Solution?

Organized crime? Gang problems? Terrorism? Dwindling resources for social programs?

HA! Easy solution, what do they all have in common? Drugs.

Gangs, Gangsters, and terrorists fuel their agendas through the illegal drug trade. So? Legalize it, tax it, and go into an economical golden age.

Simple solutions are the best.

great quote

I was watching TV last night, which is rare in itself and I saw a quote used on CBS's "Cold Case". I was a few punk kids tagging "Evil Triumphs" as thier motto and they were convicted of murdering 3 kids. It turns out they didn't, and the big rock&roll satan gimmick was a reach. The kids were making a statement. "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" was the whole quote. I thought' "Wow!".

It's so true it's scary, just look at what a generation of inaction has given us.

Everyday we lose a few more rights. we allow the Constitution to be erroded and we do nothing. As long as there is an i-Pod, a Starbucks, and 500 crystal-clear HD channels to keep us numb to world events and all the while Big Brother is listening.

A Russian commedian that was popular in the 80's, said "Things are so different here. In America, you watch TV. In Soviet Union, TV watch YOU!"

Patriot Act my rear, just wrap that one in the hammer & sickle and call it a day.

the future...whatever

I don't get much time to write with school in full blast, but we do what we can. I was looking at some vintage reels from the day talking about the future. By the year 2000, we'll have flying cars, take vacations on the moon, and have robot servants. Well, they sure missed on all that.

I think the problem with predicting the technology of the future is we use today's standards of life to base what we think tomorrow will be like. The problem being is that all the technological advances that get us closer to those goals also shape the society and creates other issues and goals.

This is a transcript of what might happen in 2000 in a 1961 newspaper.

What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you.

It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom.

- Still no cure for cancer

You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space.

- Hmmm

Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun.

- nada

Doors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

Automatic doors? yes. Everything else is BS

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

- Answering machines & internet okay, this real

You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room.

- You can have a big screen tv, and indoor pools, they made video phones and video chats are popular. Mostly stuff for the wealthy, not the average person. No push-button remodeling though...

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

Well, they can't cook, but computers and TV's do seem to 'babysit' the kids to ill-effect.

Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.

- Wow, they had the good drugs in 1961

Food won't be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form.

-Yep, food without nutritional properties are here, we call it McDonald's.

At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift.

- So much for that work week. Those glade plug-ins work nicely.

Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile.

-Email and internet. Didin't get the need for paper out of our mind yet.

There will be machines doing the work of clerks, shorthand writers and translators. Machines will "talk" to each other.

-Internet! Still have to type manually...

It will be the age of press-button transportation. Rocket belts will increase a man's stride to 30 feet, and bus-type helicopters will travel along crowded air skyways. There will be moving plastic-covered pavements, individual hoppicopters, and 200 m.p.h. monorail trains operating in all large cities.

- Not yet...

The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion.

- keep dreaming

Railways will have one central dispatcher, who will control a whole nation's traffic. Jet trains will be guided by electronic brains.

- I guess consolidation of services is a foreign concept.

In commercial transportation, there will be travel at 1000 m.p.h. at a penny a mile. Hypersonic passenger planes, using solid fuels, will reach any part of the world in an hour.

-HA!

By the year 2020, five per cent of the world's population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond.

-We're really falling behind schedule here.

Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. They will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.

-Yeah...

Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Rejuvenation will be in the middle stages of research, and people will live, healthily, to 85 or 100.

-Well, no regrown limbs, but people have been seen to live vitally past 100.


And this isn't science fiction. It's science fact - futuristic ideas, conceived by imaginative young men, whose crazy-sounding schemes have got the nod from the scientists.

It's the way they think the world will live in the next century - if there's any world left!


- Yeah, they were pretty delusional. I want my robot servant.

But there are thing we have now that they never imagined in 1961.

Cell phones
Mp3's
Laptop computers
Video Games
Internet

All these thing make a lot of what they were talking about obsolete. A robot servant could consolidate many things and really simplify life. But think also of the bad things that could happen.

Podcasting....

I'm intrigued by podcasting and I want to do it. I need to figure out what I need to make it happen.

teachers...

I was never a good student in school, I am 100% responsible for the mess I made of my adult life. I never did get much guidance and direction as a kid. I got a lot of love, but not much guidance. But there were a few. There were people who tried to teach me, even when I wasn't ready to hear what they had to say. And now that I work with kids and see what their effort meant, I'm truly ashamed that I won't ever get to thank all of them in person and tell them what they meant to me.

Mrs. Niparts, 1st grade - Thank you for being loving, inventive and creative. Thank you for making me feel special.

Mrs Leath 3rd grade - And currently my department head, thank you for making me feel wanted and important.

