I'm Not Bitter BUT...

Meet in the Middle for Equality to Overturn Prop 8 Rally Almost Overturned my Support for Gay Rights (Almost)

2009-05-31T20:56:00.000-07:00

Fresno, CA—“Meet in the Middle” was the “angry protest” promised by the Overturn Prop 8 people in the aftermath of the Supreme Courts bullshit decision to Uphold Proposition 8, the measure that for the first time in history stripped a minority of their FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS.

So OF COURSE I was out there at Santa Monica and Valencia on Tuesday marching to protest Supreme Bullshit, and of course I was RSVP'ed to go to Fresno for “Meet in the Middle” on Saturday (it was between fighting for civil liberties and going to a party my friend was throwing in Hollywood, I THOUGHT I'd made the right choice).

Caravans of carpools and buses were organizing all over the state and Socal, so I showed up to Union Station to grab a comfy and fully guaranteed seat on the bus. Finding the bus was the start of my adventure.

I got to Union Station in LA riding on 2 hours of sleep and the promise of breakfast when I got there, parked my car topside and started walking around all alone with a big blue “I DO SUPPORT THE FREEDOM TO MARRY” eqca sign. I was trying to hide it behind my back but it was two sided so that didn't work out too well. All of the sudden some skinny Latino boy with a girly-walk ran up to me wanting to know where to meet up. I guess I wasn't the only one with the plan of “follow the people holding the signs.” His name was Darwin, we walked around until we saw someone in a Day of Decision sweatshirt who told us we were in the right place, early.

Darwin and I ended up sticking together while he checked out guys.

“Don't worry, I'm gonna introduce you to lots of girls,” he said to me, then pulled me over to a young lesbian couple and literally introduced me. I waved at them, Darwin did the talking. Darwin's friends eventually showed up in a little grey Centra, all tall, lanky, and as fruity as he was. They talked like valley girls with a limp wrist and a lisp, and smiled “Hayyy” as they shook my hand. We all grabbed car-paint pens and scribbled “Equal Rights” and “Love not H8” all over the little Centra until it was a rainbow nightmare. I personally scrawled “Freedom Fighters” on the side and we all took pictures in front of it while a documentary filmmaker interviewed us.

“Why are you here?” he asked me.

“I'm here to fight Supreme Bullshit because the ruling didn't change the last ruling in the San Francisco marriage cases, Prop 8 is still unconstitutional and we really need to ban together to fight for Equality,” I answered not realizing I'd said “we.”

The caravan was ready to leave and Darwin's friends had an extra seat in their car, so I gave up my guaranteed spot on the perfectly guaranteed safe-return bus and hopped in a car full of fabulous flamers and one short lesbian named Ana. Jaime was our driver, Sean was riding shotgun, while I rode in the back with Darwin and Ana. (We also grabbed like 3 boxes of cookies and muffins from the breakfast table for the ride).

“Get down!” Darwin called and ducked as we were pulling away. Apparently he'd grabbed a gas card after Jaime had already been given a gas car, and Sean pulled out his own gas car that the organizers had given him also. $75 worth of free gas for equality by accident.

“Alright we've got the trip paid for, now lets go to Disneyland!” said Darwin.

“Wouldn't it be funny if that's what everyone ended up doing? Taking the gas cards and not showing up to the Rally?” We kicked around the idea for a moment and then hopped on the 101 to find an Exxon Mobil. A text from Ana's mother read “Y R U going 2 Fresno? Nothing up there but fruit, vegetables and Mexicans!”

“Luckily, Dawin doesn't just like Fruits, he LOVES vegetables!” said Sean.

“I wanna suck on some cucumbers but hell no Mexicans!” scoffed Darwin, who was Nicaraguan.

“Whoa!” I exclaimed wide-eyed and surprised, at which point Sean leaned back and said, “you'll never think about salad the same way again,” at which point Ana shot back, “she doesn't need to, she's a lesbian.”

Whoa. This was going to be an interesting car ride.

Sean and Darwin switched seats at the gas station we found in Boyle Heights, Jaime's hometown (we were going the wrong way but intended to turn around after we filled up). Sean sat in between in me and Ana for the rest of the way up to Fresno and chatted like a gitty school-girl about how they'd been at Club Rage the previous night and were rolling off 3 hours of sleep.

“My gay friend took me to Rage for his 21st birthday,” I said, “it was an educational experience seeing all those beautiful guys grinding on each other.” That comment was followed up by a rash of jokes about how a lesbian found gay guys attractive and self-promoting comments about things they wanted to do to each other. I don't know how I got into a conversation with Sean about politics, but the only way I could save my Republican skin from a Liberal tongue-lashing was asking Sean personal questions.

“So, can I ask you a question I've always wanted to ask a gay guy but have been too embarrassed?” We turned to face each other like teenage girls talking about secret crushes all excited. “Can guys have sex like...facing each other?” He laughed and then went into incredibly graphic detail about the fundamentals of gay sex, which I really didn't need to know. Sean gave me the whole lowdown on gay-terminology, positions, “tops,” “bottoms,” and “various',” which apparently means either or.

“That's one of the standard questions about gay sex,” he said coming back to my question, “the standard question I've always wanted to know about lesbian sex is—“ brrrriiiiinnggg.

THANK GOD MY CELL PHONE RANG! It was the Courage Campaign people calling to see if I was going to canvas with them tomorrow. I struggled to hear them over Britney Spears and Miley Cirus tunes blasting on Jaime's radio, and tried to carry on the conversation as long as possible with the guy on the other end so that by the time I'd gotten off the cell phone, Ana and Sean had already changed the subject of the conversation.

Somewhere past Bakersfeild, a biker on a Harley pulled up next to our Rainbow Monstrocity and gave us the eye. Ana tried to ignore him but then smiled and waved, he flipped us off. I rolled down the window, flipped him double birdies and called him a faggot. Everyone in the car laughed.

"He's wearing velcro shoes!" called Ana.

After four hours on the road, we finally got into Fresno, Jesus' tourist trap. In town, bikers were everywhere but ignored us for the most part, and a few friendly cars honked at us in support. We parked, applied liberal amounts of sunscreen and pulled out our signs. A same-sex married couple came up to us to say hi and when they saw my sign they nearly blew a gasket.

“Don't use EQCA signs, they're always trying to hijack our events, here use this sign.” They threw my blue sign back in Jaime's trunk and gave me a hand-made sign that said “We Deserve Equal Marriage Rights.” Well, I ended up carrying around a We sign.

Boy was it HOT! Like a billion plus degrees. Darwin walked with his arm around me as he scanned all the non-hetero guys.

“This is where you find long-term relationship type stuff, we don't want that. We want quickies in the bathrooms, backs of cars, wherever but no longer than seven minutes, lets see who can get more,” I didn't say anything when he challenged me. Just changed the subject to a guy I saw walking around with cool spikey hair.

“Ooh, I like that guys hair,” I exclaimed. Darwin rolled with the fact that I was looking at a guy and looked with me.

“He's a bottom for sure.”

“He's pretty hot too,” I replied getting everyone in the group to look at me funny.

“No, you know who's hot,” said Darwin, “that camera guy.”

I looked over at the blatantly straight camera man with big arms and a tattoo and swooned right along with Darwin, who was by now eyeing me quite confused.

The rally kicked off with speakers from gay rights advocacy groups all over the country, but when “Don't Ask Don't Tell” victim Lt. Dan Choi got up on stage, everyone went WILD! In front of the news cameras, people stood up and clapped, but behind the press stage where the cameras couldn't see, everyone was jumping up and down and cheering. I was jumping like crazy, screaming and waving my We poster all over the place while Lt. Choi recited a poem in Arabic and a quote from “a President” who said “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

"Well I'm tired of asking, I'm going to tell! And I'm going to keep telling all the way to Washington!" proclaimed Choi. I was cheering like I was at a rock concert, I'm a fan of soldiers seeing as I've always wanted to be one but have a problem with a certain combat-exclusion policy. Sean and I were chanting “Dan for President” after Lt. Choi's powerful speech. I would vote for that Korean man for President.

We all got pictures in front of a big banner that said “In Case You Haven't Noticed, This Flag Is Not White.” We couldn't stand another moment in the sun, so we left before Cleve Jones spoke to get some lunch. Stupid.

We stopped at a Jack in the Box and sat around a table Bullshitting. These guys were really cool. Most of my gay friends are the kind of guys who hang around straight men and have to tell you they're gay, but these flamboyant college kids were the kind of gay guys you party with. I was having the time of my life! They were sitting around the table talking about their sex lives, the men they'd dated, the women Ana had dated, and finally came to me. Uhhh...

I swallowed and was silent for a moment, now I knew what coming out must be like for gays. So, I set my drink to the side, folded my hands in front of me, and took a deep breath. Everyone's eyes were on me.

“Um, guys, you know this is probably going to sound like the weirdest coming out story you've ever hear but...I'm straight.”

Dead silence. Blank stares.

“What?” they asked after almost ten whole seconds. “Really?”

I nodded.

“Oh my god!” they exclaimed, then smiled quite surprised. “Why didn't you say anything?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't know how to approach it, I thought you would be like 'why are you here' if I pointed it out.”

I then explained to them why I was there. When I went out for the football team and the wrestling team in high school, I shaved my head for Hell Week just like the rest of the guys. I lost all my friends because they were homophobic, everyone called me a lesbian, no one hung around me because they were intimidated, guys didn't approach me. I told them how I'd been kicked out of lockerrooms, had complaints filed against me at the YMCA, been lectured by priests and doctors alike and been discriminated against for something I wasn't even anyway! I told them that I knew exactly what gays went through and anyone who voted Yes on 8 has never experienced real discrimination. Ending hate of homosexuals would make people stop hating me, and since I've been lumped in with them so many times, I feel like this is my fight too. This is ridiculous, if people harbored so much hate that it even spilled over onto kids who were straight, then I want to help. I also told them about my best friend who got thrown out of his house when he was 17 for telling his dad he was gay. I was totally anti-gay in 9th grade, but then my best friend came out to me and I thought “do I really want to lose my best friend?” The answer was obvious, and that is why I was at Meet in the Middle on Saturday.

“You are the most awesome straight girl in the world!” they all exclaimed. “How cute that she's coming out to us. How long have you known?” they joked.

“So that's why you were checking out my camera man!” joked Darwin.

They all proceeded to tell me their own coming out stories.

“Gosh but you were showing all the signs!”

“I'm sorry for throwing off your gay-dar,” I apologized. Then they got serious. They all apologized to me.

“You know, it's funny how we all get mad about people stereotyping us when we just turned around and did it to her.” We talked about how gay is perceived, and how funny that the stereotypes were affecting me in my life to the point where I'd be out there marching with them. It wasn't just a gay issue anymore. I found out Jaime had been in ROTC, not very stereotypical gay.

We finished our lunch and got back on the road, this time Ana sat in between me and Sean. Sean leaned over and raised his eyebrows at me.

“So it's good I never got to finish my question about lesbian sex isn't it.”

“I'm so glad my phone rang!” I exclaimed. The question was then fielded to Ana.

“So what do lesbians consider 'penetrative' sex?” asked Sean. An in-depth explanation about lesbian sex followed, again which I probably didn't need to know.

“Do you girls scissor?” Sean asked Ana, then explained to me what it was. I decided to hell with it and asked my own question.

“Don't lesbians do it with strap-ons?” This led to Sean asking me if I would ever “peg” a guy I was with.

“What the hell?” I asked. He then explained to me that “pegging” is doing a guy with a strap-on. All of this sex education was kind of overwhelming my comfort levels. Sean laughed and asked if they were making me uncomfortable. Ana said they were making her uncomfortable more than anything.

“She's asking questions, maybe she's bicurious or bisexual,” said Ana.

That threw me. My whole tone changed. I whirled and suddenly wanted nothing more than to get out of the car, and might have if we weren't in the middle of nowhere. In that moment, I realized why people voted Yes on Prop 8, and what gay people did to turn straight allies away from them. I also realized that picking and choosing which political beliefs from which political party to believe in lost you credibly.

“Ana, quit it, look you're making her blush!” said Sean. I don't know whether I was red from embarrassment or anger, but I was suddenly extremely uncomfortable sitting next to a lesbian whom I thought might have been trying to convert me. After I'd calmed down, I convinced myself that it had only been a passing comment and I was being irrational. I fidgeted uneasy for a long time after that. Suddenly we came up on highway 99.

“Hey guys, wanna go to Sequoia?” asked Jaime out of the blue, and the next second we were veering across 5 lanes onto Sequoia Hwy. We drove over snaking, winding roads all the way up mountains to the National Park. Darwin pee'd on General Sherman, Jaime got a ton of pictures of him posing like a model, Sean and Jamie got in a lot of catty arguments, which I learned gay guys do a lot, they're worse than women, and on our way back, we blew a tire. Nice. So there we were, 2 girls and 3 queens and none of us knew how to change a tire...in the dark. We waved someone down to help us and were about to get going when Darwin nearly had a heart attack from seeing a coyote. He was scared and jumped in the backseat.

“Drive, drive, drive!” he yelled. So we swerved down the forest roads once again, the altitude getting to us when suddenly Darwin called for us to stop because he was going to be car sick. It all went downhill from there. Darwin stopped responding to our questions and started wheezing. He was nearly passed out couldn't breathe or talk. We stopped the car and I leapt out and took Darwin's pulse. Fast and thready. His legs were cold, he wasn't sweating, I told Jaime to get on his cell phone because Darwin might have been having a heat stroke. No cell reception. Great! We waved down another shady driver who told us to get in his car and he'd take us for help. Um, stranger, red flag, we drove Darwin to the fire station. He was fine and apparently suffered an anxiety attack from the altitude, which he'd been dealing with all his life. It was midnight by the time we left the park.

"I wanted that firefighter to give me mouth to mouth with his tongue on my nipple!" exclaimed Darwin. We determined that hot guys are the cure to Darwin's anxiety attacks and we needed a hologram of guys whenever he started spazzing. A side thought crossed my mind that the Firefighters probably wouldn't want to be thanked by having gay guys ogle them.

So we ended up in a cheap hotel somewhere in Bakersfield. We snuck 5 people into a two bedroom with no toilet seat! We had to work out accommodations. Five people, two beds. They were going to make one bed the girls bed. That's where I got fidgety.

“I don't know how to say what I want to say without offending anyone,” I stammered. “It's weird, the gender roles are kinda reversed a little here. I'm sorry but I'm more comfortable sleeping next to a gay guy than I am next to a lesbian.” They understood and I ended up crowded onto a twin squashed in between Sean and Darwin. When I woke up the next morning, I was really ready to go home.

The Freedom Mobile was fun at the rally, but now in the middle of Bakersfield, it was suggested that we should look around for a hose.

“Nah,” said Jaime. There we were in the middle of god-knows-where surrounded by rednecks and wetbacks with a colorful kaleidoscope of liberty-and-justice-for-all-who-survive. We got the spare-tire changed at an all-hispanic tire place, crowded back in and drove back down to LA.

"We didn't get to meet any hot guys on this trip! Let's go pick some up, Nicole said she's gay."

"Hey!" I shouted, ready to punch him.

"I said you're game," said Darwin.

"Oh," I replied, and stayed quiet for a long time after that, peering out the window.

One day of spanish bubblegum pop blasting and every other word being a sex joke was fun for a while, but the second day, I found myself cursing queers and I'd never said the word queer in my life.

“I'm sorry,” said Sean, “we don't mean to talk about so much sex but when you get a car full of sexually frustrated gay guys, that's all you're gonna hear,” then they went back to making sexual innuendo and Ana kept talking about what it was like to be a lesbian. I tried to pay attention but at that point honestly didn't want to hear it. At that point I was gayed out, done, felt weird, and did NOT want to know what it was like to be a lesbian. We parked at a grocery store so Darwin could use the bathroom yet again and a truck pulled up with a bumper sticker that said “Freedom isn't Free, Protected by Smith and Wesson.”

“That truck is packing, probably Republicans,” scoffed Ana. They didn't notice me peer genuinely annoyed at them through my sunglasses. It was Democrats who passed Prop 8. Finally back down the highway to LA, rolling on a few hours of sleep and kinked necks, we dropped Ana off at Occidental College to go straight to the Canvas, and dropped Darwin off in East LA.

“Home Sweet Home,” he mused as I saw what was probably the cause of his anxiety, I mean it's East LA.

Jaime dropped me and Sean off right back where we'd started at Union Station. We all got contact info and parted ways. I left kicking myself for not bringing a camera because this would have made one hell of a documentary!

Well, all in all, Meet in the Middle was eventful, chaotic, insightful and an experience. I missed a happening party in LA to go, but had some form of crazy fun anyway. However, I think I'm pretty gayed-out, I'm sorry to say I left my “I DO” sign in Jaime's trunk. I still think the Supreme Court's decision was wrong, and with this whole abortion thing, am still scared my own rights will be taken away by popular vote, but now instead of holding a sign that says “Vote No on Prop 8,” I think I'll make a sign that just says “Vote” seeing as this WHOLE MESS happened because gays didn't all get out and vote the first time around. So far I've met at least five who didn't vote. Forget right and wrong for a moment, people died for everyone's right to vote, and no one does. Now that a national movement for full federal equality has been sparked, Prop 8 may have been the best thing to ever happen to the gay community seeing as now they're all going to come out to vote for their own proposition next year and get all their rights and then some. Right, wrong, how about just what's easy? The gay community knows what it has to do.

I'll vote however they tell me to, but I think my protesting days will be better spent studying for myself from now on.

Prop 8 Supreme Court Decision (Since the Court Site has Crashed)

2009-05-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

Link to the decision. Please summarize it for me in the comments, I'm too heartbroken to read it now.

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S168047.PDF

How to Get a Girl

2009-04-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Tip 1: Stand up to her older brother

My little brother punks on all of my little sister's friends constantly. These poor guys who tread the loser path instead of waltzing down popularity lane have to put up with my superjock bro who intimidates the heck out of them intentionally. I see how he does it. He stands right next to them looking very alpha-male and just nonchalantly says "sup," but that's all he says to them, then he does the usual brother routine with my sister and starts punking her around in front of her guy friends. Brothers do this to sisters, they're intentionally annoying. So he cracks on her hair, her freckles, her grades, her glasses, her braces etc. all in front of her guy friends, and then just goes and stands next to them while they shrivel up like kicked puppies.

Now I’m the oldest of the family, if I feel like it, I go stand next to my little brother standing next to my little sisters friends and say “sup,” and he smiles like a little kitten and walks away. I love the power that comes with being the oldest and the strongest, it gives me the power to laugh hysterically at bullies, mostly that’s what I do though when it comes to my siblings, sit back and watch the entertainment. I will admit that my little brother’s behavior borders on the slightly ass-hole, so when my sister’s friends leave, I ask him about it. Here’s what he said.

“If he would have stood up to me, I would have just been cool with it and given him a hi-five, at least he’s got some nuts, but they all just shut up like little bitches.”

Oh, I see. My little brother’s boyish antics towards other boys are primitive pecking order rituals, 15 year old boys test other 15 year old boys’ strength, which is measured not in physical prowess, but in wit. I’ve noticed the guys that my brother hangs out with are just as witty, they trade insults with each other, and they can keep up with each other. Apparently status is measured by how good you can spar with half-hearted insults, spar, mind you, not fight.

But through all this, my little sister is enduring emotional turmoil, having her self-esteem tramples on in the midst of my brother’s pecking order ritual, seeing as she’s the object of ridicule. Her hair is getting pointed out, which she spends hours doing to avoid such ridicule, her freckles are being analyzed, which she uses gobs of unhealthy chemicals to cover up, everything about her is being pointed out and laughed at, and she doesn’t care about the boy-things going on between the lines, all she knows is that she’s getting picked on. That sucks.

So given what I know from watching and listening to both my little brother and my little sister’s point of view, if I were one of her little friends, I’d stand up to my older brother. Seriously. Say “hey, don’t talk to her like that!” and be firm about it.

My little bro is of course going to stand up tall like an over-exaggerated alpha dog and go “or else what?” or “do something.” Classic GQ bully wannabe stuff. Just ignore him!

“You shouldn’t be talking to her like that!” just repeat it over and over again. “She’s none of those things you say she is. She’s nice, smart, beautiful and funny and she’s everything you’re not. You’re an asshole for treating her like that.”

Observe: You didn’t get dragged into an insult sparring match with my bro, or goaded into something that could end in physical violence which my bro would obviously win (unless you’ve got some secret ninja tricks hidden up your sleeve for dealing with bullies), you stood up to him showing your “nuts” and at the same time complimented my little sister. You exhibited two things that are attractive to women, confidence and strength.

At this point, after you’ve said the above, my little brother, being the clown he is, would have backed down, given you a hi-five and never bothered you again. Unfortunately, he still would have cracked on my sister, just not as hard because the game would be over, and you would have won. You’d have won much more than just respect, you’d have caught the eye of a very attractive popular girl (girls fantasize about guys who stick up for them).

Now, let’s say if the scenario had been some other less intelligent guy than my little brother who really was punking around a girl because that’s the only way he knows how to communicate. Standing up to dumb bullies is an insult to their pride, which may very well end in physical violence no matter which way you spin it. It all comes down to how much you’re willing to endure for the heart of a girl or for your morals in general. `If you stand up to a dumb bully, you might get your ass kicked, but here’s the real kicker. If you get your ass kicked standing up for a girl, you’ll win the heart and the sympathy of said girl. She’ll gush all over you because you got hurt and because you stood up for her. Give it your all of course, fight like a wild dog and at least try to look like you got at least one good shot in, but how much of a slap in the face would it be for the dumb bully to know that you’re dating his sister or you have a girlfriend and he doesn’t. You win.

So, in conclusion, confidence is the key to success. Endure a little scrutiny and stand up for your beliefs and you will be swimming in female fondness.

Uneducated Christians Hold Progress Back

2009-03-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

I realized why zealous Christians will never stop criticizing science no matter how much empirical proof is thrown at them. The majority of them have never even taken a science class in their lives, to them, science is just another religion.

In a country where only 10% of the population graduates from four year institutions anymore (ALL four year institutions, including high schools), children are exposed to church basically from birth, but may never step foot inside a biology class. The foundational principals of blind-faith are ingrained in them from baptism and hard study of scientific principal is not explored in-depth at all until at least the ninth grade. Schools are charged with undoing 15 years of damage, which is very unlikely to happen in one semester, or in the week max that students spend studying evolution.

The conclusion, no wonder science doesn't make sense to zealous Christians, they can't understand it. In this country's education system, that's no surprise. On the flipside, biology class can't be much more boring than church can it? The same people who will begrudgingly leave a bio lab for God will go sit in church for fear of damnation if they don't. Well, damnation to hell in a second life that may not even exist for not going to church is obviously more convincing than damnation to poverty for not staying in school. Obviously.

I tried to have a conversation with my dad about Humanity's origins, I explained that we started as unicellular organisms that split and multiplied to create multicelluar organisms and eventually changed into their present day forms over millions of years to cope with their respective environments. "That's how babies are formed, from single cells that split and multiply," I explained. It's not the best argument, but it's an analogy that him, being uneducated from Albania, might understand. He was outraged.

"I don't come from an amoeba!" he touted. "Just look at how complicated living things are! No mistake in nature could have come up with such a sophisticated and complicated system!"

Um, yes, it can and it did and the fact that we're standing here today is proof that it did. No theoretical conceptualized logic-proof (a proof and to prove, two different things btw) that Descartes wrote can undo the fact that we're here, he himself said "I am, therefore I exist."

The only shred of empirical proof that Christians have for God stems from the lack of proof scientists have for certain scientific phenomena. "Oh well explain this, explain that, hah! You can't! Therefore God must exist." We can't explain magnetism either, does that mean it doesn't exist? We can't completely explain evolution but we can see that it has happened and can see it happening just like magnetism, but until you can throw it under a microscope, Christians will not be satisfied, and even then, they'll find a way to keep looking away. It's like how cheating spouses will deny they cheated until you show them a video of them in the act, or how criminals will claim innocence until you show them the surveilance video.

Christian faith in an external God is ironically based on a lack of faith in an internal self. Of all the wondrous and amazing things that the Human mind, body, and spirit are capable of, people don't have the self-confidence to take credit for their acts or abilities, so they attribute it to an external inspiration-source to qualify their feats. It people would start believing in themselves, the need for a God would disappear. Maybe the churches know this, which is why they strive to hold people down and tell them they're incapable worthless shmucks without God--to keep their jobs.

Even professed "experts" who take up the study of scientific principals for the sake of refuting them, religion still came first. Religion set its roots, held its influence, and did its damage long before the school tried to intervene and failed. For some people, there is no hope and no escape and the only thing they can do is what they are programed to do--convert people. Yet for some, they see the light, realize that the ultimate aim of religion is to make good people and decide that they can be good people without proverbs or worship. Some people need religion, and that's okay, but some people don't, and that's fine too, just please someone graffiti over the billboard on the 105 Freeway that says "Pull the Plug on Atheism," I don't want to have to be subjected to this ignorance in this anti-intellectual society anymore.

Who Watched the Watchmen?

2009-03-27T02:33:00.000-07:00

Rotten Tomatoes gave Watchmen a 64%. What! RT complains that Snyder didn't stay true to Allan Moore's "vision" by spicing up the fight scenes, beautifying everyone, and changing dialogue.

First, let me throw it out there, this is a hard movie to understand if you have not read the novel. If you have read the novel, do not go see this movie with someone who has not, they will not get it and will ruin your experience.

This movie is essentially making fun of superheroes. The infamous Rorschach is a parody of the Question, and breaks the superhero code of honor: Superheroes don't kill people. Watchmen puts a grungy spin on the superhero by portraying it as if it were an actual profession, making the unreal completely realistic and they pretty much go around acting like rogue Blackwater operators.

But despite its namesake, Watchmen is NOT a superhero movie, it is a Human-hero movie. In the end when the twisted, completely f-d up climax of the whole movie is finally revealed, and all of those superheros with their psychic powers and technological turmoils are finally faced with the age-old dilemma of "what should we do," Rorschach, the guy in the trench coat with his only claim to superhero-dom being a sock over his face, was the only one who got it right.

A greater good in which even one person has to die unwillingly is not a greater good. Two wrongs don't make a right. "If you would have cared from the beginning, none of this would have happened."

Dr. Manhattan, the idealized image of "God," discovers the value of Humanity, which is one of the prime epiphanies of the movie. This is a Human-hero movie for the Y2K generation, who has never witnessed anything like this before.

