Standing Up for What You Believe

How far does one really go in standing up for what you believe.

I was a vegetarian for 16 years and have backed off recently.

I want the kids to decide for themselves.

I do not believe in God. Well the idea of God and Jesus as portrayed
by the media and the churches.

I want the kids to decide for themselves. I hope they think like me.

Than there is God Dam Wal-Mart

Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., research group, reported that Wal-Mart has received more than $1 billion in subsidies from state and local governments around the country

Wal-Mart announced plans to close a store in Canada after the store's workers unionized

Ratio, in the United States, of the number of Wal-Mart employees to the number of high school teachers: 1:1[Wal-Mart (Bentonville, Ark.)/U.S. Census Bureau]»


Thats just a start.

I can not and will not ever shop at Wal-Mart.

In No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual Choice, Tom Slee looks at how games theory and the theory of freedom of choice underlie most current economic thinking. Slee gives examples of how both liberal and conservative politicians in the English-speaking world hold up freedom of choice as an ideal to strive towards. But, says Slee, freedom of choice has some unrecognized effects, and he offers a wealth of entertaining examples of how freedom of choice in fact do not give us what we want.

And I choose not to shop at Wal-Mart

OSU and Being Bold

I sat and watched the college world series yesterday and it was an intriguing game. Oregon ended up winning 3 -2 with the game going to the final out .

One play sticks in my mind. The score was tied 2-2. Two balls and two strikes and 2 outs and what did North Carolina try to do; they tried stealing home. The man on third dashed toward home and slid head first.while the batter was swinging at the same place the man on third was sliding. And to complicate matters the pitcher for Oregon State un-corked the most perfect curve ball which the North Carolina batter had little chance of hitting thus making the steal of home a moot point.

That is not the point, I always consider anything from North Carolina as conservative but trying to steal home in the bottom of the eight with the score tied takes guts. I will always remember seeing that one play with a deviation of an inch either way may have changed the out come completely, ignoring the inherent danger of sliding headfirst into home as another person is swinging. It was good theatre and it was sports in its purest form.

Almost Murder of One

Almost Murder of One

I was walking along 25th and Davis and there
was a giant dumpster where some young adults
were tossing some junk into a dumpster.

They were basically cleaning out an old house.

All of sudden from the other side of the dumpster
a black disk came flying toward us.
Of course Marina asks what it was. I said to
her that it was an old photograph album.  It was
an old Peggy Lee record.

I, without thinking,  picked up the record and
tossed it back into the dumpster in an over head Ultimate
Frisbee kind of way.  It was funny how that record just took
flight.  It flew straight over the dumpster
and kept going and going.  

All the sudden I was worried
that this disk had hurt somebody.
I ran around the dumpster and the
and the three men had a startled look
on their faces.

I wonder if it would have hit them if
it would have actually chopped their heads off.

Luckily it missed.

This is very gay

I am sitting here reading a poll from my home town. (The Reading Eagle)
The poll asks.
Should the United States Constitution be amended to prohibit same-sex marriages? the results
58 percent said no and 42 percent said yes.

That my home town. Where gays are not all that common.
Its a blue collar town.

What the Fu*k does Congress think it is trying to accomplish by using
the constitution to ban gay marriage.

Remember the constitution was written back whem you had to pack, pack, pack
a musket just to get it to spray all over the place.

So heres my suggestion, for all all people who are insecure with their sexuality
and think a constitutional amendment is needed to keep ones sexual
dis-orientation.

Instead of a constitutional amendment (thats kind of permanant), so if you are wavering in
the wind and you want something to tell the world you are not gay, it is recomended to put
this classic on your muscle car. (As seen at the top of this brillant essay).

Thats the way a democracy works.

I am calling my congess person right now to ask to have those stupid mud flaps declared only legal on flag day. And yes I spelled that right.

Joe Sofa King Cool

The other day I pulled into another lane rather quickly as anther car stopped suddenly in front of me.

Of course I did not plan this thing out as I never realized that I was pulling out in from of one of the bigger flaming idiots on the planet

He was a flamer with an anger problem.

I pulled down my window and decided to listen to his poetic anger spewed wrath.

His words were something like this.

I am going to follow you and smash your car to pieces and then I am going to pull you out of the car and beat the living shit out of you….you stupid mother fucker.

As I was rolling up the window, I said to him.

Good Luck with that.

He peeled out.

A sure sign that he is cool.

He was driving a Camaro.

Another sign of cool ness.

Then we hit hit some more traffic by the Sylvan tunnel.

Somebody else pulled out in front of him.

I was off the hook for now.  

In the Swamp

In the swamp the water was disappearing,
this was the result of quirky repetitive
summers with little rain.
Most of the alligators had plenty of food to eat.
A small but growing number ate very little.
There was no in between.
The alligators felt pretty isolated and happy
as long as they were left alone.

Billy was a happy little alligator who had
lead this group through thick and thing. He was
always chasing the tail of another alligator but
he had a heart of gold.  It had been a long time
leading the alligators but it was time to go.
It was just an alligator tradition or maybe it
was alaw they had inscribed on some 200
year old Peat Bog.