Mrs Martin 5th grade part II - Thank you for just being a great, loving person and a wonderful example of who to be as a person.

Mrs Gates 6th grade - Thank you all I can remember is feeling love.

My entire 7th grade team - Thank you for not killing me, I'm sorry.

Mrs Miles 7th grade Language Arts - Than you for trying to make me a better person and not budging on it, though I hated you at the time for it.

Mrs Baumgardner 9th & 11 grade LA - Wow, thanks for being so crazy I had to pay attention and thank you for reminding me that I like to write.

Mrs Cheney 11th grade US History - Thank you for telling me I was worth something long after I no longer believed I was.

Mr. Cook - You never taught me, but you knew my name. That made me feel important. Thank you

Mr. Pickard 11th grade Intro to Computers - You are a great man and you made me feel like a person in your room, thank you.

Mr Rice 11th & 12th grade graphic arts & Al too - This class was my refuge. I felt like family in here. I stopped thinking about killing myself after the first month. Mr. Rice called me by my French class name "Serge" it was the fist time anyone thought enough of me to give me a nickname.

Coach Staley 12th grade Geometry - thank you for treating me well, and not getting mad when I was too wasted to hold my head up in class.

Mrs Danieley 12th grade Chemistry - If not for you, I would not have graduated. Thank you so very much.

They did so much for me, and cared long after I had stopped. Now that I'm trying very hard to improve my lot in life, I can use what they gave me to be a success now that I'm ready to do it.

law

I thought of going to law school after all is said and done, but I really don't think that will happen. I don't think I'm smart enough.

One of my current Criminal Justice classes is being taught by a lawyer and it is no as much demanding from him, but just difficult to grasp all these concepts of the history of law and how fickle the interpretation of said law is. I think I get it, but I'm not too sure.

I just don't think I'm smart enough for law school.

over-enthused

You ever take a class from a teacher who thinks their subject matter is a bit more important than it actually is? Were they so enthused and think every little detail is so important that it actually turned you off of that subject?

Yeah, I hate art now. I will pass the class, but the teacher can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned.

observations

Hate is as natural an emotion as love is. If we learn to stop hating based on race, we'll hate based on some other difference.

Personally, I like to hate people on a one-on-one basis. Being a racist is just lazy and ignorant, if I hate you, it's because you earned it.

Few people believe this, but I'm actually a person who is very content with life's direction right now. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Are there things I want, but don't have? Yes. Am I where I want to be? No, but I'm getting there and that knowledge is enough. My five year plan is well on track, and though it is a struggle, I'm well on my way to a goal.

observaions

I've changed since going back to school. I'm also trying to be more considerate in public. I've noticed most folks in Walmart will not look at me or even try to be considerate. They just nudge past.

I was told once by one of my teaching mentors some children and most child-like adults see kindness as a sign of weakness. They will then disrespect, and try to take advantage of you.

Kids tend to only misbehave as far as they think they can get away with, and if you don't stop unacceptable behavior today, it becomes tomorrows' acceptable behavior.

School, well...college

I'm in my second week of classes, and so far so good. I hate Art, but I have an A, so I can deal with it. I guess if you don't develop a love for art young, you find it to be a waste of time. I asked my advisor if I could just take more CJ classes than I need to fill credits.

We got our teams for Forensic Anthopology class Monday and we were split up into groups based on the fact that only four of us have pickups. I'm one of them and people who had me in previous classes gravitated toward me. Then I became team captain.

Call me Grissom.....

I really didn't want the extra responsibility, but I guess it will look good on me in the long run. We'll see.

This past week school restarted and my first week of Fall semester began. Tomorrow, the kids return.

I've made a pledge to keep up with my studies, but already it's proven difficult. When I'm in school, I'll have a large amount of daily study time, and I will use it, but my home study time will also have to be up to snuff.

I'm shooting for straight A's my final year. I'm not expecting them, but I'm aiming.

I really don't know where gym time will play in, but if anything has to give, that would be it. I will, however, make an attempt to get a more healthy diet added to my lifestyle. During school-season, my life is more about routines and schedules. Cheap and healthy is almost impossible though.

By this time next year, if I do what need to, I'll be a graduate and in a better paying job. Notice I don't say better. If I could get payed well for what I'm doing now, I'd retire from it in 30 years. Oh well....

July '08, here I come, full speed ahead.

observations......

I'm going to try to put a single observation up as often as possible, just a new angle on my content.

Today I ate at McDonald's for lunch. I ride a motorcycle, so I go in and sit down more often than not.