People who were alive back when the cold-war was a reality and the doomsday clock was actually in the papers complain that this movie wasn't true to the original concept and has instead spun off into a cheap action thrill-ride. Well, I've got a bit of a newsflash, THIS MOVIE WASN'T FOR YOU! If Snyder would have made this movie for you, he would have made no money. This was for 18-25 year old's who literally just saw The Dark Knight like a second ago, that's what they're going to be comparing it to whether we like it or not. That is the reason for the hyped-up fight scenes and the dramatic undertones, the enhanced athleticism of the characters from fat, paunchy, average joes to actual superheros so that they didn't look like they were parading around in Halloween costumes, and unfortunately also for the raunchy porno sex scenes (18-25 year old wank-off's expect that from a movie made by the guy who did 300 because of Leonidas' patootie scene). Honestly, what is this new "purist" movement going around? Who wants to see movies that are too akin to real life? If I wanted to see a movie about an insurance salesman and his problems in life, or a senior analyst living an average life, I'd save myself the cash and just look outside. I go to movies to be entertained, and this movie still managed to be entertaining given the fact that it was basically charged with portraying a dead message (who the heck is afraid of the Soviets anymore).

In conclusion, this movie had a lot of turn-off's. The bone-crushing fight scenes and the porno sex were very annoying, but I understand why they were there. You have to be intelligent to understand this movie, Allan Moore's comic did not hand you the meaning on a silver platter, the majority of American's with a 6th grade reading level would have come out of the theater completely unentertained if they couldn't at least say there was some cheap sex and shoestring action to top it off.

The book hit hard, there is no doubt about the fact that Watchmen changed people, but my generation just isn't living in the cold-war, and this movie wasn't about the war on terror. It would have gone completely over our heads and for the most part, did. Take away about 1/8 from the books hit and that's about how hard the movie hits. For the time constraints, this movie still showcased all of Allan Moore's morals and original story epiphanies, the deeper meaning is there, unfortunately you will have to sit and think about it on your drive home to get it, it will not pop out at you.

Definitely go see this movie, but take it with a grain of salt.

Prop 8 WILL be Overturned...The LA Times Miscalled It

2009-03-13T23:45:00.001-07:00

The LA Times has wrongly called oral arguments against Prop 8 before the Supreme Court last Thursday a lost cause. Luckily, I was there when it happened with an in-depth analysis of the case regarding Proposition 8—a measure that amends the California Constitution in a way that strips homosexuals of the right to marry.

Last year, the High Court ruled that Prop 22—a part of the Equal Protection Clause in our Constitution that recognized marriage as only between one man and one woman—was unconstitutional because it stripped a suspect classification of a fundamental right. Now Prop 8 has been called Prop 22 turned into an amendment. The Supreme Court will have to decide whether Prop 8 constitutes an amendment or a revision to the California Constitution in determining its validity.

Shannon Minter of the ACLU argued that not only did Prop 8 take away “the fundamental right to marry from same-sex couples...without compelling government interest,” it enacted a “wide-sweeping change in governmental structure.” Minter argued that the case of “Livermore v. Wade” held that amendments cannot change the core underlying concepts of our Constitution (the Equal Protection Clause of our Constitution is a core underlying concept). Furthermore, it was argued that the people cannot use the initiative process to reinstate a statue the Court has ruled unconstitutional, instead it must follow a separate process outlined in the Livermore case called the revision process, where parts of the Constitution are revised in order to make a proposed statue mesh with the existing framework of the Constitution.

When asked by Chief Justice George about how the case “People v. Frierson” played into his argument, Minter retorted that Frierson “did not strip a fundamental right from a suspect classification. Instead it reinstated a remedy clear across the board.” Raymond Marshal followed up on that point arguing that Frierson was a ruling on “the definition of cruel and unusual punishment,” not the case of an amendment vs. a revision. What happened in the Frierson case was that the death penalty was ruled cruel and unusual punishment and was hence repealed. The people recalled three Justices of the California Supreme Court, replaced them with Justices who ruled the death penalty was not cruel and unusual punishment and hence reinstated it. Dad said no, so they ran to mom.

The Supreme Court went on to ask Theresa Stewart of Lamda Legal how the case “Raven v. Deukmejian” does not affirm the people's ability to remove fundamental rights from a suspect classification. Steward argued that the Raven case constituted a revision because it “removed the power of the State to interpret its own Constitution” but still “did not take personal rights away from one group.” Raven was Prop 115 which stated criminal's rights could not be interpreted any differently than the US Federal Constitution dictated them. That constituted a revision and was thrown out on the grounds that it was a revision, not that it removed rights from a suspect class. Both of these cases restored remedies. What that means when compared to Prop 8: Apples to Oranges.

According to Chief Justice George, since the High Court has never had a case like this before, under the second prong of the 2 part test the Court has established for determining a revision (prong one a quantitative test; prong two a qualitative test), the Court is not limited toonly structural changes in government, and leaves open the possibility that fundamental changes in social rights may constitute a qualitative revision. In fact, it even articulated a possible ruling that “an initiative that alters a fundamental right of a suspect classification constitutes a revision,” according to Justice Corrigan.

Assistant Attorney General Chris Krueger's argument was slightly more novel in that even if Prop 8 is an amendment, it is an ultra vires amendment that the Court has no compelling state interest in upholding. “Amendments cannot be used to take away civil liberties without a compelling State interest,” argued Krueger citing the Raven Case. Courts can indeed strip fundamental rights from suspect classifications, but only if there is some very very good reason pertaining to a State's governmental structure and the ability to run itself. What possible benefit to our governmental structure could not recognizing gay marriage have? Kenn Starr of Pepperdine University, who represented the Intervenors, thinks he has an answer.

“The will of the people is sovereign even if unwise,” argued Kenn Starr. When asked by Chief Justice George if an amendment could be enacted to repeal the freedom of speech, Kenn Starr replied “as long as the people knew what they were voting for, yes.” To quote a movie featuring another famous code of laws, “they're more like guidelines anyway.” “It is the people's right to decide what is wise when it comes to their own legal structure,” argues Starr. My response: then what do we have Courts for? This constitutes a HUGE sweeping change in governmental structure. It takes the power of the Courts and puts it in the hand of the people. The end result: Mob Rule. Out of all the Justices, only one, Justice Kennard, vocally expressed a somewhat agreeable opinion that the people were sovereign but prefaced it by saying “in my opinion.”

According to the Preamble of our California Constitution, Theresa Stewart of Lamda Legal argued that “we the people came together to enact a legally binding document called the Constitution, and we understood that we the people meant all people because it says so in the Preamble.” In response to Starr's argument, this means that all people came together in a legally binding agreement to follow the rules and procedures they set forth in the Constitution, and that there would be a uniform process for revising or amending the Constitution. That is a core underlying principal which Prop 8 upended and went around.

“What I'm picking up is that this Court should willy-nilly disregard the will of the people,” Justice Kennard insenuated. Stewart answered that accusation by saying that the people could likewise not willy-nilly disregard the rules they placed upon themselves. The people do in fact have a “very broad power to amend their Constitution” but must do so in the way they entered into a legally binding agreement to do. If the people don't have to follow their own rules and they don't have to follow the Court's rules, whose rules do they have to follow? What's the point of even having a Constitution if the people have some inalienable right to “willy-nilly” disregard it at will? “Enforcing the statutes while ignoring the reasons they were enacted is like protecting the moat while allowing the castle to burn down,” argued Stewart.

“Doesn't Prop 8 only take away the nomenclature of marriage?” asked Chief Justice George. In a resounding hypothetical, Petitioners suggested that women in California cannot serve on the Judicial Bench, and addressing the Justices themselves, “Justice Corrigan, Justice Kennard, you would be called Commissioners (given your gender), while Chief Justice George would be called a Judge.”

“Justice,” the Court corrected.

“So what, it's only nomenclature right? It's not that important.” That point hit home and even got a laugh out of the Justices. Shannon Minter of the ACLU argued that the elements of marriage are organically intertwined and removing any element changes the entire institution.

Kenn Starr believed that while “denying only the recognition” of marriage did not take away any other rights of same-sex couples, people can wake up tomorrow and find they're not married but it shouldn't bother them because they have the putative spouse remedy. That was the argument Kenn Starr used to attempt to invalidate the 18,000 same-sex marriages already performed, to which the Court said “that was the law of the land at the time, and if the people cannot rely on this Court to tell them the laws, who can they rely on?”

The most important reason why Prop 8 should be invalidated according to the Petitioners is because of the foundational guarantee of equal citizenship. Prop 22 is still unconstitutional, the issue being looked at is do the people have a right to carve an exception out of equal protection? “A conditional guarantee of equal protection is no guarantee at all,” argued Stewart.

“Kenn Starr is arguing a system of Democracy, fortunately it is not this state's system of Democracy,” said Mark Rosenbound, Legal Director for the ACLU in a post-hearing press conference. “California is not a system where minorities' rights are subject to the whim of the majority. If Proposition 8 is upheld, there is no limit to the discrimination that can be mandated by the Constitution.”

Erik Dutch, a long time resident of North Hollywood, seems to agree. “If they want to get married, go for it, let them be miserable just like the rest of us!” However, the hate among some supporters is so ingrained that when Kenn Starr was asked by the Court if calling all marriages in California “civil unions” would satisfy them, Starr said it would. They would give up the right to marry completely before sharing it with homosexuals. Go for it! Then after all this has blown over, lets change the nomenclature of civil unions back to marriage!! (Just nomenclature right?).

When I personally asked Mark Rosenbound about Kenn Starr's comparison of gay marriage to pluralist marriage, Rosenbound responded that “being gay is not a lifestyle. A homosexual individual can turn around tomorrow and choose to be straight as easily as a heterosexual individual can turn around tomorrow and choose to be gay.”

If it's an amendment, it flies. If it's a revision, it dies. Essentially, here are the two side's arguments in perspective: one side, “they're taking away my right to marry the person I love.” The other side, “they're taking away my right to take their rights away.” The Court will decide which right they do and do not have. For everyone who was scared by the LA Times' lack of comprehension in reporting on this case, DO NOT WORRY. Do not stop believing in what you believe because it is unpopular and no matter what the outcome, get ready for rippling repercussions. As the ACLU and opponents of Proposition H8 have so unanimously resounded, “win or lose, this is just the beginning.”

MILK: Go See It

2009-03-01T02:04:00.001-08:00

Even if you're not all into the Gay Rights Movement, go see this movie. This is a story about Political Activism. It is a story about one man making a difference and fighting the powers that be. This movie was heartwarming and there was also a personal side to it, it makes you want to get up and change something. At the very least, it will make you want to go out and vote.

When the movie ended, everyone just stayed in their seats. For at least a whole minute after the credits came on, it was all dead silence. No one moved. We were caught in some freeze frame, some time warp that left us all wanting to applaud, but yet we all stayed quiet as if were actually there when the event happened. The feeling was surreal.

There are lots more hot guys kissing in this movie than there were in Brokeback Mountain though, so be wary about taking your old fashioned father out to dinner and a movie.

Indie 103.1 Is Off the Air!!!

2009-01-22T17:39:00.000-08:00

Indie 103.1 will cease broadcasting over this frequency effective immediately. Because of changes in the radio industry and the way radio audiences are measured, stations in this market are being forced to play too much Britney, Puffy and alternative music that is neither new nor cutting edge. Due to these challenges, Indie 103.1 was recently faced with only one option — to play the corporate radio game. We have decided not to play that game any longer.

Well damn the only good music station that actually played new and cutting edge music for cutting edge people has caught an edge and crashed. Indie was our connection to UK rock, punk, grunge and music that gets overshadowed in the KROQ sk8tr rock emo ballads exclusively for screaming teenage girls.

I hate screaming teenage girls. In fact, if I ever start a screamo band, I'm going to call it "Screaming Teenage Girls," and if any rock bands pop up in the near future with that name I'm going to punch them in the face. I'm going to punch somebody, anybody if I am forced to listen to anymore One Republic and Blink182 from like 2001 on my drive home everyday!

Well apparently advertisers are reluctant to advertise on a station that plays a diverse intelligent mix of alternative for diverse and intelligent people because intelligent people don't buy shit. Hah, that explains why it was converted to a spanish-language station!

Join the Indie Revolution and listen online to keep Independent Music alive!

Official Supreme Court Case Filings on Prop 8

2008-11-19T18:32:00.000-08:00

High Court Denies Requests to Stay Enforcement of
Proposition 8 and Agrees to Decide Issues
Arising Out of Proposition 8

Here is the Official Filings for the California Supreme Court on Prop 8.

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/highprofile/prop8.htm

This is complicated politics and this is simple politics. The argument against Prop 8 seems to be that it is a Constitutional Revision instead of a Constitutional Amendment, and has not gone through the proper channels that a Constitutional Revision must go through in order to be enacted.

So far from what I have read, the simple politics is that in 2008 the California Supreme Court struck down a law called "Family Code 300" and "Family Code 308.5" because it violated the California Constitution's "Equal Protection Clause" and the right to marry. This led to the striking of Family Code 308.5 from the California Constitution all together in June of 2008. The High Court found that Family Code 300 was sexual orientation discrimination and that sexual orientation is a suspect classification, which is basically affirming it as a minority.

Here is the ruling in that Case. Apparently, the High Court went back and asked the question "what is marriage?" In order to answer that question, they determined what the aims of marriage where. The aims of marriage were for two adults to love each other in a relationship, establish an officially sanctioned family, and if they so desired, to raise children within that family. The High Court ruled that being of opposite sexes is not a necessary prerequisite for those conditions, that two adults of the same sex are capable of forming a loving relationship and raising children. Therefore, Family Code 308.5 was a hindrance to their ability to do so successfully as residents of the State of California.

Now, Prop 8 adds a provision to the California Constitution that is identical to former Family Code 308.5 stating "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California." Essentially, the voters are trying to reverse a decision that the Supreme Court ruled on.

What it means to strike something from the Constitution or rule something "Unconstitutional" is to say that "it never should have been there in the first place." The fact that Family Code 308.5 was on the books means that it was interfering with the Constitution, and in 2008 High Court finally affirmed that it was and had it stricken from the books.

Now essentially what Prop 8 wants to do is put it back on the books. BUT here's the deal. If Prop 8 is put on the books, the Constitution will not work because not everyone will have the same equal right's that the Constitution guarantees them. That's why the original law was struck down. You cannot put a law on the books that makes the Constitution not work, so, since Prop 8 passed and now has to go on the books, the Constitution would have to be REVISED in order for Prop 8 to work. Therefore, Prop 8 is a REVISION to the California Constitution.

A REVISION to the Constitution cannot be passed by popular vote, it needs a 2/3 majority vote in the California Legislation. Prop 8 did not go through the proper legislative process, therefore it cannot be added to the books, and must be ruled "Unconstitutional" because it would make the Constitution as a document ineffective.

Now, to pass Prop 8 the legal way, it would have to be submitted as a Bill to the California Legislature and they would have to vote on it with a 2/3 majority, and then it could be submitted to the people for passage or non-passage. Prop 8 did not follow this route, therefore it should be deemed Unconstitutional now, be rewritten as a bill by whoever cares enough about it to rewrite it and resubmitted through the Legislature for approval or disapproval.

Do you see now? So to anyone who says "the People have spoken," no, the Mob has spoken. American is not run by Mob Rule, which is what pure Democracy is.

Fremont Muslim Church told Members to Vote Yes on Prop 8

2008-11-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

Sam Saleh, a store owner who is originally from Kabul, Afghanistan, said that the prayer leader at his mosque had told members to vote yes on Prop. 8 during the Friday sermon.

Now do people believe that this was a setup? Churches are not allowed to get involved in politics. That is was "Separation of Church and State" means. However, flat out telling people to vote a certain way is the definition of church interfering with legislation. Churches tell their members to jump, and millions ask blindly "how high?" Thank you to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference-- the only organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- for speaking at the Impact Rally on Saturday against bigotry in the name of God, and being one of the brave few religious institutions to stand up for Equality.

Here is an updated list of Protests around the nation.

Thursday, Nov 20th

Concord, CA
Candle Light Vigil Against Prop. 8 And For Equality
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Where: Downtown Concord, CA. Intersection of Concord Ave. and Salvio St. next to the Concord 14 Brenden Theatres. This is the point where Concord Ave. turns into Galindo St.

Santa Monica, CA
7:00pm - 11:00pm
3rd Street Promenade
equalitynation@gmail.com

Friday, Nov. 21st

San Francisco, CA
Time: 5:30pm - 9:00pm
Location: In Front of the Ferry Building
4 Embarcadero Center
onelovesanfrancisco@yahoo.com

Front Steps of Burlingame High School
Street: 1 Mangini Way
City/Town: Burlingame, CA
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=93382880491

Saturday, Nov. 22nd

Sacramento, CA
California State Capitol Building
California State Capital Building
10th Street and Capitol Mall
Saturday, 2PM
info@californiaoutreach.com

Evanston, IL
5:00pm - 11:00pm
Century 21 Theater
1715 Maple Street near the" Davis" Purple Line Stop
3128235727
runwayrebel@yahoo.com

Pasadena, CA
Old Town Pasadena, 5:30PM
Colorado Blvd/Fair Oaks Blvd.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=47106896109

Oceanside, CA
CANDLELIGHT MARCH FOR EQUALITY
Oceanside City Hall (330 North Coast Hwy, Oceanside 92054)
Saturday November 22, @ 5:30 the Gathering
6:00 the March (Down to the Pier and bring your own candle.

Orange, CA
Candlelight Vigil to Repeal Prop 8
6 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Orange Circle, Intersection of Glassel and Chapman, Orange, CA
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=110050460272

Sunday, Nov. 23rd

East Los Angeles, CA
12:00pm - 3:00pm
Mormon Temple
10777 Santa Monica Blvd

Cambridge, Massachusetts
2pm Cambridge City Hall
795 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA. 02139

Friday, Nov 28th

Mission Viejo, CA
10:00am - 1:00pm
Crown Valley, in front of Mission Viejo mall
alackofwit@yahoo.com

Sacramento, CA
Rally in front of the State Capital building
10:00am, fossilman104@hotmail.com

Saturday, Nov. 29th

West Hollywood, CA
Motorcycle Riders & Passengers For Equality!
10:00am - 6:00pm
San Vicente between Melrose and Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood Park
2138041157
mrhys@flash.net

Long Beach, CA
7:00pm
Long Beach Performing Arts Center
300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

Monday, Dec 1st
2nd Class Isn't Classy - Throughout California
http://www.2backofbus.com/

Sunday, Dec 14th

Pasadena, CA
8:00am - 10:00am
Pasadena Rose Bowl
littledykeboi@yahoo.com

Mormons Contributed Millions to Hate Legislation

2008-11-13T03:52:00.000-08:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pe2023SzWXxE8wYX5qWeoIw

And here is the proof. I challenge anyone to tell me where in the bible, the Torah, the Koran, hell even the Necronomicon where it says God hates Gays. I don't care what some cleric two thousand years ago who got a bid to publish his views in the Bible said about gays, Clerics aren't God. Do you know how many people God has supposedly spoken to? Enough people to write several Scriptures in several versions on. I challenge anyone to tell me where God put his seal of approval and signature on the books that were published in his name as well, but the fact of the matter is that the Church has once again pushed their narrow world views on the American people illegally. The Church encouraged members to contribute to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. That sounds like the church getting involved in politics to me, which should lose it its tax exemption status.

People are saying "the people have spoken." This is NOT a democracy, this is a Republic, we elect smart people to speak for the stupid people because the stupid masses will take away freedom in an instant. Pure Democracy is mob rule, the "will of the people" is Mafia law. Instead, in this country we have a concept called "majority rule, minority rights," which coupled with the concept of "Equal Rights" means that the majority can have whatever they want as long as it does not infringe upon the EQUAL RIGHTS of the minority. Prop 8 is a violation of the American way because the people have not spoken, the Mob has spoken, and the People got their rights taken away.

This is mixing a moral issue with a legal issue and it's just wasting everyone's time. I hereby publicly condemn the Mormon Church and everyone else should as well.

Prop 8 is H8 and Here's an Upd8

2008-11-11T07:13:00.000-08:00

Democratic legislators ask state Supreme Court to void Prop. 8

I am COMPLETELY AGAINST PROP 8 and am so angry I want to go beat up a Mormon with a baseball bat. I'm not even going to go into my reasons or even debate this one because it's just common sense, you don't take away someone's rights just because you feel like it, and yes it WAS gay's right to marry in California UNDER LAW for like 2 seconds and then it was TAKEN AWAY. If that's not injustice, then I don't know what is.

Here's the latest update on the lawsuits. Apperenetly 43 Democratic legislatures have signed a brief that asks the High Court to void Prop 8. Arnold didn't sign it but denounced it, seems like he's MIA to me. I'm not sure of the argument they're using but I think they're saying that the ballot measure won by a small margin of 500,000 votes and that a small majority is not entitled to take away the rights of a large, constitutionally protected minority. The ballot measure won 52% to 48% btw. Three counties including LA County and San Francisco have filed lawsuits as well as a ton of individual married couples. The fight is far from over.

I was at the Long Beach Protest on Friday and that was amazing, there were a lot of young people at that Protest and TONS of street support, everyone was holding up signs, people came out of their houses and bars to support us, at least 5000 people. In Silverlake, 15000, yes thousand people marched through Hollywood and shutdown Santa Monica Blvd. It was a small army and even some police officers were cheering us at the same time they were stuck on duty doing crowd control. I carried a sign that said "I'm Straight and I don't H8" and lots of people stopped me and said thank you for my support. A few counter protesters on the other side of the police line (like 3 guys) held up signs that said "Gay sex is a sin" and "God does not love you the way you are," as if they know who God loves. They were so outnumbered that it was ridiculous, and we were all yelling at them "hey come a little closer and hold your sign! Cross the police line and say that!" In LB we sat in the street! People held candles. My friend called me from Utah during the rally and said that angry crowds were also marching around the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. They're marching all over the country as we speak. The Mormon Church donated $20 million dollars to support Prop 8 and everyone, myself included, is calling for an end to their tax exempt status. When the President of the Mormon Church issues an order for branches to support Prop 8 in any way they can, that's a violation of the Separation of Church and State, tax 'em! Gays were not just the victims of Prop H8, everyone in the country is a victim of this measure because it's theocracy mixing moral issues with legal issues, apples to oranges. Everyone who believes in Equal Rights needs to stand up and denounce Prop 8 so that right and wrong cannot be bought with enough hate money. Write your reps and make a sign and get "out of the bars and into the streets!" Here's a schedule I found online of Protests in California:

Tuesday, Nov. 11th

Rancho Cucamonga CA
Rally at 1pm. We're meeting at the corner of Haven and Foothill.

3:00pm MN State Capitol (Meet on Old Main Lawn)
Saint Paul, MN

Redlands
4:00pm - 6:00pm
In front of the Redlands Mormon Temple
1761 Fifth Avenue
Redlands, CA

Rally on Santa Monica Pier
5 pm Meet at the pier, hang on the beach, show that we won't go away.
321 Santa Monica Pier
Santa Monica, CA 90401 Map

March to Fresno Courthouse
5 pm Meet at Fink-White Playground
Amador St and B St Map
(Needs Organizer, Please email brandon@milliongaymarch.org if interested)
IN DANGER OF CANCELLATION!

San Francisco, CA
Time: 5:00pm - 10:00pm
San Francisco City Hall
1 Dr Carton B Goodlett Pl
San Francisco, CA

San Diego, CA
5:00pm - 10:00pm
Mormon Temple
7474 Charmant Drive

March on Mormon Temple in San Diego
5 pm Meet at Doyle Park
8175 Regents Rd
San Diego, CA 92122 Map
(Needs Organizer, Please email brandon@milliongaymarch.org if interested)

Los Angeles
LA CIENEGA BL. AND CENTINELA AVE @ 6PM

Wednesday, Nov. 12th

Encinitas, CA
4:00pm - 7:00pm
Corner of Saxony and Encinitas Blvd.
Phone: 5305759264
dancewithwolves@wildmail.com

West Hollywood
Protest Prop 8 - Rally 7 PM West Hollywood (Santa Monica & San Vicente)

New York, NY
Peaceful gathering 6:30pm, Manhattan Mormon Temple
125 Columbus Ave at 65th Street

San Diego, CA
St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral
2728 Sixth Ave.
"On the Side of Love" 7:00 p.m.
For more info, contact Chris Harris at (619) 298-7261 or harrisc@stpaulcathedral.org.

Protest at Rancho on HAVEN and FOOTHILL.

Thursday, Nov. 13th

No On Prop 8 Protest - Irvine, Thursday 11/13 4:30pm
Corner of Campus & Culver Drive, Irvine
Marching to Culver & Alton.

Friday, November 14, 2008

UC San Diego, La Jolla
12:00pm - 3:00pm
9450 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California

San Francisco
TIME: 6:00pm
PLACE: San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission St.

Saturday. Nov. 15th

Join The Impact!
Nationwide.
On the steps of your City Hall on November 15th at 10:30am PST / 1:30pm EST, our community WILL take to the streets and speak out against Proposition 8.

San Francisco
10:30 A.M. at City Hall.
1 Dr Carton B Goodlett Pl
San Francisco, CA 94102
http://protest8sf.wordpress.com/

Orange County, CA
12:00pm - 5:00pm
South Coast Plaza
Bear Street (Where the mall, Crystal Court, and Metro Pt. meet)
Costa Mesa, CA

Anti-prop 8 New York Protest
1:30pm - 4:30pm
City Hall
260 Broadway
New York, NY

Valencia
Santa Clarita / Stevenson Ranch – 4PM
Corner of Valencia Blvd & McBean Pkwy, Santa Clarita
http://www.myspace.com/noonH8

Friday, Nov. 21st

Front Steps of Burlingame High School
Street: 1 Mangini Way
City/Town: Burlingame, CA
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=93382880491

Sunday, Nov. 23rd

Cambridge, Massachusetts
2pm Cambridge City Hall
795 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA. 02139

Saturday, Nov. 29th

No On Prop 8 Peaceful Protest & Candlelight Vigil - Long Beach, Saturday 11/29 7pm
Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

Monday, Dec 1st
2nd Class Isn't Classy - Throughout California
http://www.2backofbus.com/

Girl Pushups are for GIRLS

2008-10-11T08:20:00.000-07:00

Push Ups and Pull Ups are great and you gals can all learn to do them too!

Well, my response to these beloved sources of inspiration?

Screw it, No We Can't!

-Cranky Fitness

It’s the year 2008 and even Arnold Schwarzenegger says that human muscle is human muscle, whether you are a man or a woman, and it responds to one thing and one thing only…hard work.

Well shucks now that it’s the year 2008, women hitting it up with the dudes is almost common place with the advent of Crossfit and the addition of Women’s Wrestling in the Olympics. Now I see girls repping out pullups on Youtube who aren’t even super Romanian Weightlifters like the stereotype of the 90’s said they would have to be. Now we’re seeing more and more girls hop on men’s football teams in high school and movies are being made idolizing girls who hit it up with the boys.

This is a good thing right? Equality of the sexes. Finally! After so long as being viewed as “the weaker sex,” we can finally do anything a man can do AND have children. Hah! Just when you thought being a girl had its drawbacks.

So why are some girls complaining about how “the bar has been raised?” Now girls aren’t just doing pullups and pushups, they’re expected to do pullups and pushups. There’s no more “girl-pushups.” No more “modified-pullups.” That’s so last decade. If women want equality, well hop damn they’re going to have to work for it just like the men do. Guys have to work out at the age of 13 when their growth pallets are still forming just to be accepted by society, so what makes women think that we should be any different if we want the same treatment?