A curious alligator who talked like a a very
simple alligator (wait a minute these alligators
are talking….its a kids story) really wanted to
lead the alligators just like tail chasing Billy.
The curious alligator was a little rabble rouser
as a kid and always seemed to get in trouble.
He would drink right out of coke bottles left
at the side of the swamp leaving many a
summer swamp picnic attending human
just saying. Huh…

Lamps (redux)

Well I have been trying to complete this car transaction with US Bank for a while.   I make an appointment for 5:30 yesterday and I had all the paperwork ready and I was somewhat excited about closing this transaction that has gone on way too long. I gave all the information to the bank officer and he said “Are you sure this transaction is with U/S. Bank”.  I pointed to where I had written it down and assured that it was.

Only one thing I had overlooked, I was sitting in a Washington Mutual Bank. Why does every Bank have be in the same place with some variation of Red, White and Blue. Those colours can be so over rated.

I went to the lamp hospital yesterday. I went to the store where I had purchased the one gigantic lamp . I asked the stock clerk (repair technician) if I could look at the floor model and could we take the basre apart to see how it works. He agreed so we set the lamp on its’ side so that we could see how the thing works. The technician walked to the back to get his tool chest as I stood next to the lamp lying on it side.  A customer walked into the store as I stood there and looked at the lamp then looked at me and said…

“You Killed It”

I replied. “Almost”  

The Revenge of the Lamps

The Revenge of the Lamps.

My favourite reading light keeps coming un-hinged at the base of it. It finally stopped working the other day and I put it to rest.   It is the same thing for my ultra fancy reading light that is supposed to also work.  Well it simply does not. I wrestled with that 40 pound marble base and after 30 minutes of haggling with it, we decided to cart it down stairs.  

I had recently brought a upright reading light upstairs that has the most beautiful lamp. The lamp is ceramic with all different colours. The base unlike all other lamps is stainless steel. It cast the perfect light for reading.  That was until yesterday. The fairly new lamp decided to join the rest of the broken lamps in the house hold. And unlike the rest it went down with a vengeance. We tried super gluing (I hope that is a verb) the metal pieces so that it once again rest on the light bulb. Super glue should be banned from this earth. Super glue attaches to the thing it should not attach to and of course glues everything you have not targeted for gluing.  The connecting pieces of my glue work popped out of place as soon as I walked away. Of course I put paper under the gluing project to avoid a larger scale mess. This of course caused a larger scale mess. The Sunday paper was now glued to the table.  I decided to throw away the super glue. It had caused enough damage. I put a stupid red lamp shade on the floor lamp. It looks like it is being punished.  I found the cap to the super glue fastened to the fire place mantle.

I scratch super glue off my hands all day long.

I remember Easter Sunday

I remember Easter Sunday 8 years ago.
it was Seattle and it was 80 degrees.
Marina was a one year old and we planted
plants in this planting box we had and
Marina got all dirty.

The flowers came up bright and when
expected, and for the life of me I can not get any
thing to grow in that flower box these days.

Maybe I am in need of some crop
rotation.

Maybe illegal drugs..

I remember Easter when I was a kid.
I got a book on base ball and ate an egg
or two. I read that book in the car on the way
to my grandmothers. I got car sick and threw up
the eggs.

I remember another Easter in Williamsburg Va
where we hid quarts of beer in trees.

The ones we did not find were really warm
when we found them.

I remember wearing a  new suit when I was really little.
I couldn’t move.   Kind of Christ Like.

Wild Mountain Thyme

For a while today I was very grumpy and if I had to venture a guess I would say depressed. I have been so overwhelmed and feel like I can not catch up with any thing, can not find serenity and quiet; and my concentration has been all over the place.  Or maybe it has been non existent.

I just have these thing fly at me and I know they are coming but for some reason only half the time I write them down. So I find out his morning that I start teaching tonight.
Just another blip on the cosmic bowling alley we call life.

O the summer time has come, and the trees are sweetly bloomingand the wild mountain thyme grows among the purple heather
Will you go, lassie, go?And we'll all go together,To pull wild mountain thymeAll across the blooming heatherWill you go, lassie, go?
I will build my love a bower by yon crystal flowing fountainAnd on it I shall pile all the flowers of the mountain
Will you go …
If my true love will not go, then I'll surely find anotherwhere the wild mountain thyme grows among the blooming heather
Will you go …
I will build my love a shelter by yon clear mountain streamAnd my love shall be the fairest that the summer sun has seen.
Will you go …

and a 5 miles run will cure anything.

Letter to I am not Quite sure

I absolutely refuse to be the person you think I am.
Now how hard was that to say?
That is the inherent beauty of being young.
You don’t have to
remember things like
long gas lines or
the bi-centennial.
And that is the built in force field
that comes with projecting your
self into the person you think I am.
Besides, I have no idea
where you are right now.
We line in the cell phone internet age and I
really want to find you on my own terms.
I have tried google searches and Internet
searches and yes indeed you have vanished
from this world;   well my world.
I can’t really say that I miss you, but I have spent
the last 20 years refusing to be the person that
you think I am.  

mid february

mid february
striving for spring unfolding
while snow lingers

while

falling slowly slow
undulating just thrashing
surrendering slowly

to

hearts woven passion
sharing amongst friends a
perfect evening