I sat in a booth facing the exit for the drive-through line and this McD's has a trash bin right at curbside for folks to toss trash on their way out. There were no fewer than 5 people who stopped and tossed McD's wrappers and cups out. In my mind, there could only be two reasons for this.

1. That was some tasty-ass burgers and they finished it in seconds flat.
2. Their last meal was McD's as well.

Both are equally sad.

sad

I have known for a long time that the ability to breed does not prove the fitness of parenting by default. Actually, it is the inverse. Those who breed the most have the least business have children at all. But when I go to a function with kids involved, I see first hand who can and cannot raise children. The people who have all the uncontrolled kids running amok while my step-kids are well behaved. Everyone says "Wow, those are good kids."

Well, they are not perfect, but we stress proper behavior in public. Recently, I was at a gathering in which children were invited and I saw first hand how other kids were. Things were broken, I personally saved a toddler from falling down a flight of stairs....twice. All the while the parents were not watching the kids and getting drunk.

I've always wanted children of my own, and it most likely will never happen, but it sickens me to no end how people neglect their children and put them off on others to watch.

I guess these people believe either nothing will happen, or they just don't care. It might just be both ignorance and apathy that leads them to drink up and act a damn fool while other watch their kids in horror and disgust.

leggo my ego

Do ever wish that people though you were as great as you imagine yourself?

Just once, to receive a standing ovation in recognition of your accomplishments?

To be admired and envied?

Maybe just to feel you were heard?

Summer Scool over,grades finally in.....

After having the worst three weeks of my life, my grades are in, and luckily, I won't be repeating anything. I did VERY well on my final exam....so well, I almost managed a "B" out of a class I started terribly. A is for AWESOME, which is what I got in my Study of Gangs class. B is for "By God, I passed". C stands for "Could have been better, still passed". Still on track, one year to graduation and counting. If the coming year passes as quickly as this past one did, by the time I know it, I'll look up and see myself in a career that will actually pay me a living wage. But who am I kidding? There'll be much more to finish after this is all done. What next? Master's degree? Law School? Nothing? Who knows, but I do know for sure that I must stay focused and pace myself, to avoid the panic of overwhelming myself like I did this go 'round. The future is not some goal years from now I keep daydreaming over, but a run of classes that will start August 20th, and end December 10th.

Summer School is very expensive. So much so I dread returning next Summer to finish up the last two classes I'll need before graduation. Who knows how much it will cost me next year.

I bought the Harry Potter book Friday night. Wal-mart had a chest-high stack, so what the Hell? I'm about 75 pages away from the end. Very good distraction.

I've decided to start going back to the gym. I don't feel good about myself, and last time I tried to do anything endurance-related, I did horribly and I feel horribly. I though I had gained weight, but I haven't. I gained a good chunk of fat and lost muscle. I'm setting my goals, re-affirming myself, and pushing forward. forward.

trash filter

A filter is nothing more than a baracade. It will let cetain things pass and keep other things from passing. Some time the filter is there because you want to keep something and get rid of the rest, not unlike panning for gold. You want the filter you use there to remove the mud and water and leave possible gold pieces. The coffee filter keep the gound coffe in while hot water infused with the essence of the coffe beans go through. Some times filters are less tangible, but there none the less.

It's been almost 10 years since I last went to Disney World. On the flight home, I met a very interesting fellow who claimed his wife was a marketing director for Disney Resorts. He told me about the numbers she has brought home, and claimed the revenues were so robust on food, lodging, and merchandice, they could actually let people in for free and still net a profit in the billions. My next question was "Why don't they?", and he had the answer. "Dinsey caters to people with money." The resort doesn't want just anyone walking in causing all sorts of havoc. So they set a high price so that only people who meet their standards may enter and consume. So the gate price is a trash filter of sorts. People who cannot afford the $60 a day per person can't go. People who tend to not be able to afford the nicer things in life tend to not have the self-control to behave properly in public either.

So, Disney makes a nice chunk of superfluous cash and keeps out people that may be too trashy to enjoy themselves and not ruin it for everyone else.

You might be at this very moment saying "OK....and you're going WHERE whith this?"
This past week, Robyn and I went to see two movies. One was at a very nice theater in a more-or-less upscale mall The Southpoint Cenema and we watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The other was at the $2 theater, Spiderman 3.

Wow what a difference.

Total cost with concessions at Southpoint: Over $50.
Total cost with concessions at Graham Cinema : $10.