“Oh but we don’t want to have to work hard like the men do,” yeah we just want the preferential treatment no strings attached. This is why men hate girl’s on guys teams, they think they won’t want to do the same work they will, and hence they try to isolate us into our own environments. Every men’s sports team trains harder than the women’s sports team, even in college. I trained with the guys swim team and it was hell compared to the girls practice, I gained like an inch on my arms after one workout.

Here’s the deal, we all campaigned and complained for our civil rights for over a century and now that we’re getting them, let’s not screw it up. If you can’t do a pullup, don’t worry, just practice, start by hanging and doing negatives. But if you’re too fat to do a pullup, stop eating. If you’re too weak to do a pushup, hit the bench. The “oh I can’t do it because I’m a girl” excuse isn’t going to fly anymore. You wanted girl power, you got it.

Now earn it or shut the hell up. (And yes that's me in the vid doing one-arm-pushups.)

Obama's a Muslim and Hilary's a Bitch

2008-08-29T15:32:00.001-07:00

DAYTON, Ohio - Republican John McCain introduced first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate Friday, a stunning selection of a little-known conservative newcomer who relishes fighting the establishment.

The point of having a woman in the oval office is for her to be a bitch. Seriously, bitches know how to throw their weight around, are tough on policies and get things done. Hilary Clinton was a bitch, which means she was strong, steadfast, and if her amazing comebacks against Obama didn’t convince the world that she was cut out to be President, nothing will.

I haven’t been keeping up with this race like I should be, usually I’m all over it. But I can’t really stay silent much longer and I really just have to say what I’m thinking.

Firstly, the only reason Obama beat Hilary NARROWLY was because of the “youth vote.” In other words, 18 year olds put him in power! I’m 21, I was only just 18, and let me tell you, 18 year olds don’t know JACK about ANYTHING! Most of them are still living with their parents or going to college, they don’t pay taxes to the same degree that the rest of society does, social security is a foreign language, and they’re running around chanting “World Peace” just because their friends are, either that or they don’t understand the issues. They’re kids, kids are stupid. I’m a kid so I know.

So here comes Obama saying we’ll be out of Iraq by 2011, why the hell would we want that? More people are going to die when we leave, but at least they won’t be our people right? Who cares about Iraqi people, they don’t matter to liberals. “War” is a dirty word for kids, what are they going to say when we start sending troops into Darfur as part of the UN? That’s a war that is literally none of our business, in a country that has nothing against the US, and here are the liberals going “Save the Children.” Morons!

Not that I’m not for going into Darfur, it’s just that we’re going to get shot at a lot more over there than we are in Iraq, a country that DID infact have ties to Al Qaida and shipped all their Weapons of Mass Destruction to Syria (did anyone ever think of that one, NO!). And now here we come electing a Presidential candidate named BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA.

What the heck? I’m not being racist but seriously a country that won’t let Muslims board airplanes anymore is electing him? He DID go to school in a Madresa and yes we can cite his record all the way back to when he was 8 because a lot of morals I learned when I was 9 and 10 shaped who I am as a person today. I’m not saying he’s consorting with foreign terrorists whom he probably has no way of contacting even if he wanted to, I’m just saying that him being indeed a MUSLIM will put him in a vulnerable position to be taken advantage of, which would undermine all of our safety. But National Security isn’t an issue for liberals, World Peace is. We don’t even know where Obama’s father is and yet here we are touting his praise.

The people wanted Hilary, the Super Delegates wanted Obama, so guess who we got! What does that say about politics in this country? The same thing happened with Al Gore, does the government think We the People are stupid or incapable of choosing for ourselves? In some issues, maybe since the majority of the population is composed of high school dropouts, but the other half is highly educated, this feels unfair.

So now instead of picking Hilary as a running mate which would have sealed his Presidential Victory, he picks this guy Biden for his “foreign policy” stance not to appeal to Hilary supporters, but to kiss ass to conservatives!

This race is crazy. McCain comes out of left field selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate! I found out this morning and I near fell over. Who the hell is she? I mean I know she’s a woman and all which no one was expecting from the chauvinist Republicans, but she’s a senator from Alaska, from a town with a population of 6500 whose biggest concern is if there will be enough snow for the Iditarod Dog Sled Race. Hilary was a “Progressive,” but this girl is appealing to hockey-moms and Evangelicals! Are we trying to go backwards? At least Obama is touting change.

And what kind of “Change” are We the People really looking for? This past decade has been a rocky one, with a lot of racial and classist issues being thrown around. Right from the get-go in 2001, a war broke out that had us targeting Muslims, so Muslims were oppressed. Then we got into a war with no front lines where women were killing and dying in combat, which they STILL aren’t technically allowed to do thanks to Evangelical voters, so a big public outcry gave Senator Duncan Hunter the steam he needed to pass legislation pulling women off the battlefield. Women were targeted. Then Hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans, and aid workers couldn’t stay there too long because the city was completely taken over by the most vicious gangs in the Nation. New Orleans being overwhelmingly black-majority, people saw all the violence. Black people were targeted. No one has ever cared about Mormons and I still don’t care about Mormons, so when Mit Romney comes along, who do you think they’re going to vote for?

Everyone has been stepped on in this past decade. Absolutely everyone has felt repressed in this past 10 years in some way, shape, or form. No one should ever vote for someone because they are black, or just because they are a woman or a Muslim, but with the memories of ridicule and oppression sill fresh in our minds, it’s really hard not to. I think the idea is that someone who looks like them or was raised like them and has been where they have been will know what it is like for them and help make it easier. But in actuality, anyone, regardless of their race or gender, who sits in the Oval Office should be making it easier for EVERYONE in the country, no one demographic should be priority over another (that’s the definition of equality). But the American people also need to step up and work their hardest and give it everything they have, that’s the definition of Capitalism.

So this race is going to be a reflection of all We the People have been through in the past 10 years. Nothing is wrong with citing race or gender this time because we’ve all been stepped on. But what is wrong is citing ONLY race and gender. If that is how we are going to be doing it this election, then this is how I’m going to be doing it…

The only black man I am ever going to vote in for President is Colin Powell, and the woman I want to see as John McCain’s VP or as President herself is Condoleeza Rice. I refuse and I want We the People to refuse to pick the lesser of two evils YET AGAIN like we did between Al Gore and George W. Bush. As a first time voter, I’m going to exercise MY right to vote for whoever I want to like my forefathers fought and died for me to be able to.

I’m going to write Hilary in.

Sex IS the City

2008-08-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

"Everything we like doing has some kind of thing to do with sex. We like to listen to music - they talk about sex. We like watching movies - they talk about sex...that's why it's in our minds all the time."

-Sex and Young America

Why are we such a sexualized culture?

You know why? I’ll tell you why…

OUR PARENTS!

That’s right. The Gen-X slack-off Baby-Boomers who grew up on Anarchy and Teenage Angst, in an age of Cold War and Riots where life was the moment, so seize it while you can. Where words like race and gender were still war-cries and Thug-Life was real life. GenX-ers were rebels who lived in a time where it was cool to be defiant. Society told them one thing, fashion told them to shove it. So automatically anything their parents said, they did exactly the opposite, like have lots and lots of teenage sex.

Sometimes I feel like I turn on the TV and all I see is sex, sex, sex. Women are sex objects on MTV and the Disney Channel is responsible for more teen sluts than some porno studios can brag about. But then again, in an era where a comic book Batman movie can be a contender for best picture with a supporting actress portraying a female cop (or DA, whatever manly job title she had), I think we’re actually coming along.

The world is changing. GenY-ers are a little different today. We’re the Millennial Kids, our parents fought for freedom and now it’s up to us to enjoy it. So far, we’re more technologically savvy than any generation has ever been, we’re more literate thanks to Harry Potter which suddenly made reading cool along with more challenging young-adult literature, we’re into volunteer work thanks to the music scene getting involved in saving the planet, and 70% of us are college-bound or see college in our futures. We’re seizing the moment, but we’re also looking ahead, and I think that’s a sign of maturity.

The real reason Girls Gone Wild tapes are selling like mad…because middle-aged men are buying them. Damn straight, GenY guys don’t need them because they’re practically in them and go to the colleges anyway. It’s the past-their-time GenX men who make up the majority of child molesters and sexual predators that propagate this sick sex-trade and keep it in business. Looks like the Anarchy-days finally caught up with them and they learned the hard way that when you go against society and live the rebel-loner lifestyle, you’ll eventually find yourself ostracized and, well, alone. So now that Generation X has finally calmed down, they want to get back in and try again? I’m sorry, no you can’t live vicariously through me, seek some counseling for your sick fantasies about having sex with girls young enough to be your daughters, when you probably even have daughters of your own…and I wonder what morals you’re teaching them.

I consider myself pretty laid-back as far as sexuality is concerned. I’m not threatened at all by gays, I know my own sexuality, I’ve got nothing against casual sex but also nothing against meaningful relationships. And c’mon I mean is it so wrong to ask Last-Gen-Men to please date within their own age-category? 5 years, give or take? Quit seducing young women already!

I think society puts an unreasonable amount of pressure on men to carry the weight of the world, when really that’s just also last generations morals talking about things that we just don’t find attractive anymore. Millennial girls take care of themselves, like guys who are flawed, and both like to have a good time as well as consider the long-run. I’m not even that liberal, there’s got to be a slew of others who think exactly like me.

Unfortunately, the “good time” seems to be all that last-gen was concerned about, and now look what they’ve taught us. But as the Indie Scene is replacing Hip-hop and R&B and more white rappers like Flobots are actually singing about things like change, we’re getting away from the hateful angst and trading it in for EmoRock which ironically seems to make something positive out of a negative because it’s suddenly cool to be negative, and hey cool is cool. Can’t argue with that.

I think we’re getting better. The “attractive male” in most magazines is starting to be portrayed as a cool-kid type, likely to be engaging in things like, I dunno, surfing, skateboarding, music, all these things that do make a statement, but not as bold of a statement as last generation’s hard-out middle finger to the world psychothriller greaser status. And now, the good thing is that the girls in those “attractive male” magazine adds are most likely into the same things as the men. There’s very few old-boy’s clubs among GenY-er’s because they’re just not cool anymore. We’ve finally begun to put ourselves in the shoes of the people excluded and realize “that sucks.”

As I turn 21, rounding the bend of young-adult and seizing my own power in my own generation, I realize it really is MY generation now. All you 40 year old shmucks who are still out there trying to live the dream, guide us, or get out of our way. It’s our world now, we can change an election, we can make a choice, we’re smart, beautiful, sexy, creative, ridiculous, heroic, and even slightly odd. But at least I know the difference between odd and wrong. Back off Gen-X, go back to your wives, stop buying barely legal porn, get some psychological help, and stop hindering our progress on the tracks you laid but missed the train for.

Kanye’s Mom’s Gone to Heaven (and now we’ll have to put up with his whining)

2007-11-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Nooo! Not Momma West! First Anna Nicole and now Kanye’s mom? All Hollywood’s momma’s are leaving us! Whose next, Britney Spears??

Rapper Kanye West’s mom died on November 11^th due to get this…complications from Liposuction. Well at least it wasn’t a Stingray through the chest like some famous parents decide to go out on.

Now here’s my prediction for the future of Kanye West, and how his mammie is going to come back as the Angel of album sales…

Kanye is going to go off into seclusion for like a year. Not going to be seen at parties, avoid the public, maybe even leave the country. Then he’s going to emerge as a “whole new Kanye” and go public about his experience with losing his mom. How he was battling inner demons, very depressed and talk about contemplating ending his life. Then he’s going to peddle it into a book and generate absolute fandom and use the craziness to announce the release date for a new album. Then he’s going to just bust out and completely blow everyone away and it’s going to go like quintuple platinum and he’s going to thank his mom on stage.

Dang. If only I were that smart. (???) The downside is that now we’re going to have to sit through all of his lyrics preaching about how we should hug our loved one’s more and be better people.

Writers can Strike?!

2007-11-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

This is news to me. Seriously, I didn’t even know writers could strike! I mean, they’re self-employed on commission aren’t they, who are they going to strike against? Themselves? Weird.

BBC NEWS- There is no end in sight to the increasingly bitter Hollywood writers strike. Union members and their employers, the studio producers, are rigidly sticking to their position that they are not to blame for the deadlock.

Okay, so apparently every screenwriter in Hollywood is refusing to write. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives will purportedly suffer the hardest (as if these shows are well-written anyway, I’d rather watch Scrubs and Chickfights on Youtube). And Oh No! The Jay Leno Show is going to have to air re-runs! NOOOOOO!!!

Writers are ticked because apparently with the inundation of digital media like DVD’s and TIVO and internet broadcasts, Networks are doing things like airing shows online or selling DVD’s of the series and not paying the writers every time they do so. Writers want what are called “residuals” for when their media is used outside of a regularly scheduled program, even though they’ve already been commissioned and let go.

What they heck, so they want to get paid for work they’ve already been paid for? O.o

And even actors are walking off their jobs to support the writers! Someone please tell me what actors have to do with this? No one’s more air-headed than actors nowadays, they strike for jobs they don’t even have. Hah, I’m going to laugh when they get sued for breach of contract.

You know what, I’m a firefighter. I spent the summer fighting raging wildfires in the worse fire season in California history. I got paid about $12 an hour. I’d sure as heck like to make a little more money seeing as I’m like, you know, risking my life and all. But hey, that’s what they pay me, and I took the job. What am I going to do? Refuse to go fight a fire until they pay me more?

So now there are a bunch of writers wandering around Hollywood with red shirts that say “On Strike.” I’m temped to get a red t-shirt that says “Go Back to Work” on the front, and “8 Cents” on the back.

Right now, if I were an up and coming writer, I’d jump on the opportunity to be a scab for a big show right now. Screw the Writers Guild’s threats of retaliation, use a pen name and get your foot in the door while everyone else is at home sleeping.

Will You Marry Me...Boy?

2007-07-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

My older sister has been waiting 4 years for her boy toy to propose to her, and I keep telling her, but she doesn't listen. Chica should ask him already! But NOOOO girls don't propose to guys, that's like the ultimate in degrading right? I mean a girl is supposed to be "given" away like chattle to a man by her father. If a daughter doesn't take her husbands last name, she takes her father's last name, never having her own identity. Ain't that the way it's supposed to work? Well blow-me-down!

On Orango Island off the coast of Africa, it's the gals who chose their pals.

Apperently what the hipster girls of Orango Island do when they like a boy is bring him a steaming bowl of really well prepared fish, and the boy is powerless to refuse. Wow, imagine that, instead of a useless rock that you wear around your finger, you get a delicious home-cooked meal with spices and herbs and fresh fish! I mean c'mon guys, you're always talking about how it's not about what she looks like, it's about what she cooks like! And not only do women in Orango chose their husbands, they also build their own house out of palm beams and grasses, and only once the house is finished can the marriage be consumated. Man, who'd have known that cooking and cleaning for a woman would be so empowering?

Matriarichal societies apperently still exist in pockets of remote areas around the world, and apperently also the concept of divorce is rarer in those societies! Kinda gives credit to the saying "happy wife, happy life," don't it? But as these traditional societies are being invaded by the modern world, the old ways of life are disappearing. Men chasing after women in these societies is an abomanation in their culture, but its happening more and more frequently, even on Orango Island.

Missionaries who go to these societies leave their "morals and values" there, and according to one local girl, "Protestant church has taught her that it is men, not women, who should make the first move and so she plans to wait for a man to approach her." OH GOD!...why is it always God that screws things up?

Man, all I know is that you boys better watch'aself, cuz imma learn how to make some freaking fish, and if you'll be "powerless to refuse." hehehe.

Virgina Tech University Death Toll is 32

2007-04-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - The new details added to a chilling portrait of Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean student who massacred 32 people and then took his own life at the university on Monday in the deadliest shooting spree in modern U.S. history.

32 students were shot dead at Virginia Tech University

in what has become the worse school shooting in history. In Columbine, 13 students died at the hands of 2 students. The Virginia Tech shooter acted alone.

There’s a certain degree of horror to a situation, but especially when a killer acts alone. Authorities have described Cho Seung-Hui as a “troubled Loner.” People are left asking why this all happened.

Why did this all happen? I would not have been surprised if something like this happened at a High School, but I’m appalled that it happened at a College. Isn’t college supposed to be the healing point from high school? The best years of your life?

What happened?

The shooter chained doors behind him to prevent escape, used two hand guns that he purchased legally, and fired into classrooms, shooting to kill. He then took his own life on a stairwell.

I grieve and morn for the students dead. Individually, they probably didn’t do anything at all to deserve what happened. But now I am going to say something that will anger and offend most of my readers, most of the people involved, and most people anywhere.

I don’t blame the Killer.

I don’t blame him at all. I don’t endorse what he did at all, I condemn it to the fullest extent humanly possible, but I don’t condemn him. I think if anyone deserves forgiveness, it’s him.

What happened to the souls of Barry Loukaitas, Klebold and Harris, and Cho Seung-Hui to make them so unbelievably enraged that they wish for death? Not just their own death, but the death of everyone?

Barry Loukaitas was the first school shooter who acted alone. His fall is described as slow, methodical abandonment and isolation by close friends, peers, and teachers. A well liked kid started all of the sudden being left behind. These things can destroy a mind and a heart. We’ve all felt bits of what a school setting can do to a young person, but because we’ve all felt it, does that make it justified?

Cho Seung-Hui was a loner, whom according to reports did not choose Lonerism. He apparently tried to fit in, tried to be accepted, but was ultimately rejected. A police report says that 2 female students complained of him annoying them. I know from experience that most socialization techniques of Loner’s tend to be annoying to everyone else, but the Loner doesn’t know that, and hence is shunned for reasons he is completely oblivious to.

Can you imagine having everyone hate you and you not having the slightest notion of why?

I can, and that is why I sympathize with the shooter. I would not have stood by him while he did what he did, I do condemn his action, I would have handed him over to the law, but I also would have hugged him, because apparently someone else forgot to.

I do believe that someone who knew him, a roommate or distant friend, saw what was happening to him and ignored it. I believe lots of teachers sat witnessing his fall, and watched and did nothing. I think in the back of their hearts everyone saw this coming when they looked at this young man, but no one cared. No one cared.

I believe that suicide is murder by a mass group of people, people who thought it not their duty to step in and do something, 2 kids died in my graduating class. This was indeed murder, but I want everyone to realize that this killer was not a murderer. Cho Seung-Hui was a young man who snapped. I am dearly sorry that the students at Virginia Tech had to pay the price for what may have been too many insults from jocks or too many put downs from a few dumb ass students and no shoulder to lean on.

We all need somebody to lean on.

The coming investigation will reveal what exactly pushed him over the edge and many more people will say what I just said and that will make it okay, but in the meantime, my heart goes out to the students at Virginia Tech University.

To ALL the students.

Oh My LORD!

2007-04-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.

Help! Religious Zealots are trying to push their crazy ideas on me again! Particularly Catholics who are all about “God created everything by snapping his fingers and saying Let There Be Lightbulbs!” Hence giving humans the ability to “think.”

Theists somehow believe that we can’t use our brains without God. They are so perplexed by this seemingly awe-inspiring thing called consciousness and our ability to do the simplest thing imaginable (think) that they’re ultimately confused. They have a thought and they’re like “Wow, where did that thought come from,” and then they start thinking about it and are like “whoa! There it is again! Where did it come from! I can’t see where it came from, so therefore God must have put it there!” It’s like that one episode of the Simpson’s where the Mayor was searching for who was stealing the water (it was going down the drain).

Catholics in particular are mesmerized by the simple innate ability to just plain think, and their reasoning is that since we can’t throw a thought under a microscope, it must be divine. They think that means that the burden of proof is on the scientific community to disprove God and they can go ahead and keep turning a blind eye to all the progress we’re making with science because “science can’t explain the ability to think.”

Okay, maybe your biology professor lost you in college, so maybe you weren’t paying attention when you were studying this thing called a brain, which is an actual organ that if I shoot you in you die, it’s responsible for intelligent thought. Since you seem to only understand idiot-speak, I’ll dumb it down for you. There’s a bunch of things called neurons and lots of other cells with big long names, and the electric charge they create allows you to think. Now, I know this is sounding very farfetched to you people who believe the earth was created sometime in the last ten thousand years, but I think it’s a much better rational explanation than “an invisible man in the sky is controlling our minds.”

That’s the thing with you guys, you never listen to reason. We can throw all the evidence in the world at you, but if a single “i” isn’t dotted, you blow us off and stay in denial, which is ultimately what you’re doing right now. Ever since Science came up with a rational explanation, even if only in theory, for just about everything, you wannabe-philosophers have picked your brains to come up with weird theories that aren’t mentioned anywhere in the bible like “Intelligent Design” and whatnot. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there has never been ANY empirical evidence to hint at the existence of God, the only thing that’s ever given you your case is the lack of empirical evidence to disprove him. You still have absolutely nothing!

So when you start talking about things like Evolution like they are theories, it really starts to get old. I mean Evolution sometimes take millions of years, how do you expect us to recreate that in a laboratory? We’ve already come up with mountains of scientific evidence that we can pretty much see what the picture on the 5000 piece puzzle is without needing the other few missing pieces, why can’t you? You still cling to the idea that some entity magically created us, and then accuse scientists of saying the same thing. Well no, actually they’re not, finding Dolphins with remains of legs and finding animals like mudskippers who bridge the gap from fish to frog isn’t exactly magic, it’s empirical evidence. Yet you downplay it and say that we really don’t have that much evidence! OH GOSH what more do you want? Domestication is an example of evolution, and though we show you a marine iguana and a desert iguana, you’ll still staunchly sit there and insist that they weren’t at some point in time related. You’re too proud to admit that man is an ape and an animal with a scientific name, and I’m convinced that you’ll never be convinced.

"Just who is this 'nature' or 'evolution' as (an active) subject? It doesn't exist at all!" the Pope said.

Okay well if you want to take that approach, neither does your “rationality” or “conscious thought” for that matter since you can’t throw it under a microscope. Therefore your God doesn’t exist either if he is the God of thought and thoughts don’t exist. But thoughts DO exist in the same sense that nature exists, but if there is thoughts but no nature…isn’t there a word for that?...oh yes.

I smell a hypocrite.

"Science has opened up large dimensions of reason and thus brought us new insights," the Pope himself seems to agree with me on most cases as well. "But in the joy at the extent of its discoveries, it tends to take away from us dimensions of reason that we still need. Its results lead to questions that go beyond its methodical canon and cannot be answered within it," okay, basically you’re saying that the only thing religion is good for is a tool for exercising thought…or those “dimensions of reason” that you’re talking about. Wow, from the Pope’s own mouth, religion is nothing more than a philosophy, an ideal!

So Religion teaches us to be good people, and supposedly without religion the world would be filled with hate and crime and evil etc. Well the funniest thing I ever saw in a movie was a gang banger going to church. Not so funny when it’s a Muslim extremist blowing himself up in the name of, oh, GOD!

You’re still clinging to ideas that were created before running water was invented and trying to make me cling to them too! Well sorry, I’m a little more practical. I know you have a “whole other world” of existence to explore, but I do to, it’s called my imagination. And if God is thought, and thought exists, then I guess we agree…God is all in my imagination!

(Thank you, I’m here till Thursday)

You can believe whatever you want to believe, but in that case, so can I. Don’t push your crazy ideas on me. It’s really starting to get annoying.

Cure Autism! NOW DAMMIT!

2007-04-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes I feel angry when I read about attempts being made to 'cure' autism. I do not wish to be 'cured' from my autism, and many autistic persons who are able to communicate their feelings, say the same thing."

I’m sure a lot of you know people who have young autistic children. The kids that are absolute brainiacs and can do prime factorization like a computer but have weird mannerisms and stare up at ceiling fans for hours or don’t sit still. You haven’t seen autism until you’ve seen an Autistic teenager!

They’re hopeless! Weirdo’s from some other dimension who speak in binary code and think that the way to make friends is by going up and saying “my shirt has a kitty on it.” Oh gosh the speech pathologists are shaking their heads going “no Billy, complement their clothes not your clothes.” These kids can’t hold a conversation for their life, are masters at murdering jokes, are the people in the group that always manage to humiliate themselves in a way that it humiliates everyone else in the group, and are just plain strange.

I’m not talking Napoleon Dynamite strange, I’m talking Napoleon without the Dynamite, kids that are so messed up that they have no cute qualities about them, no attractive personalities, repelling auras, but an insane knowledge of every species of gymnosperm on the planet. They often have no friends because they’re not stupid enough to be special ed, so they sit in regular ed classes at the back of the class. Even geeks make fun of these kids, they're so incapable of socializing that they've even been rejected by the rejects! They’re often the object of kids ridicule, and at lunch they read a book instead of hang out with friends. They excel at repeated activities, everyone remembers the autistic waterboy who scored 27 points in a high school basketball game.

We all know someone like this, and chances are that 5 times out of 10 (since now one in 250 kids are born with some form of autism), they’re autistic. But the strangest thing about a lot of kids like these who know they have this disorder, who’ve been on meds and hospitalized for this disorder, wouldn’t want to be cured!

This is not the first person with autism I’ve heard say they don’t want to change, I used to be the same way. Autistic teens somehow get it in their mind that having this disorder makes them special and makes them who they are, and they wouldn’t want to change who they are. Oh god forbid, don’t make me part of the “collective!” “I’m original!”

“I’m Special!”

You stupid loners! You have no clue what you’re talking about! No, I’m not afraid to call you stupid because I’m one of you, I know how your inverted mind works! You don’t know what society is really like because you’ve never been in it. You don't know what it's like to have people who have your back no matter what and someone to go to the mall with and a group to have fun with. The ride is so much funner if you're sitting next to someone you call friend. You’ve never integrated yourself into a group of people, so you don’t know what it’s like to be part of a group of people. You don’t know what you’re missing because you’ve never had it. But some like you have had it, and some like you have had it and lost it because of your “special” people skills. You’re amazing ability to drive people away and award winning joke killers are astounding, why, you’re practically a joke sniper! You shoot down girls without even knowing how, and you insult peers without even knowing you have. Your existence is in itself offensive, but you don’t see it because you’re stuck in your own little Autistic world and you think that’s okay!

Maybe you’d march straight up to the doctors and researchers working on a cure and say to them “No Thank you, I’m just fine the way I am.” But then of course I’d come over and punch the living daylight out of you, you stupid ingrate crack-babies. In sci-fi novel’s you’re all euthanized! You don’t know how horrible it is like to be cursed against friendship and intimacy!

So the hell with all you disabled kids, Cure me dammit! I want to be part of the collective, I want to join society! I don’t like who I am, I don’t want to be autistic anymore! I don’t want anymore meds or counselors or psychologists or evaluations or peers avoiding me like the plague. I don’t want special education and home aids, or learning programs designed for the autistic brain, or weird looks when I say something insane. I want groups of cool friends who tell funny jokes and say cool things and hang out with me and don't dress like losers or punks. I don't care, make me a poser! But God please no longer a Loner! I’ll throw away my alternative humor and fall in line, I swear I will! Love me people, please oh please! Take me to movies and hang out with me!

