powerful as TV but that it is improving.
Ok I need to go to a meeting for work,
Read this article.

Campus Anti-War Network

New Link added,
Looks like a good site. Talks about a student protester that war assaulted maced then kicked off campus to lose both his education and his job. All without any do-process. This is supposed to be a democracy. Supposedly were fighting a war in Iraq to preserve democracy. We need to fight the war at home for democracy. The leaders of this nation are the greatest threat of all to American democracy. We want peace equality and freedom, who is more likely to take these from you a terrorist or your president? Well lets see we have never had peace for any substantial period of time, we have never know equality in any sense of the word. And freedom has been limited more and more every year since Washington was in office. Who is the enemy of Democracy? Terrorists? Im not scared of a terrorist, if they show up we will do what we can to stop them. They will not win, they cannot win therefore I have no fear of them. The people who rig elections, limit privacy, torture people without putting them before a court, people who can kill tens of thousands of innocent people and then say that they are trying to help those people, they scare the hell out of me. The leaders of this nation are the greatest threats to democracy that this world may have ever know. Communist could never have created the pervertion of Democracy that this country has all on its own.

Etan Thomas

He's a forward for the Washington Wizards.
http://www.wingsofjustice.com/05/10/woj05018.html
I copied most of the good text but theres the link.

At the September 24, Washington, D.C., rally to end the Iraq War, Thomas hammered back at the right wing chorus: "I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip," he told the crowd of more than a 100,000. "I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the 'hood....I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance."
In his tour, Thomas would "show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I'd employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat."

I like the plan, hell we could make it a reality show, use the profits to help Katrina victims. Its kinda like a combination of the shows 30 days and that filthy rich cattle drive. Take a bunch of rich elitist that have never had to work a minimum wage job in there lives let them try to survive in a city with no government support, let them work at fast food joints. Find jobs that only require a GED or no education at all. No republican left behind. This is an idea, the key is making sure that they have no assess to outside funds at all. give them each ten bucks and a resume and let them go for a few months. Thats a show I would watch. we could probably pitch it to fox, but they would make it seem like it was fun and everyone would love working at burger king. Imagine if Condoleezza Rice was arrested for being black while driving (a crime according to Chappelle's show) and couldnt call her buddys to bail her out. That would be hilarious. Im not sure which station to try to pitch this one to. Maybe as a documentary movie, like supersize me. anyway I gotta go. Now we just gotta come up with a catchy name for the show.

The Rude Pundit

'Cause, even though, and, c'mon, the chances of Harriet Miers being some lefty
who's been playin' rope-a-dope with George W. Bush since the 1990s are about the
same as Donald Rumsfeld admitting an error, it's a blast to watch conservatives go ballistic
that Bush didn't nominate Johnny Fuckyerrights, a Pepperdine-educated ideologue
who has personally beaten a "confession" out of a "terrorist" and then shoved
aborted fetuses back into wombs after chainsawing down an old growth forest just
to make a single copy of a book on intelligent design that can be sold by
Halliburton at a thousand-fold mark-up to poor school districts forced by law to
teach it. And, what the fuck, he's black.

I love a good rant and this was a pretty good one so I had to post it, heres the rest of the article
Rude Pundit, Bumfight

Ever see the movie Outbreak

it was a decent flick, never really thought the part about nuking americans because of a disease was to plausible. But that was before Bush, Read This. He wants the millitary to be the first line to quarantine people in case of an out break. The term martial law seems to be flying around a bit too. Just a though maybe a few of our scientist that are building ever deadlier weapons might switch over to a more usefull project. Maybe get few thousand extra people working on flu vaccine, hell once they figure that one out they can figure out cancer and AIDS while there at it. Nah forget all that Id rather know that they are working hard on the next generation of fighter jets and new chemical weapons.

Bennett, about time

Lautenburg Senate
About time someone did something about this.
Im not sure just what this does other than make it a official black eye on this guy.

But it was taken out of context, well I heard the full version. It is no less offensive, Im trying to think of any context where saying "aborting all the black babies would lower the crime rate" could be seen as ok. I simply cannot imagine what was going through this guys head when he said this. And he still wont appoligize, if you some how let that slip I would think that you would appologize durring the same segment.

Bolton, not the guy with the clarinet

Yale Daily News

Interesting article about bolton giving a speech at Yale with a debate with the students at the end. The part that amazed me was that they said had actually answered questions. It sounds like in exact contradiction to most politicians he was to open. They said he was harsh and abraisive even rude at times. I would love to see some of these traits in politicans, I dont want to see these traits in our ambasitor to the UN. He sounds like a person I might like in certain jobs. Anyone who will acctualy debate with students is already doing well with me, but right now with most of the world against us I dont believe this is the right time or the right place for this person in this position.