Graham Cinema has cheap conessions too, a drink and large popcorn is $5 with unlimited refills. Nice, very nice....
What is not nice is the absence of the trash filter. Every piece of hot ghetto mess that had $2 and would be breaking parole by staying out so late was there. I did find it amazing that pay-as-you-go cell phone can have mp3 ringtones. People were interacting with the movie like it would somehow change the plot. Some of them, I'm not sure they could even tell you what they were watching since they didn't shut up once during the movie. Some chunk of trash took thier infant (infant as in the umbilical cord was still there). It was a 9:45 pm show! It was more amusing than anything else, but it cements the fact that if you want quality, you have to pay for it. I don't blame them, they grew up knowing only what they were around, apathy, ignorance, crime, and dysfunction. I think I'll take the kids there one day to show them how NOT to act.

Just for example, there is a photo album of what I saw here

what a Summer!

Summer classes are rough, but I'm passing.If I keep up what I'm doing right now, I'll be on course for graduation next Summer. I'm burning out hard though. There are times I can't bring myself to even look at a textbook. When that happens, I look at the college banner on my wall and remember that everything is riding on what I'm doing now. That will ususally get me in the mood for studying.

I've noticed after every midterm, about half of the class drops out. That means I'm in the top half of my classes, which is a very encouraging thought. What it also means is I was meant to do more than I've ever pushed myself to do. Why? I guess despite all of my smugness, I've always thought of myself as below average. I never did think I was all that bright even though I was always told otherwise. Why? I just figured it was where I was. I went to a really crappy high school where the kids were mostly welfare cases from the start, and never really had a chance at all. Just because I was graduating when a few hundred didn't....I figured I was a dumbass in the company of retards. No matter how bad I was it wasn't as bad as what I was around.

My stepdad told me if I wanted to go to college, I'd better make all A's, there was no money for school unless I came up with it. He didn't like me too much back then and the feeling was mutual. I don't blame him, he did what he knew and the deck was stacked against us ever getting along. Fueds have been settled, and the truth has been told, but the scars remain. I reget not being closer to him, I really do respect him and I learned so much from him on the meaning of being a man. He deserved so much more than he ever got out of life. I wish him well.

Greed

I am disgusted with this country. On of my favorite sayings is "When making a deal, make sure the other guy makes some money too. If you make all the money all the time, you won't get many deals." I feel like the working class is being screwed over. I delivered pizza years ago. At first, I made $7.00 an hour, and tips. I worked about 45 hours a week ant took home almost $100 in tips every night. I made more than most of my managers. They got ill with people making more than them, so they started saying "Hey, I'll pay these guys minimum wage and hire more of them so they only ever work part-time. Then I'll be the highest paid!" And they did. Gas prices went up, cost of living went up, wages have stayed the same for almost 10 years. Yet oil companies, and thier CEO's are pulling down record profits along with the other major corporations, yet they have to out source jobs to other countries and allow the very people who purchase thier products to languish in order to make record profits. Why do we allow them to do it?

I'll tell you why.....

200 crystal-clear channels on your HD widescreen with surround sound.
Broadband internet access.
iPods.
Video games.
The Axe effect.

Add them all together, you get apathy.
No sir, not my problem. I've got mine, fend for yourself.
The dissolution of community has generated such an almost contempt for you fellow neighbor that it's pathetic. I'm not saying that easily, as I am guilty of it too. I tell the kids I teach/ punish to lead by example. Follow the rules, but change things for the better every chance given. That's damn good advise, I should follow it.

On youth.....

Some people say that youth is the golden time of your life. I remember being 17, it was ok I was awake but not aware. The whole world was opening to me yet I didn't quite understand it all. I miss the long hair and the 30 inch waist, but that's about it. Then in my 20's when I was a good bit chubbier, I delivered pizza and lived on my own. That was nice at first. I had more money than good sense, and all the time in the world to enjoy it. But like all good things, they came to an end. It was good, but not golden, I don't cherish and relish those days, but I do miss the money. I still don't make that much. My golden years are just ahead of me, I've worked very hard for them. I will be in shape, I will be healthy, I will be happy. I only have another year of bad times, the good times will come shortly there after.

Thirty-three

Speak to me in a language I can hear. Humor me before I have to go
Deep in thought I forgive everyone
As the cluttered streets greet me once again
I know I cant be late, suppers waiting on the table
Tomorrows just an excuse away
So I pull my collar up and face the cold, on my own
The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet
At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk
Steeple guide me to my heart and home
The sun is out and up and down again
I know Ill make it, love can last forever
Graceful swans of never topple to the earth
And you can make it last, forever you
You can make it last, forever you
And for a moment I lose myself
Wrapped up in the pleasures of the world
Ive journeyed here and there and back again
But in the same old haunts I still find my friends
Mysteries not ready to reveal
Sympathies Im ready to return
Ill make the effort, love can last forever
Graceful swans of never topple to the earth
Tomorrows just an excuse
And you can make it last, forever you
You can make it last, forever you