If I had all the money in the world, where can I go to get rid of me?

I don’t want to be Autistic, please cure me!

<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
UPDATE!!!

I found something interesting on Youtube. This is for the parents of SEVERELY AUTISTIC children, the ones who I'm not ragging on in the post above. A hospital in Costa Rica is doing work with Adult Stem Cells on Autistic Patients and claims to have pretty much a CURE. In case the vid doesn't work properly, it's called the Institute of Cellular Medicine in Costa Rica.

Fucking Mother Fucker Fuck The Departed!

2007-03-05T01:23:00.000-08:00

Oh My Fucking GOD!

You know when you went to see the movie Alexander and they had Alex full-on macking on another half naked guy and you couldn’t help but squirm? Or how about in the Ladykillers where everyone freaking DIES! Except in the Ladykillers they at least pull it off in style and you don’t really like the guys who die anyway.

The Departed is a movie about rats and cops. Long story short, a rat is in the police force and a spy is in the mob, and they’re both trying to find each other, only to all get shot in the end! On top of the rat and the mole, the head boss turns out to be an FBI informant who had more than one mole in the police force, who was friends with the rat, who went to the police academy with the mole, and they all fucking die in the last 5 minutes of the movie! Fuck! The rat—who was sleeping with moles girlfriend—catches the mole, and the FBI informant shoots the rat, and the mole shoots the informant, a random guy gets shot, and then finally the mole gets shot in his apartment by the x chief of police, who resigns.

WTF!

DON’T see this movie!

Let Prince Harry Bloody Fight

2007-02-21T03:13:00.000-08:00

LONDON - He's a freckle-faced royal rascal who has led a life of privilege. But Britain's Prince Harry is also an army officer — and he could soon be heading to Iraq to face the realities of combat.

Well, looks like Prince Harry is going off to bloody Iraq (not that Iraq isn’t bloody, but bloody is what the Brits say instead of “fucking” like us Yanks).

Prince Harry got his royal arse through Sandhurst Military Academy last year and is now a second lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry (I think that means he’s a Cavalry Scout…they ride the Bradley’s.)

But Royal Officials are apparently having a field day about the “security headache” the presence of a member of the Royal Family would be.

Okay, well if Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio joined the Army and were going to war, would we make the same fuss? The Royal Family is really nothing more today than a bunch of celebrities and they don’t have that much power in government at all. It's not like it would be SUCH a security risk like they captured the Prime Minister or the President of the United States. "The presence of a member of the Royal Family could increase the risk for his comrades." Well no shit we're actually getting shot at over there, what kind of a war are we fighting if our strategy for the entire campaign is "hopefully we'll get lucky and they won't shoot at us."

The arguments they’re making about Harry are the same arguments they’re making about women and Jews in Iraq. “Oh it will make them more vulnerable to attack.” Well what are you going to do, go hide in a hole? You’re going to get shot at, so maybe if the Coalition Command would give our troops permission to shoot back unlike they’ve been doing (“Winning Their Hearts and Minds”), we might actually be able to fight something that resembles a war!

For bloody sakes let the kid do his job.

Football is LAME!!

2007-02-04T20:37:00.000-08:00

I mean seriously, why “football?” When exactly in football do you even use your feet? Your feet don’t come in contact with that sorry excuse for a ball shaped like a lemon at anytime! Unless of course you are the kicker, in which case you are the WEAKEST guy on the team!

I remember we always used to make fun of our kickers on football. Firstly they weren’t even football players, they were the varsity soccer players! Go figure.

And as for soccer, a sport that is the only sport played in absolutely every country by everybody, we insult it by jacking its name and calling it “soccer.” We give the prestigious name of “football” to our own silly version of Pop-Warner Rugby with pads. Man, Rugby players eat “football” players for breakfast!

I guess the football/soccer thing is like the whole Iceland/Greenland thing, trick by the Vikings. Darn those Vikings!

Well all I know is that I hate football, and I played football! Believe me, its not a tough sport. Most of practice you’re just standing around in the sun like an idiot, and when you are getting in for plays, you’re running around in circles for about 5 whole seconds and then lining up and doing it all over again (it gets you dizzy).

Not to mention you see so much dick when you play football! It’s nasty. Guys will lift up the bottom of their shorts and take a leak right there on the sidelines, the girls locker-room is shut for the summer so you’re changing with the guys…btw the boys locker room smells like penis, which smells like ham and sweat, and I know this because it only smelled that way when all the guys were naked (and no its not as great of an opportunity as you girls might think).

But really most of the time the guys were in their boxers and I made friends in my bra and panties which sounds ridiculously sexual but ironically wasn’t.

Football is also a boring sport. The entire climax of excitement comes when one guy runs it in for a touchdown from all the way across the field, and it has to be from all the way across the field or else its just another point and you’re just getting up and cheering because everyone else is!

I’ll give football some props: you lift hard, you work hard, you hit hard, and you party hard, but football is not hard!

But watching football is hard! I remember our cross-town rival game, I couldn’t sit through the whole thing, after the 1^st quarter it got boring and repetitive…no make that the first down!

I’ll be honest, I watch the Superbowl for the Half-time show! Who the hell is Payton Manning, why is he so ugly, and what kind of name is Payton!? Oh gosh the worse name I have ever heard in my life is an NFL player named Dick Butgus (sound it out), I mean I swear these guys got so tough from being picked on in grade school! Poor guys.

Well, I was rooting for the Bears because my little bro was rooting for the Colts, and he nearly cried at the kickoff, and I was LMAO!!!

Gosh, maybe the reason we get into so many wars is because our favorite game is a war game! Football, Yuk!

What The...??

2007-01-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

Why Are "Old School" Fighters Coming Back?

2007-01-05T21:33:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a trend that a lot of “old school” fighters are coming out of retirement, and as a reaction, it also seems to be a trend that a lot of them are losing; badly.

Royce Gracie, the reigning UFC Hall of Famer, recently came out of retirement to fight the current UFC middle heavyweight champion Matt Hughes…and pretty much got humiliated. Royce had a perfect record of 11-0 back in the days of UFC where there were fewer rules, no time limits, and no weight classes. He hit it up with guys much bigger than he, and who were of a quality of toughness that maybe today’s fighters only aspire to be. But Royce is also 40 years old and far passed his prime, whereas Hughes was 32 years of lean, mean, ground’n’pounding machinery. I lost $10 betting on the Royce/Hughes fight (yeah ten whole dollars), I really thought he could pull it off, but even watching Royce and Hughes during the pre-fight warmups made me nervous. Hughes just looked like he was ready to rock and roll, while Gracie looked like he was teaching one of his jiu jitsu classes. I honestly thought he could win, but then again I’m only a blue belt, what do I know right?...Did he actually think he could win though? http://iamnotbitterbut.blogspot.com/2006/05/royce-gracie-lost.html

Jean-Jacques Machado did the same thing in the Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling Championships in 2005. My friend and I had perfect seats to that tourney, 5^th row, and incidentally right next to none other than the Legendary “Judo” Gene LeBell himself and Gokor Chivickyan (my friend was psyched that he met Rickson Gracie)! During all the rest of the amazing fights that day, Marcelo vs. Ricco and Jacare vs. Roger Gracie, all of the crowd was wild! But during the superfight, when JJ Machado and PrideFC prodigy Dean Lister squared up to meet on the mat, the roar of the crowd and the energy of the hundreds of cheering fans was suddenly completely silenced. The entire stadium went dead quiet. You could literally hear a pin drop in that entire arena; you couldn’t cut through the suspense with a knife. Machado played his classic Butterfly Guard and Lister grappled conservatively, but in the end, it was ultimately Lister who would come out victorious that day, the silence was shattered by the uproar of hoorays from the stands. Machado, once again, was just too old.

And let us not forget the famous abomination of Ken Shamrock vs. Tito Ortiz! The man named “The Worlds Most Dangerous Man” was utterly defeated 3 times by the cocky “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” Tito Ortiz; a fighter with really not much specialization besides Collegiate Wrestling was able to beat a professional shootfighter who studied under names like Fujiwara and Karl Gotch himself…3 TIMES SEQENCIALLY! And not only did Tito dominate Ken, he trash talked The Lion’s Den, berated Ken’s fighters, and pretty much acted like the royal ass that is the Tito Ortiz fans love. Ken had all the reason to come back and defend his name, but again, in his 40’s he just couldn’t pull it off.

Now there are some fighters in their 40’s that are absolute forces to be reckoned with. Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture practically took turns holding the title from each other! When Chuck and Tito fought in UFC 66, Tito tried to make Chuck flinch like he did with Ken Shamrock, Chuck didn’t move a muscle and Tito looked like an idiot. Needless to say he got GGPWNED! And Randy! Who in the world though an NCAA wrestler would even stand a chance against an Olympian? Enough said! Mirko Cro Cop isn’t exactly the youngest guy either. But the thing about these guys is that they haven’t gone into retirement for 10 years and then tried to get back in the game all at once, they’ve stayed on top of the game and evolved with their changing sport and changing bodies, which is why they have been so successful.

Even Dan Severn is fighting Wade Hamilton in King of the Cage this month. What’s going on with this trend of “old school” trying to come back?

My dad probably explained it to me best when we went to see Rocky Balboa this past weekend. (SPOILER SPOILER) Rocky came out of retirement to fight the current heavyweight champ who, very much like a lot of today’s fighters, was cocky and arrogant about his abilities. That fight was an all-out slugfest, an “It Aint Over Til It’s Over,” a bloody war. At the end, I thought Rocky had won. The fight was scored 95-94, and Rocky told Mason “The Line” Dixon that he was a great fighter and a good champ. Rocky’s name was chanted as he left the stadium, officially retiring The Italian Stallion, even though he lost.

My dad said that if he were Rocky he would have come back too. To be 40 or 50 or whatever and own a restaurant and know what your life was going to be like every day until you died was unbearable. It would be unbearable to guys like Rocky who came up not knowing what tomorrow was going to hold and fighting for the right to exist; for people like Royce Gracie who taught jiu jitsu out of the back of his garage in the beginning, and Machado who had to do it just like everyone else and come up through the ranks of competition to earn his name.

In a world where people are living to one hundred, we are saying 40 is too old. George Foreman the Boxer did it, maybe it can be done. I always thought the real tough guy wasn’t necessarily the guy who won, but the guy who could feel what its like to lose, and not be daunted. Even if Royce will never win another fight, or Machado and Shamrock are pretty much washed up, I say we stand behind them just for what they represent. That they will at least live their lives knowing that they didn’t back down when someone was dissing their home and friends because they were scared they were going to lose, or they didn’t go on living their life wondering if they could hit it up in what they have created in the present day, at least they went for their dreams. How about the rest of us?

“It aint about how hard you can hit, its about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

Forget the Lakers, Who's a Sparks Fan?

2006-11-29T18:19:00.000-08:00

I’m eating a pickle right now, it’s very good. What that has to do with the rest of this post, I have no idea…but it is a really good pickle.

A Girls Basketball Coach in Alabama recently won a Title IX discrimination settlement between him and the school that he coached at, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. Coach Roderick Jackson was fired for allegedly complaining too much that the Boys Basketball team was given preferential treatment over the Girls Basketball team. The Alabama school maintained that since Coach Jackson was not a direct victim of discrimination, he had no right to sue. The High Court of Alabama ruled 5-4 allowing his case to continue onto the Supreme Court, where the Court ruled in his favor.

"Reporting incidents of discrimination is integral to Title IX enforcement and would be discouraged if retaliation against those who report it went unpunished," wrote then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the majority. "Individuals who witness discrimination would likely not report it, indifference claims would be short-circuited, and the underlying discrimination would go unremedied."

Basically what was going on was that Ensley High School, where Jackson first made his discrimination claims, was giving the girls team substandard training facilities, funding, transportation etc. compared to the boys team. According to CNN, “the gym the girls used for practice had no heat, wooden backboards and bent hoops, and the team relied on inferior transportation to games, including car pools, while the boys used buses.”

Title IX is the Equalization Act for Females in Scholastic Activities. It doesn’t even have to be athletically-related, what it means is that regardless of circumstances women athletes and women’s teams must be treated exactly the same as male athletes and men’s teams. Since it’s inception, women’s sports has gained tremendous ground, creating more opportunities for women in sports and preventing discrimination against female athletes. Title IX is the reason I was able to go out for the wrestling team. However, the drawback to Title IX is that sports that are traditionally male, such as wrestling and football, get their funding cut seeing as each team must spend the same amount of money on its male and female athletes. Wrestling doesn’t have an analogous female team, therefore since it is doomed to be out of balance as far as the ratio of female to male athletes, on paper it looks like it is giving more preference to its male athletes, and its funds are cut. Legislation is currently trying to work out this glitch, but typically a lot of school’s will cut their wrestling teams completely rather than lost money trying to fund an unsupported team. When I wrestled at Cerritos College, we didn’t even have enough uniforms for our first meet (which may have been good for me seeing as one guy came back with herpes from that meet).

So, what I’m thinking happened is that in Alabama, at this overcrowded and under-funded high school that recently closed anyway, no one cared about girl’s basketball. I mean think about it, does anyone really care about the WNBA compared to the NBA? Do we even know who won the last Sparks game? So no one came to the girls games, no one sat in the stands, and the school was being forced to fund it just as much as the boys team who had people buying tickets every Friday night and selling out for the cross town rival game.

Is that really fair? I mean if no one goes to see it, why fund it right? We don’t even know if the girl’s team was really any good, or even if the boy’s team was any good either, but apparently Ensley High School cared more about their boys team than their girls team seeing as the boys at least had buses.

I remember the Gymnastics team at Warren High School didn’t have buses, they didn’t have ANY facilities to train on campus, so they had to walk to the YMCA and use their equipment. And other schools back east had Gymnastics getting more funding than Football and some school’s even had Judo teams (Scholastic Judo is non-existent out west). Warren’s Gymnastics team SUCKED though! I’m sure if Warren Gymnastics was bringing back a CIF banner a couple years in a row we’d have given them buses. Sports do fund education after all, school’s will invest in the girl’s Table Tennis team if it wins and brings in funds, at least as far as I’ve seen. Lynwood also didn’t even have a swim team until parents demanded it.

So, could it possibly be that the Alabama Girls Basketball team really sucked, and that’s why the school didn’t give them any funds? The Coach may have been complaining that the reason they sucked was because he didn’t have the resources to train them, and the school may have decided that he wasn’t that great of a Coach if he wasn’t getting results and fired him. Technically I guess their not allowed to do that though, at least according to the Supreme Court. I have trouble believing that the school just really had a bias against its female athletes because they are female, but hey then again it is down south. Don’t they eat Possums in Alabama or something?

Well it seems like Title IX is telling Alabama that it doesn’t matter what skill level either team is at, they still have to provide equal funding for each team in order to prevent discrimination.

What do you guys think? Is this fair?

I only have the CNN article also, so if you guys have more information on anything related, post it up in the comments!

You Can't Rename the KIMURA!!!!!!

2006-11-15T23:49:00.000-08:00

Oh wow! This is like the ultimate sin in the world of grappling. Shoshin Ryu Jiu Jitsu, a branch of Japanese Danzan Ryu Jujitsu which is made up of a bunch of wannabe-Bruce Lee's, is changing the name of the famous Kimura Shoulder Lock that Kimura tapped out Helio Gracie with, to “UDE GARAMI” which they argue is the original Japanese name for a technique that is similar to the Kimura Shoulder Lock in their art.

Kimura was a Judo fighter back when Helio Gracie was going around fighting all the other Martial Arts to prove that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was the best style. Gracie had almost 400 fights with no losses, and then he fought Kimura who ripped Helio’s shoulder out! That lock became known as THE Kimura. To this day, the Kimura has been used in high level competitions such as the Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling Championships, The Jiu Jitsu Mundials, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But a few CJJ (Classic Jiu Jitsu) places want to pretend they’re Samurai’s and hence you have a bunch of pasty white guys trying to speak Japanese and reminding me of all the Animae nerds in high school who used to speak Japanenglish so they could be like their hero, Inuyasha (Cartoon Network Adult Swim, don’t ask how I know that), going around saying “Mahalo” to each other even though its Hawaiian. What’s next? A secret handshake?

What I don’t understand is what is so blasphemous about taking a Japanese art and teaching it in English as long as it’s in an English-speaking country? This is why bilingual education in America doesn’t work, it only delays the learning process because the students CAN’T EVEN UNDERSTAND YOU! It's not like the brazilians keep their Potruguese names for their arts. I’ve seen cool things at wrestling matches like a guy being coached in Spanish so that his opponent won’t understand, but Japanese is not my second language.

In fact, at high level grappling gyms, a lot of the instructors don’t even name the moves! They show you it, show it on you, tap you out with it a couple times, then say “okay go tap someone with it.”

I can understand honoring the old masters by keeping to the traditions, that is why many Muay Thai fighters go to Hindu Shrines regardless of their religion before their fights. Many Judo Schools, even renown one who send fighters to the Pan American Games, bow to a picture of Kano before workouts. But you know what else, Kano and Master Okazaki also passed like literally a hundred years ago. I seriously doubt they would come back from their eternal naps and make you do pushups for dishonoring their art by deviating from their ways a little. Oh the wrath of the Ancestors be upon us for trying to be just a little bit modern!

I’m not saying it’s completely wrong to name techniques in their language of origin. We have techniques like “DROP SEOI NAGE” and “OMA PLATA.” But if everyone was calling the “OMA PLATA” a “SITTING UP SHOULDER LOCK,” we’d be best advised to call it that too so that we’d be learning the same art that all the other grapplers are learning so that we know what they’re doing when their coach yells it to them from the sideline. You’re either a Grappling art, an MMA art, or a Stunt Double’s art…or you’re a Mcdojo. If all the Grappling, MMA, and Stunt Double’s arts are calling it the “KIMURA,” we should call it the Kimura too so that we’re not labeled a Mcdojo by all the young grapplers that are starting to come in and roll with us. What kind of a future does a martial arts gym hold that is not changing with the times? Didn't the UFC teach us that unless you evolve, you lose?

But apparently if you don’t care what other people think about you, you can technically take every existing move, and invent your own funny names for them and still tap people out. I mean so far me and my friends have invented a ton of crazy moves that may or may not work outside of our own grappling circles or the UFC videogames, I guess Eddie Bravo made his name doing the exact same crazy stuff we're doing. Personally though I would at least have a little more self-respect than to name one of my moves the "Papper Castle," but then again if you tap some guy out with it, you can make fun of him by saying that he got tapped with "Insert Lame Name Here."

Okay fine, point made, other people’s opinions aren’t so important. Call the move whatever you want, but if you’re changing the name of the Kimura I’m changing the name of the Rear-Naked Choke to "Mata Leon" like Renzo Gracie calls it!

Update: OH GOD THIS IS NOT FAIR. Google sucks, in fact that is my next blog. Blame Google.

"Kimura" "The Kimura" "Kimura Shoulder Lock" "Kimura BJJ"

................................... "Ude Garami"

DOH!!

Do Terrorists Think We Will Join Them?

2006-09-29T22:51:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Calling President Bush "the murderer and spiller of Muslim blood," al Qaeda's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a videotape Friday accusing the U.S. president of being a "deceitful charlatan" who has lied to the American people.

I’m sure many people, including Americans, can think of a few things to call President Bush, but “deceitful charlatan” coming from a Muslim Cleric? I think that’s just a little bit silly.

Why is al Qaeda now speaking to the American public? Are they trying to say that Bush lied to them about the fact that al Qaeda is killing innocent people and slaughtering their own civilization? In Iraq, soldiers aren’t being targeted anymore, civilians are! Terrorists are holding their own children at gunpoint to try and get the American’s to back down, and they say our president lied?

Or are they speaking to their own people and trying to say that Terrorism is the better choice over Democracy by trying to make us look more evil than they are? I’m not sure what is going on, but so far all they’ve been doing is calling our government names and asking Allah to throw lightning bolts at us, and apparently when Allah doesn’t, they do it themselves.

But by vehemently pointing out things about our current government that Democrats and Republicans say about each other to the American people every day, my question is are they trying to do more than make our government look bad?

Are they actually trying to turn us against each other? Do they really think we will join them?

On the tape, al-Zawahiri calls the leader of the Roman Catholic Church an "impostor" whose religion "is made of myths, like the Trinity, crucifixion, sacrifice and the original sin."

Okay, so is theirs! I really don’t understand, right here they’re either condemning their own religion or encouraging atheism (??). Islam and Catholicism are the same religion with different prophets, and each one has its share of supposed “myths.” Trinity, crucifixion and the original sin? Try the Holy City, polygamy, and suicide! I really don’t understand where these Terrorists are going with this whole “my religion has a bigger penis than yours,” but it’s gotten old.

I really don’t understand why the Muslims think they are being oppressed? Is it really because we took Israel from Palestine? Even if we did give it back to them (which we never will because it never belonged to them), would it stop the violence? Would it make the Mujahadeen go back to their homes and cease to exist? Would rioting and suicide bombings stop and would Muslims simply go about their business and leave the West alone?

Sadly I don’t think so. I was wrong, this war isn’t about Israel, or oil, or imperialism, this war could probably be the most justified war in the history of civilization. This war truly is about freedom, and not just some other poor ransacked country’s freedom…this is about our freedom. Our Freedom. Mohamed said kill all infidels, convert all non-believers.

If we pulled all our advertising from Muslim countries, withdrew our support for Israel, let the Arabs have their blood, and never interfered with another Jihad ever again, the Middle East would still come after us. They would still crash airplanes into our towers and decapitate our journalists and burn our flag because they want every school in America to be a Madrasah, every church to be a Mosque, and every store to close 5 times a day and every woman and female child to be veiled, banned from public education, and stoned to death for showing their ankles. This war is about control and oppression, but who is really being oppressed?

Let’s stand behind our soldiers and hope we make it out of this one, because I’m starting to think that this war is a heck of a lot more dire than our media is telling us it is.

Allah be merciful and God help us all.

Where Is The Love?

2006-09-21T03:03:00.000-07:00

"The young and depressed often don`t get the talk therapy they deserve and may be getting medication they don`t need for a range of reasons, specialists say."
-Depressed Youth Shortchanged

"Talk Therapy?" They don't need talk therapy, they need love, stupid!

It seems as if today teenage depression has become like sticks and stones, the two terms go hand in hand. And yet despite the phenomenon of young people hurting and taking their lives being given epidemic status, the worlds leading researchers and experts have come up with only one viable solution.

Pills.

Lots of different types of pills for lots of different "patients." Different creative therapies to relieve the symptoms of distress. Parents and friends give into the lull of supposed "experts" and send their children off to strangers who "know better than they would as to what to do." Depression has afterall been dubbed a chemical imbalance in the brain, and controlling the flow of those chemicals would no doubt alieviate the pain of the person in suffering. God forbid the chemicals actually be triggered by negative thoughts and feelings, which are triggered by real life experiences.

"Well all the reserch points to physiological imbalances in the brains hormonal system that bring about negative feelings as a result of the chemical imbalances, and controlling the flow of chemicals has yeilded results in controling the patient's depression," say leading experts.

ohmygodyouranidiot!!!

Supposedly the onslaught of puberty and adolesence brings about an unavoidable bout of depression that every teenager must experience as a right of passage. "Every teenager feels this way," say mentors and teachers...whoa, depressing in and of itself! And while young people cry for love and support, authority figures stand back and take it as common-place. They all go through it and they all live without anyone stepping in. They grow out of it.

Unfortunately, no. Not all simply out-grow it and certainly not all even survive it. In 2020, suicide will be the 2nd leading cause of death in this country next to heart-disease. It is already the leading cause of death world-wide among people 15-24. While it's true that teenagers do experience certain hormonal changes that make them more suseptable to moody spells and irrational decisions, it's also true that teenager's make up only about 1.7% of the figures for people suffering with depression. (NIHM)

Studies show that over 60 million Americans suffer from depression, and only about 1 million of those are people under 18. This figure is skewed though because most young people who suffer with depression slip under the wire and are never diagnosed. 60 million American adults suffer with depression, and the figures only rise each year despite numerous new drugs available on the market. Studies also show a 70% increase since 1996 of people over 18 who report that they have no close friends.

My dad always tells me that a person is lucky if they die having one true friend. Unfortunately, I'm finding that to be true. The most common reason for people developing depression is because of peer relationship issues. Being alone or ostracized more often than not leads to suicidal thoughts and depression.

It doesn't take fancy therapies or dangerous medications to solve depressed moods, all it takes is love. Love from friends who put their arm around you and support from mentors who guide you in the right direction. Unfortunately, in today's age, a good friend doesn't dump their issues on their friends and mentors are driven away legally seeing as many mentorships are abused. Most adults simply have their hands tied and most friends aren't really friends at all. The result is the harsh reality that the depressed person is all alone with a gun to their head. The responsibility is placed on the family to handle their depressed members, however it is often the family that is the cause. Most adults simply don't want to deal with the commitment a suicidal teenager demands, and most people hold the attitude that they made it through adolesence, everyone else will too. Often times amid lectures and scolding and endless reasoning, all it usually takes is a hug to bring a lost young person out of their dark place. No one hugs anymore.

America's youth is crying for help and no one is helping for fear of being stigmatized. Love is a weird concept to Americans for some reason, and love of a teenager is often concidered perverted before it is concidered sacred. The result is an entire generation left cold and unloved, and dead.

Rest In Peace Stephen Loafing.

Crikey Mate! The Crocodile Hunter is Gone!

2006-09-08T00:20:00.000-07:00

Steve Irwin, internationally renowned as Discover Channel’s The Crocodile Hunter, died Tuesday from being stung in the heart by a poisonous stingray. He was filming a series for Discovery’s Animal Planet titled “The Most Dangerous” when he accidentally came over the top of a stingray buried in the sand and was attacked as a result of the ray’s defense instincts. The stinger plunged up through his zyphoid process, where the diaphragm meets the breast bone, and pierced his heart. In a last futile effort, Steve was caught on tape wrenching the stinger out of his chest, but was paralyzed and possibly died almost instantly, leaving behind a wife, two young children who will grow up without a father, and the animals he cared for at Australia’s Zoo in Queensland.

“Being around nature is what I love,” said Steve in a TV interview a year ago, “it’s what these hands were born and bred to do.”

His energetic and passionate love of nature and wildlife gained him international celebrity status. He embodied what Aussies call the “True Blue,” and even though people in other countries couldn’t name the Prime Minister of Australia, they could name Steve Irwin. He did it all, he wrestled croc’s, handled poisonous snakes, dived in the most dangerous waters of the Great Barrier Reef, rehabilitated many animals (including a baby kangaroo), and educated a generation about the importance of environmental awareness.