Wanta shoot people?

Before if you wanted to kill people you had to join the army and only kill who "they" wanted you to, now with the new castle law in Florida you can shoot anyone who enters your home. Not enough you say? just wait theres more, you can shoot anyone who threatens you in your car too! Still not enough? Ok if you act right now, you can shoot anyone who threatens you... Anywhere!! (in Florida)

Great plan people.
http://www.gunguys.com/?p=121
When a site called gun guys says that a pro-gun law is going to far, then maybe its going way to far.

the war on terror

war is terror.
And were losing anyway you look at it. Im not sure that its a war that can be won, but I know it could go better than this. According to the State Department international terrorism is at its highest levels ever. Ill be curious to see how the spin machine can make this work for them. They will probably say that all the anti-war protests are encouraging the terrorist. Read the quote right below my Blogger logo on the right, above the buzzflash headlines.

Its to nice out to be in here. ill finish this later, or not.

hehe

ok for stupid kicks try this. Google the word " failure "
yeah I know why it happens but its still ammusing.

Senate Space

Ok this is pretty funny. had to post it, its from crooks and liars and is by Fletch
http://www.file83.com/senate_space.wmv

Tom Delay, Harriet Miers

This could be a big week. Tom Delay indicted, again. This time its money laundering instead of conspiracy.
http://www.perrspectives.com/resources/documents.htm#tomdelay
Harriet Miers get nominated for the new Supreme Court Justice, unfortunately no one seems to know who she is. The left assumes they are going to appease her but they don't know anything about her yet.
Andy Rooney, had a nice commentary about or war spending. worth looking at real quick.
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. …"
-- Dwight Eisenhower

Inteligent design

here it goes.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_noway.htm#3
Wow, look around on the religious tolerance page, some really good stuff there.
inteligent design is one thing but the idea that the earth and the universe are only 6-10 thousand years old is just really hard to believe, hell some people date the pyramids at gaza as being older than that. The idea that people actualy want this taught at school frightens me.
http://www.creationism.org/topbar/faq.htm
ok this one starts out pretty crappy but picks up at the end. it gives reasonable rebutals to many of the evolutionists logic. He points out that carbon dating rocks is not accurate, which is why I was under the impression that carbon dating only works on things that were once alive.
http://www.creationism.org/articles/index.htm
this is where the faq's above came from, havent had a chance to look at the rest of the site.

The combination of sites does lead to a good point, something like 99.8% of scientists agree with evolution. that is a powerful statement, this can also be used against the evolutionist in that it shows why there are very few in the profesional world who would be willing to stand up against evolution. Then again if there was strong proof for inteligent design than maybe more than .15% would agree with it.
This is going to be a major battle, the case in PA right now is huge. The whole intelligent design hypothesis seems like it still needs to be finalised a bit before it should be consitered for anything.

Have we ever taught a theory in schools before that was not in agreement with the scientific community?