My most memorable episode of The Crocodile Hunter series was where his dog, Suie, jumped out of their dingy (boat) to fight a wild boar and Steve had to jump out after them and separate them. So here’s this skinny guy in khaki shorts standing on a slippery slope of a croc infested river with a pit bull in one hand and a wild boar in the other! Crikey what a tough bloke!

Steve was many people’s hero, including my own. I remember watching his shows as a kid living in the San Gabriel Mountains. He had an amazing way with animals, much like my own interest in nature. I would go around picking up wild snakes and tracking actual wild coyotes through the forest and bringing home all varieties of injured animals (much to my poor mother’s dismay). I caught a wild burrowing rat once and was bitten to the bone, I remember my mother having to sit in the lobby with me all afternoon for a rabies shot, and the next day I was hand-feeding raccoons (which is disturbing nature in and of itself, I was 8). My dad will tell the story of how I chased a grizzly bear (usually it’s the bear chasing the person), and as recently as this month I rescued a seagull with a broken wing from the pool that I work at…I guess some things never change. Today, I am a biology major studying to be a video documentarian for National Geographic and make a career out of working with animals. I pursue this ambition that I decided I wanted to pursue at 11 years old because of the inspiration of Steve Irwin, and I’ll never forget that my enthusiasm started with him. I would not be pursuing it today if it weren’t for people like Steve who showed the world that our planet and the other things we share it with are not just “backburner issues.” I feel like I’ve lost my hero, and the world mourns with me.

Australia is talking about declaring his birthday a National Holiday. People from Guam to Albania have said they will celebrate that holiday, and my little brother and sister and I are no exception!

The fans will miss you Steve-O and the Croc’s will never forget you!

Seniors Get Sucked into the Community College Trap

2006-08-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

It’s so easy, and not to mention CHEAPER! Students can slack off all through high school without having to worry about applying to college because they can just go strait to community college and transfer to a bigger University. It is easy, effective, and saves students from a lifetime of debt in unnecessary student loans. I have a secret…it’s a trap!

I fell into the community-college-first trap. My freshman year of High School, I had intended to go strait to UCLA out of high school and get strait A’s and do so well. I was in the Honors Program and on my way to becoming an AP student by my senior year. I had confidence, drive, determination, I would have developed good study skills and healthy relationships with peers.

But then my parents heard about the idea of going to Community College first. Students could go to Community College to get their first 2 years of General Education Requirements out of the way for one one-hundredth of the cost of University, and then students could transfer to whichever University they so chose. It almost sounds like common sense not to take this route, I mean who would want to pay that much just to take the same things they could take closer to home, and at that much of a bargain.

The thing about bargains is that they suck. My parents started heavily discouraging me from attending University out of high school, and said I would be “smarter” if I didn’t go to University first. I wanted to be smart, so I allowed myself to be brainwashed into thinking that this was just the better option, and AP students were stupid for not taking that route. However, all of the sudden High School just wasn’t important, since I would be able to take all the classes at Community College anyway…what was the point?

I lost motivation. High School isn’t hard, but it’s an awful lot of work. If you don’t like the work you’re doing, and you can’t see a reason to continue doing it, you start to lapse. It wasn't like I wasn't a hard worker or a very dedicated person, it's just that taking away the relevancy of my hard work made it that much harder. High School just wasn’t necessary, in Community College I would knuckle down and really get the job done because then it would matter…high school just doesn’t matter.

When I found out you don’t even need a diploma to go to Community College, things got even worse. I started not being able to even see a reason to go to high school at all. Just going felt pointless, and the fact that by junior year no one wants to be there made just going to school a phenomenal drain. There was just no point. There was just no point in making myself go through this. The human mind and body can go through tremendous things, if there is a reason for it. My reasons for going to high school had been taken from me.

By the time I reached senior year, the pointlessness became overwhelming, and I dropped out. There were many other problems that made it so that I physically just couldn’t go back to that campus, but I think the main thing is that I didn’t have any drive to go back. I just didn’t have the energy to expend on something that I’d been taught to think wasn’t necessary anyway. My famous “If I would have known” is that if I would have know that it would be this way, I would have knuckled down first chance I had.

Now that I am in Community College, I have no energy left. My emotions are spent because I’m so used to being a strait-F student with poor attendance that getting a B- is a great accomplishment for me. Changing that has taken such an emotional toll that University just doesn’t even seem that important anymore. I might never get there. It hurts me to write this down…but I might not even get through Community College. Its lack of discipline, lack of energy, lack of motivation, and learned helplessness that have made a once potential college-bound student into a struggling student.

Seniors. Don’t make my mistake! Go strait to a 4 year and apply for as many Cal Grants as you are eligible for along with whatever scholarships you can gain. In some very large Ivy League Colleges like Berkeley I believe, if you get accepted to their school from a disadvantaged area like LA Unified, and you cannot afford the cost, the University will pay for your education. Plus you can take community college classes concurrently with your University classes to get your general ed out of the way for half the price anyway (that’s what most University students do). Even if you can’t get that much financial aid, get jobs, get 2 full times, work very hard and get those 4 years OVER WITH!

There are also some of the larger Ivy Leagues that don't accept ANY transfers. Harvard and Oxford being some of the most sought after Universities for gifted minds accept less than 1% of transfer students into their student population (the ironic thing being that many of the most gifted minds usually don't do well in High School). Forein Universities like The University of Heidelburg in Germany don't accept Community College kids, why would they? They have their own population to educate.

Don't forget about West Point or Annapolis. Dreams of attending the most prestigious Military Academies in the world? 15% of the most gifted applicants get accepted, the competition is fierce. First one must maintain a 4.00gpa ALL FOUR YEARS of high school (including freshman year), stand out in an ROTC troop, spend all of your free time involved in community service and pretty much beat out 90% of all the best applicants who apply. Not to mention that applicants with Veterans in their families are given special concideration.

You might think "oh well I'm never going to go to one of those highly presigious institutions." How do you know though? Why shoot yourself in the foot before you get on the battlefield? Why limit yourself now to the things you think you may not be interested in when a lot is going to change in your life, and you may regret not going for something more when you had the chance? Maybe you think you aren't good enough? Well you'll never know unless you apply, and you can't apply unless you meet their minimum requirements.

However, if you choose not to take my advice and pursue the community college route anyway, DO NOT take classes in high school. Many high school students take community college classes thinking they are getting a head start on their education. They are actually digging themselves into a bigger hole. If you’re a brainy freshman who placed into the 100 level College English Class your first try, you’re still no better than the 40 year old returning student who started at English 20 Basic Writing. Classes taken in high school cannot be taken for Scholars Honors at the College Level, therefore when you get to JC and are ready to transfer, all of those classes you hit it up with real college students with are only regular ed classes…you didn’t take them for honors, and your transcript is not going to show that you took them while you were still in High School. Tough break kiddo.

Don’t do it guys. 10% of high school students actually graduate, 10% of those go to college, where only 10% of seniors will graduate with a degree. The odds are stacked against you whatever way you look at it. Don’t try to be smart and take a bunch of shortcuts, just follow the program, stick with what works, and make it easier on yourself! The price of your success should be irrelevant. Don’t let the dreams on the sale rack deter you from true success.

Where Was Dad?

2006-07-29T01:19:00.000-07:00

For centuries, eons, generations and possibly even since the beginning of time, the general model of what would become a Homo Sapien family is that the female stays home with the children while the male goes out and hunts (works). This was the way it has been since the beginning of history—history being the point at which the stories were written down.

This seemed to work too, didn’t it? Equal jobs, equal partnership, neither job harder than the other (but in some cases less fulfilling), and the job got done. The kids grew up with morals, the food was put on the table, the household belonged to the woman, and everything worked out fine…

Actually, no, it didn’t.

Let me tell you why this doesn’t work today, and why it worked “way back when.” In fact today, this is probably the worse economic system that we as a society can chose to hang on to. We’ve pretty much mostly gotten away from it (at least my generation sorta has), but isn’t it ironic how America usually chooses to hold on to the most detrimental traditions?

This system of home economics worked so well “way back when” because at that time in history, father’s were for the most part just not involved in their children’s lives. In fact, in the 17-18^th century, it was common for children to rarely see their father or meet him for the first time in their teenage years. The father would show up to bestow his blessing in Creole society and then return to his practice. This was “way back when.” As recent as the 50’s, this philosophy still held root. Father’s were involved in their children’s lives but just not really. Father’s places just weren’t with the children.

However, now we have this syndrome that has been popping up in Modern America that is blind to social, economic, and gender status. It’s called the “I’m Angry at my Father” syndrome, and it is most common among teenagers and young-adults. It radiates in the rock and rap music that young ears tend to listen too, and supposedly it is the music that is the cause of the syndrome...but someone had to write the music and where do you think they got the idea?

Now, a father figure (it doesn’t necessarily have to be male, just so long as it is strong) is necessary to serve as a role model. Families lacking a father often produce delinquent youths. A father in today’s society acts as enforcer of the rules, while mother acts as the maker of the rules.

Father’s need to be there for their children today. Little Girl’s need daddies to serve as a model for what kind of men they want in their lives, just as little boys need mothers for the same reasons. Both need to have two strong parents to model themselves after, and if one is more frequently absent than the other, they are going to wonder where they are. Fatherless son’s are born under the mark of the outcast because they will never be able to learn the social skills that are essential to make friends, and fatherless daughters are cursed under the mark of a loner because they will not know what qualities to look for and to not look for in the people they surround themselves with. Children without a father grow up missing something and end up getting in trouble that could have been avoided by having a father there to give counsel. The kids know this, hence the “I’m Angry at My Father” syndrome.

Today, Mother’s and Father’s need to be equally involved in their children’s lives, or else the child will grow up asking “where’s my father?” One parent can’t be completely involved with the child while another parent be completely uninvolved, it must go both ways now. It is the only way to raise a healthy, productive young person. To both be there for them.

I don’t care if YOUR FATHER was never there for you, I don’t care how many reasons you have that can justify it. There is NO excuse or reason, cultural or economical, not to be there for your child. Both Parents, if you cannot be there for your child, you should not have had it. There is no excuse for why the child should have to have only one parent in their life and wonder where the other one was when they were in need of guidance. Half a family equals half of the problem-solving skills and good advice.

Like Cat Stevens put it, “There were Planes to Catch, and Bills to Pay, but he learned to walk while I was away…and as he grew, he said I’m gonna be like you.” No child should have to walk while you’re away.

My mom quit working so that she could stay home and “raise me.” My dad went to work full time as a painter. All I know about my dad to this day was that he doesn’t know how to be a Dad because he never had one, and I didn’t start talking with my dad until I was 17. Now I’m a little lost in my life and at the same point my father was lost at in his life, but there was no way to keep history from repeating itself, because by just talking to me he couldn’t teach me the lessons that he learned from experience, and now I only have half as much confidence as I should have because I only really ever had half a family and one parent, and she was drunk half the time I was a kid. When parents aren't around to show their good sides to the kids, the only things the kids inherit from their parents are their parents bad traits which they will never be able to control because it is part of them. Did I get my parents good qualities? Hell no. I got my Dad's temper and my Mother's self-esteem...which has brought me nothing but failure. And I cannot say that I don't know why.

At least my dad didn’t up and leave like a lot of kids parents did, but those kids whose parents did leave them for real that I know have scars on their hearts that don’t heal. I know my dad grew up in a concentration camp and saw his family shot and came to America in the 60’s gang lifestyle with nothing, I know he doesn’t know how a good father is really supposed to be…But that shouldn't be an excuse. There’s no reason to not be able to be there for your kid. There is no excuse. There is no justification and no reason a child should have to grow up without a father. None whatsoever.

The question is: how is suffering the pain of not having a parent be there at all because he left different from the pain suffered from not having a parent be there because he was working? Either way, he’s not there, and it seems as if “he doesn’t love me enough to have time for me.” And parents wonder why their kids disappoint them, because they were NEVER THERE FOR THEM.

And we wonder why the majority of Americans are depressed and obese, and why the crime rate is 10 times as high as it is in other developed countries. We wonder why less civilized, "traditional" countries have such massive poverty problems and are at the top of the Third World list. No, I'm not blaming all of this on Dad...well maybe I am, just a little.

Now standing in the shoes of my father and not knowing what to do or how I’m supposed to wear them in my life, I feel for the rest of my generation, and for the fact that the old ways need to hurry up and die. I find myself looking for hero’s in my life, for people to take the place of a father who was never really there because he didn’t know how, so that I can know what it feels like to be protected and built up, so that I can know what it feels like to have someone’s strong arm hold me up when I’m weak and stumble, my mom is just not strong enough alone. But these hero's never stay long because friends are like soap that slips through your hands if you try too hard, and though my mind is desperate for teachings, my heart can’t take anymore fake father and older brother-figures. Through and through, I join the choir, and can’t help but asking the age-old question…

Where was my Dad!?!?!?!?

For Those of You Guys Who Have Lost A BGF (best girl friend)...

2006-07-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

…Here’s a bit of girl code for you.

I’m going to dispel a common myth about girls. If the goddesses of femininity strike me dead then so be it because girls can’t keep secrets (but that’s not the myth I’m dispelling).

When you and your BGF are not speaking, usually it’s not for the reasons you think it is. If she was the one that stopped speaking to you first, then yeah it probably is for the reason’s you think it is, but if you’re the one that initiated it, then you probably have it all wrong, and vise versa.

First let me start off by describing the few types of girls. The most widely publicized type of girl is the “popular girl,” the girl who has great self-esteem and carries herself with an air of confidence, with a radiant smile that attracts many friends. This type of girl is associated with bitchiness and sometimes has a tendency to be stuck up and controlling, so it is assumed that if you make one mistake with these girls they kick you out of their lives and never speak to you again and hold their head above you and avert their gaze from you to shame.

Well I have news for all you guys…THESE GIRLS ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN! I mean, c’mon have some common sense. NO GIRL before the age of 30 has “great self-esteem,” in fact no girl before the age of 20 has ANY self-esteem for that matter. Self-esteem is forbidden for girls, it makes them look like “bitches” who are stuck up and spoiled. The slightest bit of self esteem for the girl in pursuit of popularity makes them seem like they think they are better than the majority, and then the majority won’t hang around them because they are so obviously not.

The typical girl (who has any sort of intellegence) is one who is sorta shy, subconscious of a few things about herself, helps people out when they need it but this depends on the girl, has had an eating disorder at one point in her life, is (believe it or not) nice, is unbelievably insecure around her “friends,” and always assumes she is wrong before assuming she is right. It doesn’t really matter what type of girl it is, punk or preppy, girly or tom-boy, this general model is pretty universal.

Now if you are lucky enough to have a tendency to attract the mean, stupid, bitchy types of females, you're probably focused on the wrong qualities. I'm saying that most girls with ambitions in life, who have goals and inteligent plans, usually follow the above model of personality. Seek out females with dreams who say things like "I want to write for National Geographic," or "I want to design clothes for Calvin Klein," or "I want to own my own business" and are actually working toward these goals. Those types of girls I've noticed tend to be more logical and understanding of the world and of you.

Let’s talk about assuming error very quickly. Ever notice how when girls think they are right about something, there is no doubt in their mind that they are right? This is because they’ve already been down the “what if I’m wrong,” train of thought. The first thing they do, when it’s not a snap-decision confrontation and if they value the friendship, is damage control. “What did I do wrong?” as opposed to “what can I do to fix it?” (that is how guys deal with things). They think the situation through and if they come to the conclusion that they were really wrong, they’ll call you back and cry and apologize. BUT if they come to the conclusion that YOU were wrong, you’re pretty fucked. Ironically the most important factor in this decision making process is incidentally the girl’s decision making skills and logic…if the girl’s logic is flawed (which it often is when thinking in terms of friends of the opposite gender), that’s your problem not hers.

So the original point, when you and a female friend are not speaking, what sort of messages do you think you are sending to each other? To be honest it doesn’t really matter that you’ve known each other your entire lives (although it sure helps), you really have no idea what is going on inside her head, and she—despite all her logic and intelligence—is only guessing at what is going on in yours.

So you guys got into a fight, let’s just say you were both wrong, and deep down you know you were both wrong…however you were both right and justified in being angry at the other person. Sticky situation, sound familiar? I’m sure many have been between this rock and a hard place before. What it was about doesn’t really matter, all that matters is that is severely damaged the friendship, and you two aren’t exactly speaking.

I am now going to dispel the myth of the angry girl because it is causing me so much heartache. Girls hold grudges, this is true, but girls also love openly and endlessly. They are going to love you 100 times more as a friend than you, as a stereotypical masculine model of a male, are going to be able to love her as a friend without developing feelings for her. Girls can do this, it’s a social skill. So even if they are so mad at you that they just want to kill you, believe it or not, they still love you and they would still jump into a fight for you or stick up for you.

The psychology behind a girl’s reluctance to speak to you is actually very much tied into her self esteem. If she is a person who has had all the support in the world throughout her life and has had a good childhood with her share of bad times, then she might handle the situation pretty well and less emotionally. However, like I have pointed out, most girls have been hurt beyond measure throughout their lives and have at least one horror story that shapes who they become as people.

It's out of Pride that guys will refrain from speaking to you. Ego and machoism will be the reasons that guy’s stop speaking and leave it that way, but these things don’t exist with girls. Ego and pride imply self-esteem, which is just lower than most guys even if it’s high, and not to mention most girls think ego and pride are stupid reasons to ruin a friendship. They don’t place as much emphasis on it as guys do. When girls stop speaking, believe it or not it’s because they think YOU don’t want to talk to them.

Yes, I’m being completely honest, the emotional “he hurt me so I don’t want to talk to him” lasts a week or two tops, after that, the only reason she is not speaking to you is because you are not speaking to her. In fact, a lot of times it actually hurts her that she is not speaking to you, and the more you ignore her, the farther away she will take herself from you, even if all she wants is to be close to you.

I know it seems like she doesn’t care, and that she is still mad and she might even act like it or say so if you do try to confront her. But please, believe me its all skin deep, and under the surface of her easily scarred intuition, she still loves you more than she loves herself. C’mon guys, its not worth the complacency and confusion to let things lie in the ground. Whatever happened between you two happened a million years ago and a million miles away, and now all that’s there is the lack of her dumb jokes and cocky demeanor, which you know you really miss even though it got annoying at times. She’s not mean enough to have wanted to hurt you on purpose; she just doesn’t have it in her.

Accept that she never meant to hurt you and would never do it on purpose and FREAKING GO SAY HI TO HER DAMMIT!

Sex Sells

2006-06-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed a seemingly reoccurring theme in the music and entertainment industry? It might just be me, but it seems like all music nowadays, no matter what genre, is either about sex/love, drugs, making money, or teenage angst. Those seem to be the only themes in songs that are played on major radio stations. Some genres of music seem to be composed entirely of nothing but modern-day serenade tunes. Even though the beat and tone of the music might be really nice, the words are just not relatable to someone like me. It gets old. It gets me frustrated looking for good music on the radio and wondering if life to the world is nothing more than a huge mating ritual.

I’m an independent-minded young person. A lot of America is made up of independent-minded young people who are also very intelligent. Music is supposed to be something you can relate to. The type of music I can relate to is music about dreaming, about setting goals, about overcoming insurmountable obstacles, and about being strong and making a change. The “rally to the cause” music attracts me in many ways…but the only kind of music I hear like that on the major stations is “Spiritual.” I’m a fan of Ani Defranco and Janet Jackson, but we don’t hear a lot of them on the radio anymore unless they release a hit about shaking some part of the human anatomy. I like to hear music about the institution. I like to hear music that talks about the real world in bigger terms, bigger than “you and me baby.” I like music with something to say.

But it seems like all ANY music on KIISFM or KGGI or KROQ has to say is “I love you”/“I want to fuck you,” “I want to kill you,” “I want to smoke some weed,” “I’m richer than you,” “I want to kill my father for never being there.” I mean the melody is very attractive and makes me want to listen to the song and maybe even like it, but when I actually listen to the words of the song, it’s just not the same. It’s actually very annoying at times. Like for instance, I like the Goo Goo Dolls, but I have recently realized that every single one of their songs is somehow about a relationship and relationship issues. IT SUCKS!

Sometimes I will even see a group like Dashboard Confessionals compose a very nice, relatable song that can really be applied to anything the listener wants, but when they make a music video on it, guess what it’s about—a girl. I mean c’mon, there’s gotta be more to life!

I have to admit, I’m a fan of Linkin Park. I love every single song on every single one of their albums, I can relate to all of their music so perfectly. I did point out that I like music I can relate to, but why is Linkin Park’s music so relatable and enjoyable to me? It’s because I’m an angstful teenager and they write angstful teenage music. They write ONLY angstful teen music, falling under the “I hate my father” category.

The song “Soul Meets Body” by Deathcab for Cutie or artists like Keane and Jet, the type of Alternative Ballad Rock music about struggles of identity and finding your place in the world, that’s the type of music I want to hear more of, but it seems like the only people who sing songs like that are either from other countries or one-hit wonders. Most of the artists are huge in countries like the UK and the European Union, could this just be an American thing? Another one of those “oh those dumb arrogant American’s” things?

Well actually, it might just be. My older sister is in the film industry. Her job is coming up with ideas for shows and getting networks to buy them so she can produce them. After 10 years in the industry, her claim to fame is hardly “Survivor.” “Its like you think that you’re going to go in with all these great new ideas that haven’t been done before and revolutionize the industry,” says she, “but the truth is that no one will be willing to invest in an idea that hasn’t been proven reliable in the past and has a guaranteed high selling rate. Networks just don’t want to take chances, they’ll stick with something that’s safe and always worked and be boring than go out on a limb.”

Ahhh, so it’s not actually that sex is the only thing the world cares about…it’s just the only thing that is a safe and reliable seller every time. I mean, when VHS and VCD tapes were released, VCD was a far superior model to VHS, but the only reason VHS became popular in America was because all of the porn movies were shot in VHS. Reading even further into it, 10% of high school students in this country actually graduate, and only 10% of those go onto college, where only 10% will earn a degree. It’s a failure on the part of both sides that the majority of the country is completely stupid…I mean uneducated, and so maybe their lives really are one big mating ritual, and since they are the most prevalent demographic, what they want is what we all get.

So there actually is more to life than what the media and radio networks portray, it’s just that the opinion guaranteed to rack in the most revenue is the “Sex Sells” opinion, which the networks don’t seem to realize has a dramatic effect on society. It’s a vicious circle. We tell the media what we want to see, the media plays it, and it influences what we want to see in the future. I’m not hyper religious or anything, but I think it’s leading to a decline in our country’s morals. Studies have shown that a 25% increase from 20 years ago of Americans say they have no close friends or companions with which to share personal matters with. America is getting lonelier, Depression is on the rise, the Divorce rate is up, less people are experiencing friendship and true companionship…mainly I think because human interaction has become about sex, at least that’s the message that the media is hard lining into our culture.

I’m just fed up, I need to hear more independent music, and I shouldn’t have to pay a whole bunch for hi-def radio to pick up pirate radio stations for it.

Let's Hear It For The Boys!

2006-06-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- The American Civil Liberties Union wants Michigan's governing body for high school athletics to reconsider a policy keeping boys out of the postseason tournament for competitive cheerleading.

In Michigan, boys can only compete on girls cheerleading teams if the school that they are facing agrees to it!

This is just in my humble opinion, but that sounds an awful lot like a certain female wrestler not getting a match because the catholic school being faced did not allow its wrestlers to wrestle girls.

Apparently the case is that in Michigan, boys on "girls teams" cannot attend tournaments that aren’t sanctioned by the high school. The way athletics works in most of the country is that there are two venues for sports, one scholastic (meaning school-sponsored for student-athletes) and another open-invitational (meaning independent association sponsored for any athlete). In wrestling, there are high school dual and invitational meets that are CIF sponsored through the high schools, and then there are Local Association Events (Freestyle Tournaments) that aren’t through the schools, but have divisions for high school and junior athletes. These are the tournaments you go to if you’re trying to go to the Olympics, they’re not school sanctioned at all, but school-aged athletes are highly encouraged to go to them for the experience and to get better at their sport. From my experience, these tournaments are crucial for improvement in wrestling. Other sports, including gymnastics, cheerleading, judo, swimming, track and field etc, have their own associations like FILA (wrestling) and USASwim which are state sanctioned and hold their own meets.

Under a decade-old policy in Michigan, boys cannot compete in local association and non-scholastic sports venues with girls on girl’s teams during the off-season. They can compete through their school’s during the sport’s season, but only if the other school doesn’t have some sort of an aversion to it (!!).

Firstly, this is incredibly unfair because it limits the amount of training a person receives and how good an athlete gets in his or her chosen sport based on gender. Some people may have an aversion or make fun of male cheerleaders, but seeing them in person at the National or College level, they are amazing! They have to bench 135lbs with one arm while standing on one leg and then catch it as it is thrown up and falling! I’m pretty tough, but I don’t know if I could do that. The same goes for male dancers and especially male gymnasts (who tend to be some of the most conditioned athletes in the world). These are athletes, many of which are heterosexual and take their sport very seriously. Almost every Division 1 college in the country recruits men for their cheerleading and dance teams, the competition is fierce. For some athletes, it means a college education. Actually physically limiting the amount of time an athlete can put into their chosen sport based on something they can’t control and the opinions of religious bigots who don’t want their girls to even be in the same room with other guys is a shame on our society.

We don’t have to make huge leaps and bounds and rewrite title 9 again, but we do need to be more accepting as a society. Such conservativism hurts others when you try to restrict them from going down a path you or someone else besides them does not want them to go down. It’s killing our society because it’s bringing the dreamers down, and America was originally a place for people with dreams to come and live. Ambition and individualism built this nation and reactionary fundamentalism is killing it. And yes, I do have the nerve to call Michigan’s policy reactionary, mainly because Michigan is not the only place it is happening.

In Texas, girls cannot wrestle on any scholastic team with boys and cannot compete in the local association freestyle events after the age of 13 under penalty of law. In Arizona, if a boy gets paired with a girl at a State level competition, the boy must forfeit his match and any dreams of becoming a state champion. There is virtually no such animal as male synchronized swimming, and there is no men’s scholastic gymnastics division in Southern California.

What gives people?! I don’t care if you think girls shouldn’t wrestle and boys shouldn’t dance, firstly unless you are a wrestler or a dancer you don’t have the right to tell any of us what to do, and secondly you know we are going to do it anyway so making it harder for us is only going to get us more press when we succeed! So thanks for the attention I guess!

I personally think Male Cheerleaders are hot. I’m all for it!

I Know Why Men Don't Support Women

2006-06-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

Men, I understand why you don’t support women, really I do, and I can't say I blame you. I understand exactly why the majority of men do not want to see women in the boy scouts, in business, in the priesthood, in the Fire Academy, in the military. I know you try to use rational reasons, citing “the safety and sanctity of the institution” as your main argument. But don’t worry, I know its all BS, I know you’re just frontin’. I don't want to sound presumptious when I say this (well maybe I do), but I know exactly what you’re thinking. A lot of men aren’t like this, but generally those within these institutions reek of it.

What would the world say if I said sex had nothing to do with it? I’ll bet they’d think I’m ridiculous. Men can’t be in the same room with a woman without having some sort of 5 second fantasy about her right? I don't know about that, but I know that’s not the reason men viciously defend the remaining all-male institutions against females. I'm not a guy, but after being completely emersed in guy code for the past few years of my life, I think I have a general idea of how things work. My best friends are guys, and no I'm not violating rule #21 of the Code which states "Never talk about Guy Code." (hehehe)

The real underlying reason for men’s non-acceptance of women is the Camaraderie. The “boys will be boys” allowance. The machoism. The Esprit de Corps. The right to the conversation topics that happen behind closed wrestling room doors or inside the men’s locker room, the stuff that other guys would understand from experience and not fault other men for. Not that this isn't a good reason, cameraderie is the stuff that builds friendships. Guys talk with other guys about stuff that makes them seem (gasp) not so tough and do things that other girls would think is absolutely disgusting and it's not like the guys care about impressing the sole female who is present, they're concerned about Little Miss going and telling all of her other girlfriends and never getting a date ever again. It’s also a way for guys to let other guys know that they trust them. Guys want the camaraderie that exists solely in all-male settings and will fight viciously for it. They want to make friends and they think that a woman present will hinder their ability to make friends.

Basically, the image that comes to mind when guys hear the word “girl” is of, well…a girl! Short, long hair, fat or thin but not muscular in the least, and boobs. It just messes everything up. I somewhat agree too. When I was grappling down at one of the gyms I used to train at, the Sensei made me grapple his girlfriend who was a black belt in Jeet Kun Do. But it didn’t matter how skilled she was, she was wearing the tight workout clothes that society says girls have to wear, and she had big boobs. I couldn’t work in her guard because putting my hand across her chest (even though I was another female) was just plain annoying! I wanted to grapple, not avoid her chest! And I didn’t just want to put my hand there either because…jesus I just didn’t want to! Image how a guy must feel, he comes to fight practice to fight, he’s got a girlfriend at home for that other stuff!

So I understand, and I can’t say I blame men for it. I wanted the same thing. I wanted the all-male atmosphere and the crassness and toughness of it all. The hard-core blood, sweat, but no tears attitude, everything, I wanted it. I got it too by casting off everything feminine about myself, and most male environments just simply made an exception for me. But I’m one in a million. There aren’t too many girls who revolt against femininity and manage to stay heterosexual. Most girls think the things men say amongst each other are insulting and degrading…I think they’re funny because I’m not too fond of females myself and plus I know that they are not talking about me (or maybe they are, lol). Guys like how I can roll with crass humor, the boys on the swim team that I would hang out with just kinda asked if I minded if they checked out girls while I was there, I said nah and it was all good. Most girls will get angry at guys or somehow be insulted, or physically they will make the really macho program into a pansy program. Guys don’t want to deal with that. I wouldn’t either.

It’s not like men blame women for being the way they are either though. They don’t blame women for showing off their bodies or for being “girly” and perky, they like girls like that. But they have been taught that that is the default model for woman, and that's just not the kind of thing that belongs in a Special Forces Group. The other type of woman, the strong muscular type, is a default lesbian and in the above institutions those are just as bad and all need to die. So the hell with it, all women are either incapable or lesbians, so screw it all just keep them all out! Its not women’s choice whether they want to be the way they are, its obviously nature, so god forbid we ask them to change, we can’t ask them to do anything that’s not natural (note sarcasm).

What I deeply respect about guys is the honor that is shown among men in same-gender friendships. It's kinda hard to describe from being on the outside, but that's what I picture when I think about honor. Friendship amoung guys from what I've seen is serious, it's earned in tough situations that require aliances, and those who tough it out together take a silent oath to hold each other up. It's almost sacred. Female friendships just don't have that, and while it's sometime's present in coed friendships and groups, it's just not the same. Even though female friendships make up in closeness, the lack of of that earned-in-blood honor just isn't the same.

I might be a little off with all of this Guy Code business, I had to pick up the programming as I went, it wasn’t handed out to me like the other half of the population. But I do understand it’s about the camaraderie. The military places a great deal of emphasis on camaraderie, its not just making friends. I agree that the girly, feminine, tampon issues should be kept out of these institutions of strength and performance at all cost…

But I won’t bring any of those with me!!! Can’t you make just one exception?????

Iraq Defends Iranian Nuclear Program

2006-06-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iran has a right to develop nuclear technology and the international community should drop its demands that Tehran prove it's not trying to build a nuclear weapon, Iraq's foreign minister said Friday, May 26, 2006

WAIT A MINUTE!!!! Aren’t we fighting a war for them? Don’t we still have soldiers over there dieing for them?!?! Didn’t we spend billions of dollars to liberate them? Yet they turn around and defend the country that’s attempting to blow us up???

"Iran doesn't claim that they want to obtain a nuclear weapon or a nuclear bomb, so there is no need that we ask them for any guarantee now," Hoshyar Zebari said after meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki.

Oh Really?...

Then this high speed underwater nuclear-capable torpedo that they’ve developed (which is capable of destroying warships and submarines) is just an experiment in the interest of peace keeping right? What kind of crack-head peace keeping operation is that? Mutually Assured Destruction?

"We have agreement that we need to deal with this issue politically, peacefully and diplomatically," Zebari said. "We know that the wise Iranian administration will be able to resolve this issue."

The “WISE?” The WISE terrorist regime that claimed the Holocaust never happened and called for the destruction of Israel and America? WE FOUGHT A WAR FOR THIS COUNTRY AND THEY’RE TURNING AGAINST US! They’re going to support a country that is developing weapons against us, nuclear or not.

Iraq says that it supports Iran's right to peaceful use of nuclear power. Right, we really think a country that is the leading state-sponsors of terrorism and is incidentally building a nuclear-capable missile that takes out warships at the same time as the program is being developed, and just so happens to hate the West, is really going to use it for "peacefull" purposes. Iran and Hammas and Bin Laden, what's next? Is North Korea going to back them too?

This is ridiculous. First Afghanistan condemns a Muslim man to die after converting to Christianity, and now Iraq turns around and supports a terrorist regime aimed at destroying the Free World. What next? Where is Bin Laden?

I didn’t want to believe it and I wasn’t convinced before, but I’m convinced now…

This war is about oil. Not freedom, or peace. Oil.

ROYCE GRACIE LOST!!!!!!!!!

2006-05-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

hughes vs. gracie

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(I'm trying to upload the video, but for some reason Blogger keeps saying the tag isn't closed, I'll keep trying, but for right now, here's the website where you can see the fight.)

OH MY GOD! The Man, The Myth, The Legendary Royce Gracie lost yesterday in UFG 60 to Matt Hughes. OF ALL PEOPLE! I could understand Royce losing to Sakuraba in Pride since the Japanese fighters are of a very high quality, but to MATT HUGHES, the most cockey and hated fighter besides Tito Ortiz in all of UFC history!? Blasphamous!

Firstly I just don't know why Royce was sticking his left arm up around Hughes head like he was. I understand trying to hold his head down to avoid being punched, but you should at least have another arm tied up so that your opponent can't get both of his arms on one of yours to work a submission. Even I know to keep my arms in close in half-guard. If Royce could have gotten both of his legs around Hughes body, he could have pushed Hughes away with his hips and gotten out of the submission attempt, possibly even landing a submission himself. I just don't understand though, usually when Royce is in trouble, he starts hitting his opponent in one spot repetedly to make him uncomfortable and change position a little (this is called a "softening technique"), he just wasn't doing anything. He didn't even try to get out of the side-mount, he gave up his back possibly attemtping to go for some sort of throw, but failed miserably. I just didn't see Royce in that Octagon.

For those of you who are not fighters or Mixed Martial Arts fans, The Ultimate Fighting Championship is a No-Holds-Barred Cagefighting competition that until recently was PPV only. It was started to pit fighters of different styles against each other to determine which style was the ultimate martial art. Back in 1993, fighters from all styles came to represent...Karate, Boxing, Kung Fu, but amid all of these different styles, one style dominated them all. Brazilian Jiujitsu, a martial art that had never been heard of and had only recently been invented by a group of brothers in Brazil, dominated fighters who had lifetimes of study in their art, and a little 160lb guy named Royce Gracie defeated 10th degree black belts who outweighed him by almost double.

He fought in a gi, with a 4th degree black belt out of some godforsaken wild west ranch in some godforsaken part of the world. What Gracie brought to the world of Martial Arts was something that the world had never really thought of before...how to fight on the ground. Before The UFC, the assumption was that if you got knocked down or godforbid voluntarily went to the ground, you're dead! Gracie changed all of that and made Brazilian Jiu Jitsu the most sought after martial art, ending the rein of Mcdojo arts like Karate and Tae Kwon Do as legitimate streetfighting styles.

Soon, other arts emerged from the shadows of the third world. Wrestling, an overlooked sport that no one really ever concidered a martial art, and Muay Thai, a devestating kickboxing style that threw out the notions of form and kata replacing them with power and speed, both were found to be able to hang with the new generation of ground fighters that was emerging. Soon, Judo adapted to the nogi game and added its name to the list of devestating battle-tested arts.

Karate and Tae Kwon Do were not forgotten though. The Martial Arts now had a venue to evolve in, so they did just that. Karatekas studied wrestling to defend takedowns, and submissions to know what they looked like. Grapplers started knocking people out, the term Mixed Martial Artist was born. As existing arts adapted, other arts emerged from all parts of the world. Sambo, Shooto, Sumission Wrestling, French Savate, Vale Tudo and other arts took their turn in the UFC.

Today, The Ultimate Fighting Championship is no longer a ground to test style vs. style, but fighter vs. fighter, since "styles" have been integrated and the well rounded fighter is the fighter who is going to win. Finally allowed on the major cable networks, the UFC has reinvented Martial Arts as we know it, and it would not be anywhere without the works of the Gracie Family.

Royce Gracie, now 40 and coming out of retirement, took on UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Matt Hughes and pretty much got dominated. Hughes, a 175lb 32 year old wrestler beat Royce via referee stoppage in the first round. Royce is just past his prime. But the Hall of Famer Gracie still remains the Giant that he is. Every hero loses at least one, and it is not going to tarnish his image in the least. If it weren't for Royce, there would be no UFC.

If I were Hughes, I would have thrown that fight on purpose, now it doesn't matter that he beat Royce (who is 10 years past his prime), everyone just hates him more, but congratulations to Hughes for winning the fight, and props to Royce for not tapping ever in his entire career!

Catholics...Get Over It!

2006-05-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

What’s all this noise about The Da Vinci Code? Wow, no one made a big deal about Independence Day when it was released, even though it had to do with Area 51 and the end of the world as we know it. No one made a big fuss over National Treasure either, even though it’s exactly the SAME FREAKING MOVIE only with the bible instead of the Constitution! How about Tomb Raider, didn’t we already see this movie like 20 times?

What is this movie? Okay, from what I understand, it’s a couple of guys going on an Indiana Jones adventure to find the Ark, or the Grail, or some godforsaken artifact that’s just really important to have. Hey, maybe it’ll give immortal life and we can sell it at retail value!

What Da Vinci Code and a bunch of other predecessors and spawned writings claim is that the Holy Grail is actually the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene… Jesus’ wife. Wait…I know that religion! Polygamy!...I mean Mormonism! Oh I don’t know what I mean. I’m just kidding.

I haven’t read the book, but I did see the piece that Discovery Channel did on it. It’s actually all very plausible and I half believe it. I can believe that Jesus was a human being with a wife and children, after all it’s been proven that he had brothers and sisters, but what I don’t buy is all this “Holy Grail” mess.

The mess was supposedly about a cup. For centuries, people have been searching for a cup which honestly IMO disintegrated around 2000 years ago with the rest of the Tupperware at Jesus’ friend’s place where he had The Last Supper (they probably used it the next morning at breakfast, sheesh what do you think happened to it?).

Anyway, it was brought to the attention that “The Grail” might not be a cup, but a bloodline, a secret bloodline of Jesus entrusted to an organization of Knights to protect. Dude, Jesus had ninjas (ironically ninjas existed around the same time as Christ lol)!

A secret society called the Priory of Sion was supposed to protect the bloodline. A real organization? Right, that’s why the founder admitted to the staging of the TV interview and the administration of a hoax. All of these hoaxes have driven people insane running around the world drilling holes in ancient churches and ruining the really pretty floors to find a cup which disintegrated around the time that the Great Wall of China was built. I have an idea! If I wanted to hide the Holy Grail, I’d hide it in the most unlikely place…a Buddhist Temple. Or, if the Grail really does exist, we all know its buried deep within the impenetrable vaults of the Vatican where no outside eyes have ever set foot so that no one can prove that God doesn’t exist.

Jesus was not God. His real name wasn’t even “Jesus,” it was Joshua. If there is a bloodline, the descendants don’t have super powers, aren’t part of some secret holy clan, probably did not do anything worth while to change the world unless by some chance and were probably even wiped out in the Holocaust seeing as the bloodline was most likely Jewish, and I'm willing to bet money that at least someone in Jesus' extended family was gay. Anyone want to bid that Jesus was autistic (like most of the brilliant minds)? The Last Supper painting may or may not have Mary Magdalene sitting next to Jesus as opposed to St. Peter, the figure does look awfully feminine. Then again, so does Leonardo Da Vinci’s individual painting of St. Peter’s face because supposedly that was where Da Vinci’s interest lay (??). I’m pretty convinced myself that it is a girl, but you know, I really don’t care. It’s a beautiful painting and if it really was Mary Magdalene, then the only people it would really affect are feminist groups.

Basically, according to The Discovery Channel, the whole deal of a cup at The Last Supper being saved was was invented by some writer of the romantic era mid 15th century and later messed up by another author mid 17th centruy who mispelled "San Greal," meaning Holy Grail, as "Sang Real," meaning Holy Blood. Dammit Spellcheck!

Not to mention that the author stole the idea anyway. He’s being sued big time by four other authors whom he stole ideas from. My sister is going through a whole ordeal where someone stole her idea, why am I going to go support the author when he wasn’t even the author? I can spend my money better, he ain’t getting my $10.50.

Even though I really like Tom Hanks, I’ve already seen this movie so many other times. My recommendation, don’t see this movie, not because you’re a “good catholic,” but because it’s STUPID! A remake of Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones, and probably not even a good thriller. Go see Mission Impossible 3, that movie was awesome!!!!

United 93 Movie Came Too Soon

2006-05-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

United 93

I’m hesitating to see this movie. I’m undecided on whether I should see it at all. It feels too much like I’m buying the tragedy. Like I’m making it easier for backstabbing business to profit off other people’s suffering, including my own. I don’t know if I want to see this movie.

For those who don’t know. United Airlines Flight 93 was the fourth hijacked airplane that was attempting to crash into The White House. The passengers rose up and, according to reports, caused the plane to instead crash into an open field. There were no survivors.

I think it’s too soon. Vietnam movies didn’t start being made until as much as 20 years after the war. There’s a war still going on right now, and we’re already making movies about it? Regardless of what we like to think, no, we really don’t have all the facts, we don’t know how things are going to be in 3-5 years, and any media produced in that time just has a queasy feeling to it. It seems like propaganda.

What about the theory that it was shot down? I mean it was headed for the White House, it's government policy to shoot anything that’s a threat to the Head of State. It would make sense. Supposedly the passengers rose up and neutralized the threat of a suicide bomber, but never made it into the cockpit. How did they bring down the plane then? Then again, the hijacker pilot could be heard chanting a prayer as the plane was going down. I’ll bet conspiracy theorists are salivating over this. I just don’t know.

September 11^th has touched my family as well. The window washer of the 2^nd Tower was a long time classmate of my father’s, they escaped Communist Albania when they were kids. Time did a piece on him, I forget his name off the top of my head. He was apparently in the process of taking people down in his carriage when the Towers fell. He never made it down.

It just doesn’t feel right. It feels too soon. It makes me angry thinking that this happened. It summons enormous rage at those involved. What keeps me sane is that I still have faith in my country, that we will do the right thing, that even if we’re bending our own morals almost backwards, we will make things right. Moussaoui, don’t worry, he’s not going to a Maximum Security prison in Iowa, we all know where he’s going…He’s headed to Guantanamo where he’ll have a lot more hell than the laws of our country will allow. We’ll turn a blind eye though, just this time.

My only qualm with United 93...I wonder how long after September 11^th the film industry buffs waited to start bidding on the movie rights.

Can't Spell Crap Without Spelling Rap

2006-05-10T05:04:00.000-07:00

You know you’re a child of the 90’s when you can rap the entire song to Fresh Prince of Bel Aire. Boy do I miss the 90’s. The 70’s was funky, the 80’s was retro, but the 90’s…the 90’s was Crisp. Original. Back when P. Diddy was still Puff Daddy and “More Money, More Problems” was the song of choice. When NWA was alive with a message, and the Beastie Boys were the original white rappers. Before the word music was cut from “rap music,” rap really was that, music.

Now one really can’t spell crap without spelling rap. I mean, what is this shit I hear on the radio? I hear people going by names that aren’t even names, like “50 cent.” WTF!? Who the hell would call themselves “fifty-cents?” Is that how much it cost to make your album because IT SUCKS! The rap of today talks about nothing but sex sex sex, bitches bitches bitches, slap that hoe, kill that cop, get rich or die trying, killing prostitutes and going to jail is cool, not to mention not knowing how to speak English. Aw hell naw not nobody who speak that proper English is dope dawg. Word cuz!

I mean back when I was growing up, rap used to talk about problems that were happening in the real world. Rap was the artists’ way of yelling at the institution, or just talking about the good times. It was urban expressionism, talking about how it really was back in those days, or talking about how it could be. Rap really was poetry.

Now its not even called rap anymore, its called hip hop, or R&B, or Soul, or Thug, its like they dragged the name “rap” through the mud so much that now artists will do anything to keep from falling into the “rap” genre, they’ll do anything to not be labeled “that music that ruins young people’s minds.” What happened to the music that started revolutions? What happened to the message that sent Huey Newton through the White House without a business suit? Rap music was labeled disruptive because it got young people to rise up, get active, say no, start something, change something! Unfortunately, I think the true rap genre is dead.

Why would anyone listen to rap now? All rappers today talk about is doing drugs, killing innocent people, and degrading women. I’m a women, I’m more than a bitch or a hoe and no you can’t take me to the “candy shop.” I thought rap was supposed to have a message, like back when NWA was around, what’s your message? “Its hard out here for a pimp?” Sorry “cuh” you can sell your c“rap” to anyone who will buy it, but its not going to be me.

Why Are Girls So Stupid?

2006-05-10T03:34:00.000-07:00

I remember a time during my freshman year of high school when I was falling into the crowd. I was on the cross country team, surrounded by girly girls and gay guys. I had been a hardcore tomboy my entire life, but the influence my effeminate friends had over me was getting to the point where I was starting to wear makeup.

One day I came to school wearing this really cute mid-drift top from Forever 21, and my hair was up in this pig-tail style that Claudia did for me. I thought I looked really cool, and carried myself with the grace of a true American girl.

Then my Algebra class rolled along. It was report card day. I wasn’t too concerned about my grades, I was more concerned about whether I looked like a dork or not. I noticed the girls that were sitting next to me. They were dressed really cute in the ultra-tight clothing that was popular at the time. I couldn’t get over how stylish they were. I wanted to know where they got their clothes so that I could go buy them with my mom later in the week. Envious, I listened in on their conversation.

“WOW Roxanne! Oh My God!”

“What did you get?”

“I GOT A D!”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah! My mom’s gonna pay for this! This is the third time I’ve taken this class and I finally passed!”

“I got a D too, but its in English, I don’t care.”

The chances of getting hit by a falling meteorite are slim to none…I got hit by a big one. I didn't want to be like these girls! That’s not how I saw myself, and that’s not how I wanted to be. I flashed back to younger years, and adventurous hikes up mountains back home, of playing tag in the woods and running with my dogs, of climbing trees and tether ball. I remembered who I was.

At the end of the period, I ran into the bathrooms, washed my face, took down my stupid hair style, threw it in a pony tail, changed into a t-shirt I used for running, and never looked back.

Why Do Guys Stare?

2006-05-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

Why do guys do that? They stare at you in groups of two, seemingly sizing you up, and even when you look back at them, they still look at you as if you’re not even real. Their gaze intimidates you, but yours doesn’t intimidate them in the least, they keep on doing it while you have the decency to look away.

The Golden Rule of Guy Code is NEVER look a strange guy in the eye, and never never never stare. When a guy looks another guy in the eye outside of conversation, it means one of two things: “I want to fuck you” or “I want to kill you.” If guys are unsure of other guys, they’ll let it itch, they won’t dare check out another guy.

Why then, even if you’re a girl in guys clothing, will they not be in the least bit threatened by looking at a girl for extended periods of time? I was at Lars’ party the other night and two of the younger guys there (looked about 19) were staring in my direction as if to size me up. Both of them did it for about 5 minutes and then my group left. I was thinking WTF! It pissed me off that the two losers thought they had power over me that they could stare unchecked by social norms as if I wasn’t allowed to do anything about it. The ironic thing is that before-hand, Erik and I were playing with Lars’ padded sticks and were going at them when I accidentally punched him in the face hard!

My first thought when I see some guys staring at me is that they are staring at something behind me or next to me, so I ignore if for a while. If it persists, I’ll think there’s something about me that they don’t get, and then I’ll think they’re trying to make me uncomfortable. If it gets to the point where I know for a fact that they’re looking at me, and they even hint at sexual reference, then I get super pissed off.

That’s against the rules stupid! You should be more afraid of looking me in the eye than any other guy! I just punched that 6 foot 3 guy in the face, what makes you think I won’t hesitate to smash your skull? Did you notice Ross, the stunt guy, talking to me about my wrestling background? Do you have a death wish? I’m not dressed like a hoe, there’s no reason for you to be staring in my direction because I’m a female and technically Guy Code doesn’t apply to females.

Any of you cock-swinging pansies try to pull that crap on me, you’ll get a foot up your ass and like it for the rest of your life! Freaking D.I.M.’s!

Other Women are Holding Me Down!

2006-05-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

Ever notice how whenever the topic of women’s rights comes up, the first people to always shoot it down are women? During women’s sufferage, the main opponents of women voting were, guess what, women! In the case of this article, a writer states that mixed gender wrestling is morally wrong. I could accept the reader’s point of view because it made sense from their perspective and they have the right to their opinion, but only when I read that it was a woman who wrote the article did my mouth drop to the floor.

Mixed-sex Wrestling

Why do women hold each other down, and why are they the first ones to shoot each other down when it comes to their own rights, rights that would also benefit them? I’ve noticed that guys are very willing and actually eager to accept a woman as “one of the guys” provided she can walk the walk. The argument is that when a girl beats a guy at anything, he is humiliated. In my personally experience, I would go to wrestling and grappling gyms and tap out a whole line of guys, and afterwards they would stand in awe and say “wow! You are so cool!” In high school, my male teammates could care less that I changed in the same locker room as them, nor could my male coaches, and for that matter, not even the male vice principal. I made friends in my bra and panties, which sounds ridiculously sexual, but ironically wasn’t. It was only when the female principal found out that she put a stop to it and effectively alienated me from the rest of my team.

It just seems ironic that women’s greatest opponents would be other women. Why are other women so adamant about forfeiting their own rights and holding other women down in the process? Why are they the last to stand up for themselves and the first to sit back down? Why shoot themselves in the foot? Men are all in agreement about their rights, why is the female vote split down the middle? Half of them think they are equal, the other half think they aren’t human. What gives?

I have a theory, my theory is this. Most women who are voting responsibly are fairly educated and the women who run our country are some of the most intelligent humans on the planet. I think that a smart woman would want what is best for society before what is best for herself. In this way, women are thought responsible and applauded for putting her family, her country, her society before her own wants and needs and civil liberties. Supposedly this is honorable, to place yourself on the backburner, and to pursue ambitions for your own purposes is considered selfish and is stigmatized. I’ve noticed this slight taboo with girls in conservative families. Women are supposed to be humanitarian, so what is best for the big picture is always pushed first. Men are encouraged to think of the bigger picture too, but men don’t have a civil rights issue, except for maybe custody rights.

I think its women’s way of gaining respect, kinda like guys chug beer and abstain from sex for as long as they can, women forfeit their natural value. Its not that women don’t want equality, it’s that they prefer the respect they receive from not having it. It all kinda balances out, a quick-fix. Basically, women who agree with the chauvinistic male-dominated majority can hop into a conversation at a bar or go out with more men or advance their careers for supposedly being “smart.”

The problem is it holds them back. Society tells women that they’re okay if they are “disciplined enough to forfeit their natural rights,” what does this say about ones character? Nothing but good things.

When women put down other women, usually young, who are ambitious and want equality and freedom to move, they are doing three things: They are being reasonable by thinking about what is supposedly best for society (since female equality is going to lose the war, topple towers and kill the free world), they are helping other women find “their place” by educating them as to the way the world is and should be, and finally and probably most importantly they are defending themselves and ensuring that they keep receiving the respect they are receiving. How ironic that women say they don’t want anything and then fight for the respect that they want (??), it makes me wonder how far we could go if we just skip the first step and fight for what we want?

Lastly, is it at all possible that women could be jealous of other ambitious women? Prevailing attitudes of most people are “I had to go through it, so should you.” It’s amazing how many countries are destroyed solely by the gossip of old ladies. I’m not exactly sure if the female vote is split intentionally or it really is that women don’t want their rights.

Well one thing I know for sure, women who have rights don’t need to exercise them if they don’t want to, but one right the definitely don’t have is the right to hold other women down. It might not be hurting them, but its hurting someone else, and that’s not just wrong, it’s stupid.

Coming next week, A Female President. Good night Vietnam!

I've Had Enough!

2006-04-30T03:22:00.000-07:00

I don't want to ever hear anything about women's "inferior upper body strength" EVER again. NEVER!

(video takes a minute to upload)

I'm finished and Women should be allowed in Special Forced. WHAT HUH! Here's the deal...

SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C., June 27, 2005 -- The House Armed Services Committee approved a bill recently which puts a Pentagon policy from 1994 into federal law prohibiting females in the military to serve in units below brigade level whose primary mission is direct ground combat.

Congress recently passed a law that took female soldiers off forward combat support convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan. 20,000 female soldiers were out of a job and reassigned while male soldiers had to pick up the slack in a time of war. 20,000 soldiers is a lot of man-power. The Pentagon, the Military and the rest of the country were against this law, but since majority in the house is ultra-conservative right, guess what, the law passed.

Basically, the American Public wants women in combat. The Pentagon wants women in combat. The United States Military wants women in combat. But a handful of crusty old religious bigots don’t…therefore, no women in combat. WTF?

Don’t you just hate when other people try to tell you how to do your job, especially when they don’t do your job themselves? That’s pretty much what the Military under the Department of Defense has in their job description.