open minded

Maybe some of my posts are to negative, maybe i should be more careful to attack ideas and not people, maybe I’m not open minded enough. Ill give you negative, the whole Katrina disaster put me in a rather negative mood. Did I go to far, yeah probably should I have gone farther, maybe. Basically the same answer to the next part about attacking ideas not people. I did do a bit of name calling in the "ill become a republican" post. I didn’t call anyone in particular any names, which I guess would make it stereotyping or bigotry so maybe its worst to make fun of a whole organization than an individual. But the not open minded bit has me stumped. I like to think of myself as fairly open-minded. I will listen to any reasonable debate; I really enjoy a good debate. I don’t claim to be great at it, but its fun anyway. I tried to have open debates on a blog called sandy's spot. It started off well but I just got angry when people would keep saying that the war in Iraq is stopping terrorism but couldn’t say how. yes they damaged some terrorist organizations but there is the very real possibility that it has created many more terrorists. Its odd how people can be so angry about 9/11 that they want to kill every Arab and yet cant understand that bombing a sovereign nation will make people want to kill us in return. They kept saying that that’s not how it works and yet the people saying it are perfect examples that it is true. I try to be open-minded; I try to listen to what conservatives have to say. I just find that I very quickly see some motive behind their views that I disagree with. I see people who want to push religion into government. This is Un-American and wrong; putting one religion into government hinders the rights of all other religions. My view on this is quite easily defended by the constitution, which is why I view the opposition as Un-American. The conservatives, who claim the moral high ground, then speak of assassinations and god’s wraith against the sinners. I’m not quite sure how someone can be a conservative Christian. If you’re trying to follow the ways of Jesus than how can you be a conservative? That’s equivalent to being a follower of Gandhi but supporting apartheid. If Jesus was here today which side do you really think he would be on? Which of his virtues do you think would be most important to him today? Would the fact that he might have been anti-gay really outweigh his belief in helping those less fortunate? Would he support our imperialistic armies? Was Jesus a conservative in his own time? Was his goal to maintain the status quo? Short answer; NO! I am not a religious man and I've never read the entire bible, if I were going to truly study the bible I would want to learn Hebrew first so I didn’t have to read a translation, well it still would have been rewritten many times over the years so I still wouldn’t take any of it as literal word for word accounts of what happened. But at least in Hebrew you don’t lose the connotation of words in a language which is very different than our own.
Well this has gotten off subject. I try to see the other side, I realize that most people either want to help others or are simply indifferent of other peoples plight. I am sure that there are very few if any people out there who want to harm others for no reason. But there are plenty of people who will allow others to starve to death if it is beneficial to themselves. When I try to look through the eyes of a conservative Christian I get confused, I know that most of the values are to come from the bible and that they want to do good for the world. Then I hear about cutting funding from third world nations that have overpopulation because the country promotes safe sex. The conservatives would rather have a child starve to death than allow people to use condoms. Because having sex for reasons other than procreation is murder. I cannot accept this logic. I see where it comes from but I simply cannot agree with it. But sitting by idle and watching a generation of children grow up with no hope, no food, no education, no water, no medical attention, and no way to improve their lives, well that’s just rugged individualism. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps and make something of yourself, oh wait they cant afford shoes.
I keep falling into the trap of negativity. I am trying to be as open as possible but once I realize the persons motive I cannot ignore that. When I see the peace activists and the environmentalist I see people more courageous than I trying to stop a war or stop loggers from cutting down ancient trees. The environmentalist in particular I have a hard time seeing a malicious motive. Many things motivate the anti-war protesters but I have a hard time believing that greed is one of them. There is no money to be made in stopping a war, or at least not much. I’m sure there are a few people who make money from protesting, Michael Moore comes to mind. Sustaining a war on the other hand creates billions of dollars of profit. Halliburton comes to mind on this one. Want to compare profits of Halliburton CEO's with the profits of Micheal Moore ?

Maybe Halliburton compared to MoveOn.org or the ACLU? Ok that’s not really fair one is a corporation the others are not. This started with a concern that I was not open minded about the issues. I would love to hear a convincing argument to back up the basic morals of the conservative Christians. If you can sum up how the right wing is going to make this a better country then please leave me a message or a link. I would love to read it.
I will try to keep an open mind; I try to listen to several sides of an issue before I decide where I stand. I probably do get stuck in my views once I decide on an issue. I will have to actively work at keeping my mind open even after I have a stance on an issue. I try to listen to the conservative side and I am constantly told to have faith, well I don’t. Faith is something I lack I need at least some level of evidence. Logic is something I do have, and I have a hard time suspending that in order to understand other points of view. I am close-minded when it comes to ideas that don’t follow common sense and rely on faith instead. I will not listen to an argument that cannot be backed up with at least logic if not evidence. This I do not feel bad about and I’m not going to apologize for not listening to arguments not grounded in evidence or at least common sense. To tell me that I must have faith in order to understand is to say that you can’t prove your own point. I haven’t even gotten into the whole intelligent design bullshit. That’s for a latter post.

Well I’ll try to keep an open mind, I have to thank my big sister for pointing out that I was beginning to sound like someone I don’t want to sound like. I also have to point out that these posts are usually just me spouting off about something I saw on the net that pissed me off. Some article gets me riled up and then I have to write a few lines about it which then spirals out of control until I am just angry at the whole political system. Not always exactly how I feel about each issue. There are also the times when I lean farther to the left then I am actually inclined then I have some room to compromise when I get in a debate about it. I want to rip the whole system down and start fresh. A full on revolution is what this country needs. Go back to the constitution and the bill of rights and start over. I think this is a great country and I think that there are some great ideas in those old documents, we just need to clean out all of the greed and corruption that has been infecting the system for the last 200 years.

damn

my plan for turning republican might be in trouble. some jerks in DC didnt like my plan so there trying to pass a law get to stop me from accomplishing my dream of making lots of money at a job I have no right to have. these guys are assholes. Heres the article, they dont mention my name but we all know that they read my post and decided they couldnt risk losing me to the republican party.

Iraq is not Vietnam

The difference between Iraq and Vietnam is Bush had a plan to get out of Vietnam.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,
that's not funny.
It would be funny if people werent dying.

Protest Slogans from Znet