Female Soldiers have been in the Army since 1943, as has been a ban on them serving in direct ground combat. Currently in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there are no “lines” to decipher rear from front, women are being exposed to more direct combat than ever before. They are taking enemy fire and fighting back, and their performance in battle has rendered the dogmatic “combat exclusion” rule obsolete. Military Police companies with women in their ranks are performing essentially the same tasks as the Infantry, and the women in these units are exceeding expectations. They’re returning fire, guarding gates, participating in raids, and even taking hostages.

For Female GI's, Combat is a Fact
It was mid-February and Guay, 26, an Army specialist who was the first woman to be assigned as an infantry combat medic, was spending 10 hours a day on missions with the 82nd Airborne Division, dodging rockets and grenades in the crowded streets of Mosul.

Woman Soldier Receives Silver Star for Valor in Iraq
WASHINGTON, June 16, 2005 -- For the first time since World War II, a woman soldier was awarded the Silver Star Medal today in Iraq. Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Richmond, Ky., received the Silver Star, along with two other members of her unit, Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein and Spc. Jason Mike, for their actions during an enemy ambush on their convoy. Other members of the unit also received awards.

In a time where an All-Volunteer force is struggling to meet quotas, the Army wants to lift the obsolete ban on women in combat so that it can start placing mixed-units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and polls show the American public is behind it.

Firstly, women are already in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the most dangerous place in the world for a soldier, but it is even more dangerous for these female soldiers not because they are females, but because the Army is attaching them to infantry units without letting them go through the infantry’s training school. They have skills they will need, but the lifesaving skills learned in training that is currently closed to women are essential to the tasks that they are performing, making it more dangerous for everyone. If the Army would allow women the opportunity to obtain this training, instead of closing the schools to them, it would make everything safer for everyone.

What they don’t want is lowered standards. Currently, the minimum physical fitness standard for women in the Armed Forces is slightly to drastically lower than those for men. If the Combat Arms Jobs including Infantry and Armor were to be open to women, standards should not be lowered given the number of women who can already max the male 17-24 physical fitness requirements (SEE VIDEO ABOVE!!!!!!! SEE IT SEE IT SEE IT!!!!). The Army has tried to implement one standard for combat MOS's before, but has been so bogged down by politicians getting on their case that they pretty much said "fuck it leave me alone," and refuse to even go there anymore. Get this though, the fight about double standards is a fight between TWO WOMEN! Politicians from DACOWITS and The Center for Military Readiness can't agree on what "equal opportunity" really means, so they've been butting heads for the last decade and its been keeping women out of combat. Gosh if someone could just get these two girls to kiss and makeup everything might work out!

As for the argument that the presence of women in the combat arms would jeopardize unit cohesion—this is absolutely ludicrous! Women are performing raids, executing police duties, flying fighter jets, piloting helicopters, manning turrets, driving supply trucks, gathering intelligence, racking in confirmed kills and defending our nation all side by side with their male counterparts so that there is no such thing as “Woman Marine” or “Female Soldier” anymore, it is just simply “Soldier” now. Studies have been conducted to see if mixed-units present a strain on unit cohesion. Studies found that it does not. Unless individuals within a given unit act irresponsibly does it sometimes play a factor in cohesion, but studies found that units in which irresponsibility among members occurred, so did poor leadership among officers and authority figures. Those units whose officers displayed good leadership had minimal to no interference with team cohesion. STOP BLAMING IT ON THE GIRLS!

Plus, its like opening up the men’s football team to girls, only a few would apply anyway, so even if women in units does somehow present a strain on cohesion, there’d only be a few of them so stop trippin! I went out for the men’s football team in high school and got a lot of press because of it. I thought because I did it, a lot of other girls would do it the next season and it would all be my fault…nope, not a single one went out.

“But why bother if there’s only a few of them? Why make a major policy change to only benefit a few?” Firstly, it wouldn’t just be opening the Infantry for the women who are willing to step up to the challenge, it would be allowing the 20,000 women soldiers on the forward support convoys they were taken off of to make the job of combat soldiers easier, it would be allowing the supply convoys that task women to drive into combat zones in support of operations, it would be getting the female soldiers who are already being assigned to infantry units the training they need to participate in those units, it would be making the military more efficient. In a time where strength in numbers is crucial and numbers are dwindling, man power is absolutely essential. This is not the time to be picky about the man-power we have and refusing help because of little details that have been shown again and again DON’T MATTER! I have soldier friends who back this up over and over again. When will things change?

God forbid we actually let women fight a war. That would topple The Towers, lose the war, and kill the free world! I’m tired of people saying “could we, should we, will we” I want them to start saying “we could, we should and WE WILL.” But Oh No the American Public is not ready to see women come home in body bags. Hurry up and get ready!!! They’re already coming home anyway, at least 40 women have been Killed in Action, and over 400 have been wounded. They are soldiers and making laws that limit their value as soldiers sends a mixed message to ALL troops. This is NO TIME to be sending mixed messages, especially in the middle of a war unlike any we’ve ever seen before where morale is low and there is no sign of the enemy letting up!

On a last note, I know the two words everyone is going to say: "Jessica Lynch." I have two more words: "Fuck Her!" Jessica Lynch failed the ASVAB 3 times and performed a minimum of 18 pushups to barely pass with the MOS of "Truck Passenger." Her publicity has outraged the female soldier community and does not in any way represent the thousands of capable females in the Armed Forces right now. Remember the famous phrase: "what is popular is not always right, what is right is not always popular."

What can you do? You can call your representatives, you can write letters, you can show your support. The question is not whether there could be female commando’s, but that there CAN be female commandos.

The day the Infantry opens up, I will be the first in line to enlist.

Not Even the Army is This Extreme!

2006-04-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

CBSNews

CNN

http://www.nospank.net/anderson.htm

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) -- Florida lawmakers agreed Wednesday to shut down the state's juvenile boot camps after the death of a 14-year-old boy who had been kicked and punched by guards.

WHOA! I think I know this drill. Trouble children get sent to boot camp, come home better people and never break a law again. Works miracles, I’ve seen it. Some kids end up getting sent there off the streets, turn their acts around, join the army and become freaking Green Berets! But whoa whoa whoa I don’t think kids are supposed to be dieing in these boot camps!

(CBS/AP) Guards at a juvenile-detention boot camp kneed and struck a teenager who had apparently gone limp while being restrained the day before he died, a videotape released Friday showed... On the 1-hour, 20-minute tape, which has no sound, as many as nine guards can be seen restraining Anderson. Guards kneed him and wrestled him to the ground, where he was repeatedly struck by one guard.

And that’s not even all of it!

No charges will be filed in the case of a teenager who died at a behavioral treatment center after reportedly being restrained for disruptive behavior, authorities said…Joey Aletriz's death was the second at SummitQuest in less than two months. Another resident, James White, 17, died in December of what the Lancaster County coroner determined was natural causes.

I did some researching on the net and found scores of pages in which kids have died at boot camps from what were recorded as “natural causes.” I discovered that suffocation is “the leading cause of death among children in custodial settings.” Whoa okay the fact that they used the phrase “the leading cause,” how often does this happen?! Supposedly kids accidentally die while being restrained by guards in various holds. Okay, I’m a blue belt in jiujitsu, I know the police arts and they don’t restrain, they put someone out! I read that one boy had his inhaler witheld as punishmen and died. The things I'm reading from various news websites (independent and mainstream) are really disturbing.

On February 4, 1992, 5' 4" tall, fifteen-year-old Paul Choy was being taught a lesson he wouldn't forget. Choy was required to sit on a wooden platform in the cold for five hours as punishment for failing to finish a five-mile run…Those attending him in the hospital discovered recent trauma consistent with forced anal penetration. Granted, life at Rite of Passage was not intended to be a bed of roses, but at least it should have been safe in bed, considering that the boys' sleeping quarters were shared by their no-nonsense coaches.

Oh my God, I mean like…Oh my God!!!! I’m speechless, I really am. I’m so confused. I’m really at a loss for words now, I honestly don’t know what to say. I’m so aghast that I can’t even take a position on this issue. This is crazy! They can’t even do this in the real army and they’re doing it in juvenile boot camps??!?!? In the ARMY-army, the actual ARMED FORCES Army, THAT Army, the one where they send you off to DIE, drill instructors can’t touch you! Even back in the day they couldn’t touch you! You go to Ranger school, they can’t beat you! Even Navy SEAL school, my friend got punched in the face once, but that’s a whole lot different than being beaten to death! I just really don’t understand, my eyes are so wide right now that its not even funny. You guys tell me what I’m supposed to think because really I just can’t think! I’ll write a more thought out post when I can get my head strait and take sides on this.

High School Ruined My Life...And No One Seems To Care

2006-04-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

In today's data-happy era of accountability, testing and No Child Left Behind, here is the most astonishing statistic in the whole field of education: an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly 1 out of 3 public high school students won't graduate. For Latinos and African Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50%. Virtually no community, small or large, rural or urban, has escaped the problem… "Ten years ago," [says a school official] "if we had a problem student, the plan was, 'O.K., let's figure out how to get rid of this kid.' Now we have to get them help…We've doubled the amount we spend per pupil since the '70s, but the problem hasn't budged."
Time Magazine April 13, 06

We have a problem. There’s a problem in this country that no one’s caught. It’s silent, and the silence is growing. It’s the problem of education forgetting about the kids. At a national dropout statistic of 50%, the public still only complains about teacher pensions, lapse discipline, and basically all the people running the place…the public seems to have forgotten whose behind the school gates.

No one seems to know what’s going on. Educators and experts who have never been where this problem leads, who were successful in school and in life, are tasked with coming up with a solution. Despite their “expertise” on the matter, I think we’re asking the wrong people.

We like to think that high school is preparing our kids for a great life. A life where they will be educated, have a great career, make their own decisions, and be self-sufficient. We like to think that our kids are nurtured in the environment that we entrust our children for the majority of their childhood. We trust that their innocence is being protected.

Sadly however, with one of the worse public education systems in the WORLD, American high schools serve as little more than daycare/prisons for America’s unruly youth. The public wants the real deal on what’s going on inside its public schools. Here’s the Real Deal…

High School is the last stop before show time. It’s the airlock before exiting the Matrix and being booted into the rough waters of the Real World. It is a right of passage, designed to strip you of your childhood identity so that you can build a new one akin to the rest of the world, and find yourself in a way that is productive and beneficial to society. But it doesn’t, it fails miserably. It tries to follow the military model as much as lawsuits will allow and goes half way, coming up dangerously short and leaving kids broken down but not built back up.

Public High School’s are not designed to create senators. That is the Private Schools job. Public High School is designed to create a perpetual work force and ensure the creation of a permanent middle class (the absence of a middle class is what brings many country’s to their knees). It’s become more about creating jobs than about educating kids. School’s support teachers, laborers, construction workers, custodial staff, security guards, research analysts, secretaries, food service workers, police officers, public health officials, building inspectors, psychologists, tech advisors, electricians, secretaries, publishing companies, board members to make sure everyone does their jobs, and non-teachers who coach sports which generate revenue. What is the function of the public high school? To prepare students for real life. In other words…to fill these jobs.

The process starts by breaking the student down. The system mimics the military model but goes dangerously half way, leaving the students broken down but not built back up. There is a way that school teaches material that does not in anyway mimic the outside world, and the job of students is to roll with it, those who can catch on will survive and thrive. Those who can’t are supposedly the ones who will never make it in the real world, so why waste precious limited resources on them?

Curriculum in high school is designed to simulate the work environment. Classwork and homework are assigned in bulk to mimic “quotas” and production standards of a middle class labor or desk job. Busy work is 40% of a total grade whereas tests—that make sure you actually know the material—are worth about 25%. Curriculum is not challenging and is slowed down to snail pace to accommodate the non-english speaking students of illegal aliens while busy work is still assigned in bulk. Somehow more homework equals more of a challenge, especially considering that the only thing separating the curriculum of and AP biology class and a regular biology class is the work load, not the subject matter. This is catastrophic considering that everyone and their mother has ADD now, and 80% of dropouts are ADD (ADD is an invention however, ADHD is the serious disorder that warrants special ed). Studies have shown that speeding up the curriculum would increase interest in subject matter ten fold, but does the school care? Of course not. Students are intentionally placed in stressful environments to teach them how to perform under stress, and forget about creativity unless you are in the AP program, which is the only way you are going to get into a good 4 year University and have a great life. Everyone else...they’ll be working for the AP students (forget about all of the cheating rings that have been busted in the AP programs).

Think child labor doesn’t exist in the US? Think again. Sports programs in High Schools get paid $100,000 for bringing home a regional championship, even more if they take a state title for the team. If a lone athlete gets scouted by a college, the high school gets paid an allowance for the athlete, and the coach of the program gets an incentive for each league championship and a bonus for every level after that. A good sports program can fund an entire school 100 times better and faster than a good academic program. Compton High School is carried by its track team. It seems as if athletes are given all of the resources because public education knows that students have a better chance of getting an athletic ride into a University than an academic ride. Maybe this is why more teachers are lenient toward athletes. Students are pushed harder than almost any child laborer in any poor country to the point of repeated injury and hazed so bad so as to make sure the ones who will rack in revenue won’t quit. The only thing that keeps it from being child labor is the fact that students are choosing to be there. Sports has ruined a lot more lives than it has enhanced.

Lets talk about High School’s take on creativity. Creativity is very important and individualism is very important to the American Ideal. In high school, creativity does not exist. “50 minute class periods are no place to teach creativity,” argue teachers.” Kids grow the most physically and mentally between the ages of 15 and 18, these need to be the years where they are allowed to explore their world and develop their own insights and ideas, not be shoved into the abyss of the drab ideal and shocked into submission. In high school, the message of dreaming big and aiming high is replaced by “play it safe and don’t be stupid, the real world is no place for trailblazers.”

What about teachers? I have a lot to say about teachers.

There is such a huge discrepancy in what makes a teacher a good teacher that most good ones get screwed. Most of the Young Liberal teachers burn out within the first few years while the Old Crusty teachers can’t be fired because they get tenure. Its ballsy for a teacher to even step up to teach high school, but its all too common for them to fail. No one in their right mind teaches high school. All the student-teachers I’ve met: middle school, elementary school, kindergarten. Mention high school and they run. The American Teenager is the epitome of a challenge because they are smart enough to know what they want and what’s going on around them, but stupid enough to not have the experience to deal with it.

That’s why High School teachers have to be strong. A great teacher can change a kid’s life. I’ve known a few good teachers though, the ones that succeeded in being extraordinary teachers have been of the following, and these people were crazy to begin with:

A) X-Military (One Navy SEAL, a Marine and an Airman)
B) Olympic Wrestler
C) Martial Artists
D) Former CDC agent
E) NFL Wide Receiver
F) Former Police Officer
G) Mother of 5 boys

However, most of the teachers that students in need get stuck with are bitter professionals who have failed in their professions in the real world. The saying is true, “Those who can’t, teach.” To all those who teach high school because they failed in the professions of with they teach, and pushed the good teachers out of work, to this I say the following. Go sell candy like the rest of the student you humiliate. School is about kids, not you. It is your job to be superhero’s because of the lives you are entrusted with.

It’s true that there are limited resources, that the standards the school is required to meet are in many ways unrealistic, that teachers are over-tasked and underpaid. The problems with education are so spread out that sometimes it seems hopeless trying to fix them. We turn to the worlds greatest minds begging for an answer, like I said above, I think we are asking the wrong people.

If you asked me, if you asked students who have been there, and teenagers who are going through it now, they would give you this answer…

People could start by caring.

After 4 years of emotional catastrophe and trying to please everybody, I finally realized the only lesson they were trying to teach me. No one gave a damn. No one outside of my extended family who had been nagging on the laces of my shoes for my entire life gave a damn whether I lived or died and I could go jump off a bridge for all they cared. The world doesn’t want me, the world doesn’t love me, the world doesn’t exist for me and I am nothing…That was what a teacher said to me the day before I left. If you can’t find reasons to believe in us, and you’re bigger and smarter than us, then how can we stupid kids find reasons to believe in ourselves, especially when you say we’re wrong? The expelling of the soul from the body is the most painful process a life form can undergo. The period in which a life realizes that there are no special things inside of it is like squeezing the yolk out of an egg though a tiny hole in the shell. The mush that comes out can never be put back in, and that’s what American High Schools leave their children with, mush for dreams and a receipt for a piece of paper, the ironic thing being that half of the words written on that paper will be too high above the graduates reading level.

Boys Destroyed A Nation

2006-04-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Who in their right mind reads “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus?” What planet are they from? That 10th planet?

Supposedly, the brain chemistry of men and women is so incredibly dissimilar, regardless of the fact that men and women differ by only a single chromosome. According to the author, men’s minds are compartmentalized, like their sock drawers, whereas women’s minds are integrated, like transparent slides on an overhead projector.

This would explain why men are dogs right? They can sleep with any girl as long as she’s half-decent looking and completely detach themselves emotionally, supposedly whereas women prefer to be in a relationship with a person they really care about and can be emotionally comfortable around. Sex and emotions aren’t necessarily connected in a male mind, whereas women connect sex to love to marriage to family to financial stability etc.

WHATEVER! I guess now we know why girls are good at word association games right? Maybe a girl likes to be in love before she has sex…if she’s a VIRGIN! If everything in this book is true, then I know how boys destroyed a nation!

Lets assume the “compartmentalization” theory was accurate. Boys can think about one think at a time completely and not get distracted by other thoughts. They can open all of their drawers and only see their sock drawer, not their underwear drawer. Let’s examine what kind of effect this has had on the rest of the world, assuming its true.

Men have predominantly ruled the world (those scoundrels). In some countries, women still can’t drive cars! In America, there are arguably more men in government than there are women, and women haven’t had that great of an influence in it until about 50-60 years ago. Let’s look at our government: departments, bureaus, cabinets, agencies, divisions, so many levels of organization in government that it’s ultimately disorganized. It works good enough to keep it from falling apart. Sound COMPARTMENTALIZED?

In today’s government, the FBI can’t communicate with the CIA which can’t communicate with the Dept of Agriculture to keep confidentiality secure. Everything is like a drawer that can’t be opened unless a process is initiated to open it, and for two drawers to be opened at the same time in the same issue takes a freaking act of god! For instance, Tornados and Hurricanes are getting far more severe such as in the instance of Hurricane Katrina. First it was Fema’s fault, then it was the department that staffed fema, then it was the government’s fault for placing fema under the jurisdiction of a department that was under funded, then it was President Bush’s fault for focusing too much on foreign affairs and not enough on problems at home, then it was God’s fault for putting Bush in power which unleashed terrorism on our beloved country. It took FOREVER for it to finally get back to humanities fault for ensuing Global Warming on our planet and building a city smack on top of the wetlands. Finally, after about a year of deliberation and religious groups claiming global warming doesn’t exist, our government finally took steps to restore the wetlands by imposing its eminent domain laws on individuals who owned land throughout Georgia and Northern Florida; steps that were pushed by a Louisiana senator named Mary Landrieu (female).

How about if government were INTEGRATED? Wouldn’t it be nice to have every drawer open at the same time and be able to communicate with one another so that no possibility to a problem is ruled out? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a congress that can actually communicate with each other? Wouldn’t it be nice to have humanitarian causes matter over fiscal causes? Probably. That’s why we should all vote for Condi Rice in 2008!

I’m saying that if women really do have integrated minds that can see every aspect of every problem at the same time even if problems are not related, wouldn’t it then be good to have them run our country? Yeah but supposedly the way they think takes longer…as opposed to a years worth of deliberation to settle one problem at a time? Our schools would be better because our government would care about education, rape victims would get better care and treatment, we’d have more freedom because our government would be able to relate to us, and fiscal issues would take more of a backseat to humanitarian and essential needs because it’s a known fact that MEN DON’T HAVE FEELINGS.

But hey I’m only saying what the author thinks. Its not my opinion (lol).

The deal with brain chemistry, what is the deal? Supposedly women’s “lack of testosterone makes it so that they can not be fiercely competitive even if they tried.” Okay, that’s bull. Whoever conducted that study never saw a girlfight on a playground. Enough said. What about Testosterone?

This stuff is great! Doubles your athletic potential, gives you an instant sugar rush, makes you able to life twice your body weight and leap tall buildings in a single bound, not to mention the benefits to your cardiovascular health and bone density! They should market this stuff and make millions! Why haven’t they?

The stuff is unstable! Don’t believe me? How many female psychopaths have you heard of? How many have actually been documented? Supposedly women report problems to their doctors more than men, you’d think they’d catch a female serial killer every now and then. How about female heart attack victims? There are lots of them, but why are all the heart attack medicines marketed to men? Could it be that men’s supposed “higher VO2 max” makes them more vulnerable to cholesterol buildup. Basically, my mom and dad eat the same things, why does he have high cholesterol and she doesn’t? Why do men live eight years less than women? Why is it that the average woman can outswim a seasoned male athlete? Why do men go up quickly and crash suddenly?

Testosterone is not approved by the FDA for a reason!

When you have too much testosterone in things that matter most, like government, you get way too competitive and before you know it we’re focusing more on winning wars than curing cancer. Extremes do not make means. I say men are good for one thing…reproduction.

That is of course, only if “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” is correct after all.

Why exactly are women segregated anyway? They have different sports programs, different health care, different counseling methods, even different methods to make friends. There is a different protocol for dealing with girls, why?

There’s a new vitamin on the market specifically developed for the individual needs of different…get this…races! Supposedly African-Americans don’t absorb as much healthy sun rays, so therefore need more vitamin A in their diet, whereas Asians need more carotenes for their slightly less dominant eye-sight (always with the Asians and the eyes). Oh okay, so there’s lots of physical and biological differences between races after all! In that case, since studies show African-American men tend to have slightly lower body fat percentages and slightly denser muscle development than Caucasian men, and that Asian men tend to be shorter than Caucasian men, there should be separate sports programs for each race. Its not fair to make everyone have to work harder because of biological differences now is it?

Too bad. Men fight in the same division. Don’t wanna challenge up? So sad. So ultimately biological differences don’t matter and the American public doesn’t give a care about who supposedly has it harder. In that case, why don’t we make women challenge up? Biological differences don’t matter right, and there’ve been so many women that have proven their own against men that its not even funny, yet we still throw them all together into a weaker training program and say “oh it’ll never happen.” I swam with the boys team for one day and I swear I gained half an inch on my arms. Its societies acceptance that women are allowed to be weaker that makes them weaker, not “biology.” Sorry, testosterone only goes so far. If we would expect women to be stronger, they would be.

For those of you who want to be politically correct, let me explain the “strength difference” deal. Testosterone functions as a speedy agent that makes you gain a lot of muscle very quickly and rather efficiently. In the wild, male lions are bigger and stronger to fight off other big males and pass the best genes on to the next generation. However, this extra muscle makes them slower and less efficient than lionesses. More is not necessarily better. Researches can say all they want about different brain chemistry, but in humans, muscle is muscle, that is a direct quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book. However, in females, their muscle is more compact than it is in males, they have more muscle per square inch. Female’s have genes that make lower body muscles develop more efficiently than upper muscles, but they do not have “less upper body muscle.” Lack of testosterone makes it so that in the wild, when we’re running around and naturally being athletes, we don’t get as huge and bulky as males to sacrifice our speed and agility. Remember, we weren’t supposed to be living in houses with running water, in the beginning, we hunted our food. Basically, in today’s world, it’s really hard for a girl to get big, but once she does, she is as strong if not stronger than a guy the same size.

Why are the men’s and women’s short distance sprint records only different by 3/10 of a second? If that’s the case, the girl should be as big as the guy right? No? Why then is the worlds fastest female only about half the size of the worlds fastest male? Could it be that smaller women are faster, but why then is the fastest female (referencing Marion Jones types) considered tall for a girl? Nothing is adding up.

In old traditional times, the purpose of women is to make more men, on the contrary, the purpose of men is to make strong females.

Man, boys messed up everything didn’t they!

I really think men and women do understand each other, they just don't want to.

Proof is coming soon. I’m having trouble uploading a video onto blogger. In the meantime, sit tight.

Fashion is Communism!

2006-04-12T05:13:00.000-07:00

Communism is the absence of freedom of choice. Your life and your personality are dictated by whatever mob is in power. You pick, they decide. American life has gotten a little on the stricter side since 9/11, freedom of speech and expression has even been cut into as much as our constitution allows, but even if the only thing that’s keeping us from becoming the same as our Muslim counterpart countries is religion, at least we don’t have to wear the burqa. At least we can still wear whatever we want right?

WRONG!

When you go clothes shopping, it’s impossible to buy something that’s not on the shelf right? You browse and select from the inventory available, and maybe if you’re insistent, go to another mall if they don’t have what you’re looking for. Who decides what goes on those shelves? Do you decide?

In Cuba, fashion is regulated. There is an actual governmental bureau that decides what its citizens will like and what they will wear in the spirit of communism. The government has decided that its citizens like communism, so will dress to support it. Oh you want to wear a band tshirt instead of a Castro tshirt? Too bad!

Is it really that much different in America? An elite group of fashion designers decides what they think looks good on America regardless of what Americans think and then we select from their opinions. It can be argued that they analyze trends of what the public is wearing and go off that…NO they don’t analyze trends c’mon! If they want to bring back the 80’s (which they’ve done about 10 times already), they’re bringin’ back them 80’s! Fashion has become so predictable that there’s no way around it. There’s no such thing as “gender-neutral” in clothes. It’s either tight for girls or baggy for boys. You decide what comes off those shelves, but you want to wear something else? Too bad! “They” have decided that big bug-eye glasses and slutty, skin-tight clothes look good on women and have also decided that women like to look slutty, so have marketed nothing but slutty clothes to the female population. Don’t believe me?

Levis

Bottega Veneta

Even our younger girls!

This isn’t just going on with women’s clothing. Mens fashion is currently designed to make men look gay. Don’t believe me?

Abercombrie&Fitch

Levis 501

If I’m not mistaken, most female taboo is about sluts, and most male taboo is about homosexuals. Why is fashion trying to bring the extremes to the center? The reason is because most of them came from the extremes of society. They don’t necessarily represent the majority of American opinion. Why are we venturing into the Netherworld to do our shopping? Fist off, what exactly are the reasons we trust those in the fashion industry in the first place? Most of them are either (and not that there is anything wrong with being any of these):

A- French. C’mon! We hate the French! When did we start emulating them through our clothes!? I’d think Americans would walk around naked to avoid supporting the French (ooh, there’s an idea for a protest, boys are welcome to attend!). And don’t the French hate us? Doesn’t anyone get the feeling that they’re giving us extreme styles on purpose to make us suffer because they know we’ll wear what they tell us to? I sense a disturbance in the Force. It’s a conspiracy (!!).

B- Gay Men. Fashion designers dress models in clothes they feel look good on them. Gay men think that gay men look good, so hence the reason that male models often look like they swing the other way. Gay men are also dressing women, of which they are not attracted to, but are tasked with making them look attractive. Could this have anything to do with the reason women are increasingly pressured into being pencil-thin, so as to look like adolescent boys whom typically have very low body fat levels? It’s a known fact that strait men oftentimes prefer curvy women, and girls who are too skinny are often unattractive. So why then are we still stressing this extreme look? I can’t think of any other reason.

C- Punk Rockers! That would explain the push toward striking, weird dazzling makeup and inseams sewn in new and exotic ways. Like Wow! Who would have thought that I would ever have to pay $160 for a pair of torn-up jeans! And when did fishnet stockings become acceptable to wear on the outside? Isn’t that like indecent exposure to wear underwear on the outside?

D- Older Women. Both of my moms (yes I have two moms) are older women and are going to yell at me for this. Older women are often at that age where their hormones are finally at the level that a male’s hormones were at when he was 16! The joke however is that now men’s hormones have calmed down and women aren’t as attractive as they used to be at 16, so now it’s the women begging the men for a change and hence they have a harder time getting laid. It’s not surprising at all that they go to the dark side and begin to adopt a taste for more extreme fashions to get noticed. Also, honestly with all due respect, the time they grew up in was just a little bit behind the time we live in now. Things that looked good on them back in their youth don’t exactly look good on today’s youth.

I went shopping the other weekend for the first time in literally 3 years. My style consists of pretty much anything I can get in a fight in. So tight clothes are OUT! How do you tell someone you don’t like tight clothes though? In today’s world, tight clothes ARE women’s clothes. That’s like trying to explain to someone why you don’t like the color Orange. Hey, I like what I like. I don't even know why they bother putting pockets on women's jeans, its not like you can put anything in them! Maybe you could fit a Pink RAZR Phone or a condom but that's about it! But women’s baggy doesn’t even exist! Literally, there is no such thing as women’s baggy because they are still designed to outline your boobs and your butt and make you look slutty. Google “Women’s Baggy” and tell me what you find. Women’s baggy is nothing but a cheap attempt to cater to fighting tomboys who still haven’t crossed over yet (since most tomboys get it brainwashed out of them by the time they hit high school and if they don’t they are exiled to the “dyke” subculture where they just wear men’s clothes anyway). Same thing with men’s form-fitting, tight in all the wrong places. I see guys shop in the girls section for their pants where they can get the same thing they’re looking for for $29 as opposed $70 in men’s form fitting. I do the same, I shop in the boys department for my clothes, but its sad that the true mainstream in America is misrepresented and forced to “fit molds” that are for the few minorities anyway. When will we have our freedom?

Fashion is Communism! Or worse…

Its FASCISM!

Pet-owners Make Me Sick

2006-04-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

What I hate is people who buy pets and then kick them outside when they realize that it’s an actual living thing they’ve adopted. I hate people who think pets are toys for their kids and turn a blind eye when their children abuse them like stuffed dolls. I hate people who won’t spend a dime to take their animals to the vet but will run out and buy luxuries for themselves or family. I hate people who get puppies at 6 weeks and then put them in the pound at 6 months when they start teething. I hate people who give up cats because they scratch on their furniture. I hate petowners!

My Dad has thrown my 4 primarily-indoor cats outside indefinately because HIS FRIENDS are making fun that his house smells like cats. Well duh, maybe because cats live there. I don't understand, he hates his friends, yet abuses my animals to appease them. Other unneutered cats have been coming around, and my cats have been spraying as a result. He buys them cheap food, so they keep throwing up. He won't give me money to take them to the vet but he'll give me money to go buy clothes. Now I have to watch them sit at the glass screen door all day waiting to come in.

People think that a pet is an easy responsibility. A thing that you feed and look at. Keep it outside and you don’t even have to clean up after it. Keeps your kids occupied and since it doesn’t have feelings, keeps them from beating each other up. Everyone’s happy. People do really bad things to animals when they are trying, but its horrifying the things they can do to animals when they’re not even trying:

A substitute teacher at Veterans Park Academy for the Arts was charged with animal cruelty on March 28 after sheriff's deputies found a dog that had been left for hours in her car at the school. Deputies learned that the dog, a basset named Bailey, had been locked in the vehicle for six hours with no water and minimal ventilation.
The News-Press - April 1, 2006

State Police investigated a case of cruelty to animals at Countryside Bargains, located at 416 Nottingham Road, earlier this week. During a routine patrol on Tuesday, March 28 at 1:13 a.m., Troopers found one adult dog and two small puppies tied behind the store without proper sustenance and no shelter during a night when temperatures plummeted to 32 degrees
Solanco News - March 30, 2006

A Brooklyn man was pinched for allegedly starving his Cane Corso breed dog for two years. Gary Mapp, 39, was charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty for allegedly keeping 2-year-old Obi chained with no water or food in a concrete area behind his Bushwick house.
New York Post - March 24, 2006

Police charged a city woman with cruelty to animals. The Meriden Animal Hospital contacted police Jan. 13, 2006 after it was forced to euthanize a cat that had been brought in for treatment, police spokesman Sgt. Lenny Caponigro said. The cat, which had been adopted from the Meriden Humane Society in July 2005, was severely dehydrated and emaciated and had no chance of survival, a hospital employee told police.
Record Journal News - March 2006

NEWSFLASH! Pets are People too, since you’re supposed to treat them like a member of the family. A lot of people think a puppy is a play-baby, and get one to practice. Stupid. Get a puppy for the sake of getting a puppy, not to practice on and then impound once you get pregnant. Don’t just get a cat to please your kids and then kick them outside when you don’t take care of them. Ever heard of shaken-baby syndrome? Kittens get it too. That’s why you shouldn’t get young children pets. ANIMALS ARE NOT TOYS! They have feelings and need love and attention just like humans do. If you don’t PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR ANIMALS, it is neglect, and that is abuse, and that is a crime.

Its as simple as that.

This Means War!

2006-04-09T05:27:00.000-07:00

Underlying Causes of The War: How the heck did all this get started? What the heck happened?

I remember a few years ago, I think I was in like 8th grade, seeing conflicts in “THE HOLY LAND” on TV. The headline was something like “updates on the conflict in the middle-east, Israeli’s…blah blah blah…Palestinians…blah blah blah…lots of fighting and violence yatta yatta yatta.” I remember thinking WTF when did this happen? No one told me a war started! Mom!!!

That was the first time I’d seen or became acquainted with the conflicts in the Middle-East. There was no explanation of the ongoing war because it had already been given…50 years ago! Apparently this war has been going on forever, and even stretches further back than the State of Israel or the First World War or even the Prophet Muhammad (cough, terrorist, cough).

This might be old news to some of you (keep in mind I’m 18), but what happened and when did everyone start hating America? Supposedly, America is denounced by the eastern World for it's support and endorsement of Israel. But why? What did Israel ever do to its neighbors that was so bad to make everyone in the region bann together and want to annihilate them and anyone who supports them? Who was really at fault? Why is Israel the subject of so much hate and burried anger? Here’s my knowledge on the subject:

After the Holocaust, displaced Jews scattered all over the world, fleeing to any country that would take them. Few would. Once again, the people of Zion were without a country in a long sad history of being without a country.

The Jews have been kicked out of literally every country they’ve been in since the dawn of time! Damn, that’s harsh. What brought every single country to hate their guts, I can’t say for sure, but I do know that they were different, and most people hate things that are different.

In a polytheist time-period, monotheists were undoubtedly persecuted for such charges as impiety (being unloyal to the Gods, the same charges Socrates was tried under) and corruption. In this time-period, there were these guys called the Romans. These guys were cool, they were idealists, religiously out-going, the epitome of morality and innovation all rolled into one. Their take on The Gods was that there were many Gods, they just hadn’t discovered them all yet. They had this thing about collecting Gods. So when a new civilization was discovered, the Romans would be “hey, what’s your god?”
“Oh our God is the God of coconut trees!”
“Wow! That’s so neat! It’s a shame we didn’t discover him earlier! Lets build a temple and name a holiday in his honor!”

So when this new group of travelers shows up, the Romans welcome them with open arms and are like “So what’s your God?”
“The God of pain and suffering and self-sacrifice.”
“Wow—uh…what?”

The Hebrew God isn’t really that much fun (incase you hadn’t noticed). The religion was very representative of the struggles of real life, which is what ended up drawing many people to it in the end. The Jews were rigid, with strict codes of conduct, borderline Amish. The Romans thought “that’s no fun,” and kinda let the Jews do their own thing and left them alone for a while.

It wasn’t the fact that the Hebrews only had one God, it was that they insisted “there is ONLY one God, and all your other Gods are fakes and all who worship them are idiots.” They were viewed as pushy, and when you push, you get persecuted. They were kinda in the same boat that gays are in today, everyone wanted them dead and no one cared what they had to say. Then the whole Jesus deal really pushed some buttons. Jesus was a political activist and a hippie, you know he wasn’t just preaching peacefully. For the kind of revolution he started, you know there were riots in the streets that had his teachings at their root. The state killed him for causing an uprising and refusing to call it off. We did the same thing to Martin Luther King Jr.

The Jews didn’t stand with Jesus though. Jesus was a Jew, but those who followed him broke away from the Jewish faith. He wasn’t standing up for Jews, he was advocating for governmental reform, and that’s why his own culture came to hate him. Today when a political figure doesn’t represent their ethnic group, their ethnic group denounces them. Trust me, Condi Rice does not have the Black vote, but Al Sharpton does??? The death of Jesus left the public wondering what in the heck, in this religion of pain and suffering, could make any masochistic moron want to die for it? This gives rise to what many Anthropologist unofficially term “Closet Christians.” The whole Christianity thing really gained a foothold when the Emperor of Rome at the time (a practicing Closet Christian) had a dream that he would win an upcoming battle if he marched forward with banners of the Cross. The Cross wasn’t even a Christian Cross, it was an Egyptian Cross, the one with the loop at the top! Regardless, he won the battle, dropped to his knees and proclaimed “there is only one God!”

Now a completely new religion had ensued, but it STILL wasn’t Judaism! It was their religion, but all messed up. The Jews were like “wait wait wait no no no you got it all wrong! Curse you!” Goddammit the Hebrews got rid of polytheism, gave birth to a hero, set up a single god AND THEY’RE STILL BITCHIN!
“OUT!”

Hit the road, Jack, and dontcha come back…that road pretty much scattered them all over Europe where for centuries they were demoted to the lowest caste in society…Bankers (??). In medieval times money lending was a sin, so they gave that “dirty work” to the Jews. Hmm…lets think about this…money=power, entrust them with YOUR MONEY, teach them how to manage it, and expect them to be none the wiser. Jews started becoming the richest Mo-Fos in the unions! Their communities were close-knit, so all the money would commonly stay within their circles. This may or may not have had any affect on the economy, but it was perceived that money staying within their inner-circles was money not circulating through the economy.

In the case of Germany, The Brain came up with the only plan for world domination that almost worked and pretty much used the handle “the Jews are sucking money out of the economy and taking away from your child’s education and your job benefits, they must be gotten rid of!” Quick interjection, I can’t help but think after reading that… replace the word “Jews” with the words “illegal aliens” and see what you get.

Anyway, after the Holocaust, displaced Jews wondered the globe searching for a home. No country could bear the brunt of all these refugees, so the UN, in this age of the ability to FINALLY learn from the past, came up with a solution.
“Send them home.”
Where is Home?
“Israel…”
Where is Israel?

Ancient texts depicted Zion and the state of Israel as belonging to the Hebrew peoples of God. This had always been theirs, it was where their original temple had stood before it was ransacked and burned, thinking that it would destroy their god. We said “Yes! Send them home!” And the Jewish state of Israel was added to the map.

Unfortunately, no one really took into account that in the past few thousand years of the Hebrew’s absence, people had moved in there, and Palestine being a poor Muslim country, wasn’t given too much input into the decision. We should have bought it from them, a starving nation would have sold it for so cheap back then. Instead, no we wanted to be politically correct, we dropped these refugees off at the beaches and aren’t we feeling the effects of that decision today.

It really wasn’t fair, if you think about it. Well, it might have been fair, but it was a little harsh, and harsh is not what you want to be to a culture whose only possessions are pride and machetes. I’m sure they were thinking “they can’t just come in here and kick us out of our own land! Allah be praised we’ll kill them!” It may have been their land to begin with, but are you brave enough to waltz in there and tell armed jihadi’s to cease and desist?

We probably didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. We thought the War of Independence would come and go, problem solved, another seat in the UN. Nah-uh. This decision is going to fuel the insurgency for the next 100 years and it’s a little too late to buy them off now. Its really not America that is despised, its Israel that is confusing and despised because it is confusing, and America’s backing of it makes us look like bad guys to young Palestinian patriots who don’t understand. I’m having problems understanding myself, and I’m only 18, so I can imagine in a country with limited education how difficult the whole political process must seem to them. Everyone F’d up this time, now we’re going to have to live with this and try our best to fix the problem.

We will never stop backing Israel though. True, we could have handled the situation a little better, but I think everyone needs to calm down and get over it instead of letting the issue stay fresh in their minds and teaching the pain to their next generations.

Needless to say, I find it ironic that the most chaos and carnage is happening in “the Holy Land.”

What He Said!...

2006-04-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

I'm just kidding. Don't take anything this guy says seriously. I gotta make this site a little fun! Laugh a little!

Dos Años de Español en la Escuela, y No Entiendo Nada!

2006-04-07T04:50:00.000-07:00

President Bush is apparently on the verge of approving the measure to allow illegal aliens to mooch off of...I mean work and eventually receive citizenship in this country.

One of my friends, Mike, is a whitexican…I mean third generation Mexican-American (the dude can’t even speak Spanish). Obviously born and raised north of the border, Mike has no accent, no tan, and likes basketball as opposed to fútbol. During the World Cup, he’s more likely to root for Brazil than for Mexico (three cheers for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu). You can’t make the La Migra jokes with him, it just doesn’t work. But even though Mike is as American as they come, I’ll bet he’d still get a little upset if I described Mexicans as “chollos and strawberry pickers who hop the border to get on welfare.”

Mike describes the Mexican culture as “hard-working, religious, moral, and placing a great value on family and education.” Well, honestly I have to agree with him. My Hispanic friend Jesse signs the cross every time he walks out of his house! Show a pic of a naked girl to a Mexican: “Aye Dios Mio Santa Maria me pregunta!” and they get down on their knees and start praying! Don’t take a Mexican drinking, they sing God’s praise in Spanish like the National Anthem! The most common phrase in that scratch music they insist on listening to on their paint-flecked radios that look like they've been pulled out of a dumpster: “Es mi vida de me Corazon aye por Dioooos!” ( I should probably note that I have no idea what I’m saying). Honestly, Mexicans are worse than Muslims when it comes to prayer and family. Aye Mamamía! They seem to have a very serious culture with lots of love in it; the kind of idealistic culture that we humanitarians strive for. So why is it then that the Mexican culture in America is so problematic?

Mexico is not a poor country, it’s the fifth largest economy in the world (“made in Mexico” ring a bell). With its beautiful countryside and resort-quality beaches, it is a magnet for tourism from all corners of the earth. Border towns like Tijuana, with a legal drinking age of 18, are party-cities for anyone with some dinero and street smarts. The University of Mexico is also a top-rated accredited college, one of the best in the world. The culture is rich and colorful, filled with lots of love and general friendliness. It’s a culture of celebration and open arms. In today’s American society of Capitalism and every-man-for-himself mentalities, a little love would benefit us all, don’t you think?

Why isn’t it though?

Well for one, most of the immigrants coming over from third-world countries are the poverty-stricken and the very poor. It appears that the poorer the civilization, the less education it has, and the more gravitation there is toward crime and desperate measures. But if Mexico is such a beautiful country with so many means to invest in feeding its people, why do they still have nothing?

This can be said about many countries in which the majority of the population is poor. Albania for example: Albanians are to Greeks as Mexicans are to Americans (they hop the border into Greece or cross the Adriatic to Italy, we’re leeches). They are very family oriented, very religious, and very morally-guided. Same old story. Albania has beaches to rival Hawaii and the land is mostly undeveloped. The culture is welcoming, warm, everyone is family. Its also one of the most war-torn hotspots in the world. Only a crazy person goes into Albania unarmed. Even Iraq! Have any of you actually seen Iraq! I looked at it in a travel book written before the war and am now so mad at my soldier friend who is over there and is not sending me any post cards!

The ancient city of Babylon was in Iraq! An oil rich country sitting on masses of wealth and yet its people are war-torn and starving? What’s going on?

A big problem with these countries, ironically, is their culture itself. Think about it, if mankind has been around for a million years, why did it take us until the last 100 years to invent the light bulb? True, these traditional cultures are very moral, religious, and family oriented, more of what we need in America right? The flip side is that these things hold you down, and only when we started breaking away from our beloved parents and dogmatic teachings did we really start to explore how far we could really go. Jesus was a rebel! Whole countries like Albania, with lots of natural resources and tourist opportunites, are ruined by the gossib of old ladies. I really don't think Ben Franklin was the first person to discover electricity, he was just the first one lucky enough to be in a place where he wouldn't be burned at the stake for announcing that he could command the power of thunder! Doom!

Aside from obvious attitude problems, I think the main problem with countries like Mexico and Iraq and Albania is their governments. Mexico, for one, has no middle-class. The people are either very poor or very wealthy. That means that if the scales are tipped evenly (which they are not), at least 50% of Mexico is poor. Why is this? Probably because the people in power in these countries like it like that. So the ultimate underlying cause is corruption in government. After seeing what happened in Iraq with their Nazi dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, I don’t know how to disagree.

This is why we can’t pull out of Iraq. Every country in the world affects each other now, every country feels the repercussions of another countries’ problems in some way. If we pull out of Iraq now before everything is all set up and the mission is complete, extremists are just going to go in and take it over again and gain another foothold and destroy another Trade Center. Somehow, the problems of Iraq are going to haunt the United States and the rest of the world unless we finish the job. Unfortunately, some countries don’t really care about the affects they have on their neighboring countries. I wonder how many troops Mexico has in Iraq?

So corruption in governments that don’t care about their neighbors constitutes a strain on our economy. Mexico’s unwillingness to solve its own problems seems to me like a middle finger to the USA. Now Mexico’s problems are hopping the border into our country and dragging us down and Mexico is kicking back. Even if countries like Mexico don’t have money to support their people, they still have rights don’t they? Mexico’s constitution is almost identical to that of America’s. So why are its citizens coming to this country and demonstrating for rights over here when they don’t even legally have the right to demonstrate, why aren’t they demonstrating in their own country so they can fix their problems in their own country, which they have stated over and over again that they love so much?

This is the solution. Immigrants need to demonstrate in their own countries to fix their problems or else they will never be solved and the people will continue to suffer. People of their countries need to stand up for themselves and overcome corruption in their own countries for the sake of their heritage the way it was meant to be. Evil is possible only when good people do nothing. A civil rights movement should be brewing in Mexico to stop the corruption, but illegals, go do it over there in your country, not over here in ours! You have power, use it to change things! And in places like Iran and the middle east, if your country does not allow change, rise up! Fight for your rights and what you want for your family and your culture. But the burden cannot be placed on the United States to continually fight your battles for you.

On a final note in defense of Albanians, this recovering country has 70 of its best commandos in Iraq and is sending more to replace Spain’s pullout. They have vowed to stay until the job is done. The irony of this country is that its Northern borders are breeding grounds for the mujahadeen. So to all countries attempting to clean themselves up while still managing to help the greater cause, the people of the United States thank and salute you.

As for Mexico, thanks for the cheap labor. We’re going to milk your problems for all they’re worth. @$$3Z!

I Feel Alienated by all these Aliens!

2006-04-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

I'm A-LEGAL, not Il-legal, even though they sound the same if you say them fast. My father escaped from a communist country and came to this country LEGALLY to fight the vietnam war. We're just a bunch of crazy albanians taking one for Team USA. So when my little bro and sis, 12 years old, say they are afraid to go to school because they're afraid they'll get beat up for not wanting to walk out, I'm thinking "WTF!"

The protests currently going on around the country are pertaining to illegal immigration rights. In the 70's, our government launched a temporary program in which all illegal aliens would be given automatic citizenship if they came forward, allowing them to at least be documented and pay taxes. Now illegal aliens want the government to put on that program again, and are demonstrating on its behalf.

West Middle School, the same middle school I went to almost 6 years ago and the same middle school my sister went to almost 13 years ago, encouraged students on Friday to wear all black to show support for the illegal immigration issue and they will get their pictures in the paper. My sibblings didn't want to wear all black because they don't support the issue. When they said they are afraid they are going to get hassled by older hispanic students for not wearing black to support them, I told them to wear big T-shirts with the American Flag on them! Afterwards, I took them outside and taught them how to throw a right-cross.

Firstly, what is a public school doing touting a political agenda? Secondly, what are they doing coercing students into touting a political agenda? What does illegal immigration have to do with education other than draining its resources? Interupting class time to ostracize non-latino kids seems to me like a civil rights violation, even though it is ironically a civil rights issue! My sibblings have best friends who are latino and until now didn't even know they were different. Now they do, nice job West. It seems like the new way to teach tolerance is to teach students why they are different, why they should hate each other, and then tell them not to.

I support an individual's right to protest and freedom of speech 110%, but it doesn't mean I have to join you. I don’t understand why I can’t get a Team USA jersey during the World Cup when you know Mexico ain’t gonna qualify anyhow homes! I’m just a dumb kid trying to get a job in my neighborhood and I can’t because I don’t speak Spanish! The fact is that NO, most illegals are not working hard and pulling their weight, they’re hoppin’ the border, getting on welfare, draining our resources and paying for them in food stamps, and I know this because that’s the first thing "B" and "V" (a couple of illegal Albanians) did when they came over here.

Freedom isn’t free guys. California IS NOT Mexico. We settled this in the Mexican-American war, and no viva la revolucion, its dead already get over it! If you like Mexico so much, here’s an idea, GO HOME! Just because you can make a few dollars more over here is no reason to take advantage and hurt AMERICAN children. And "American" does not just mean "White." American means all the legal latinos who ARE out here pulling their weight and putting their kids through school. If you would have stayed in school in your own country in the first place, I won’t even continue. Mexico has good schools, better than California (wonder why). The illegals that come over here give me a really bad impression of Mexico even though my impression is completely wrong. It would be the same as if poor Americans hopped the border into Mexico, Mexicans would get a very poor impression of Americans. If you came over here waving the American flag singing our national anthem, I’d say open the borders, but you’re not. You’re flipping my flag, taking my job, insulting my patriotism and doing it all IN SPANISH! You hop the border and the first thing you look for is a taco stand!

I challenge you to name one thing that Mexico has contributed to America. One thing besides cheap tacos and tortillas. And no, our infrastructure would not crumble if we rounded up all illegals and deported them. According to a 2005 study at the University of Iowa, since labor is such a small part of the whole manufacturing, shipping, stocking and distribution process, the most prices would rise would be no more than 3%. That’s hardly $4 for a head of lettuce or $25 for a batch of strawberries. But if we must point fingers, you’re right, American businesses do commonly hire illegals, and if our government would just crack down on the businesses the problem would be solved right? I wonder who runs most of those businesses though? Would it be a shock if a percentage of them were minority owned? I think it would not. And as the government can’t do anything the people don’t want, if the people are all illegals or sympathizers, what can the government do?

Look, don’t put the Mexican flag, or the Iraqi flag, or the Cambodian flag above the American flag in America! WTF! I know that everyone who came here originally came from somewhere else, but those who did either got here when the gates were wide open or did it the right way and either joined the army or applied legally. I feel alienated in my own country. Does anyone feel the same?

Abortion is Killing Me (??)

2006-04-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

I can't decide which is more painful...having a baby or having a baby cut out of me (eeeehhh).

It is now illegal in South Dakota to have an abortion. I'm not sure how much this matters in South Dakota seeing as there is only ONE CLINIC IN THE ENTIRE STATE! But I imagine that the handfull women a year in a state with six-digit license plates are pretty literally pissed off (as if their vaginas are not already under enough stress). I can imagine the ONE clinic is pretty ticked too seeing as with no competition in the rest of the state, they could have a coupon day for abortions and not work nights or weekends with paid vacations. Will this be an indicator of a trend that the rest of the United States will feel inclined to follow? IMO, probably not seeing as its SOUTH DAKOTA and I'm not sure many people could point it out on a map without help. I personally think its a quick move to get some attention seeing as once again its SOUTH DAKOTA and no one cares about it! Poor South Dakota. Too bad its not California which will never outlaw two things even if the entire rest of the world outlawed them: Gay marriage and women's rights. This will not happen seeing as California, with the third largest economy in the world and liberal mainframe, is practically its own country and can do whatever the hell it wants to and still be the best and baddest state in the union. We have the Terminator as our govenor for christ sakes! What does South Dakota have? Is that the state with the cheese or is that Wisconsin? I think if California outlawed abortion, it would cause ripples, but South Dakota?...ehh dunno bout that'un. Isn't it legal to marry your 14 year old cousin in South Dakota? Apperently its legal to marry a 15 year old boy if you're a 35 year old woman and get pregnent by him. That might be Georgia though, I'm getting my southern states all mixed up. Florida seems pretty cool though, except for the fact that they don't know how to punch ballot-cards to save their lives, guess the exceptions really do make the rule, okay I have to stop now about the South, I'm having too much fun making fun of them. I have to say I think this gives new meaning to the term "arogant Americans," I really think its just "arogant Californians," they do most of the traveling anyway! Then again, true that California has the third worse public education IN THE WORLD, so I don't know how much authority we sun-tanned beauties have on political matters, ah who cares, at least its better than being South Dakota. I have a feeling that I'm going to get a death threat from someone in South Dakota after this. Okay I'm done, I'll stop now.

I guess what I have to say is that if people from one side of South Dakota are willing to make the journey all the way to the other side of the state to go to the ONE abortion clinic to have an abortion, I'm pretty sure that the smart ones will be willing to buy a ticket to California to have it done for half the price, or just go a state over! Duh.

As for where I stand on abortion, I'm not pro-abortion, I'm pro-choice because even if I don't have an abortion or don't agree with it, who am I to tell you what to do (thanx Alison)? If I care so much about killing babies, why don't I go volunteer at a childrens hospital or orphanage first and then once those problems are solved, focus on the slaughter of masses of cells. Priorities people, priorities!

All These Old People Are Trying To Steal My Idea!

2006-04-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

Alison and Aeolan came up with this great idea.

“Nikki, you should get a blog.”

But then they realized how great their idea was and tried to steal it from me! Of all the nerve!

My name is Nicole, this is my blog that I took from Aelon and Alison who tried to steal it from me even though they came up with it. Thanks guys. The Nikki_Jilton screen name was also their clever idea to rope-in sloppy-typers on google (hehehe). My deal is that I have no deal. I’m a first year college student trying to figure out the world just like the rest of the matrix. You know those questionnaires in high school where you’re asked to write three words that best describe you? My answer was always “Something Else Entirely.” My life is irony and my political views are just as much so. Despite coming from a moderately conservative family, I just can’t seem to place my loyalties in any one political party. It is said that if you are young and conservative, you have no heart, and if you are old and liberal, you have no brain. Thanks Mr. Weeks for confusing me even more.

I like to say I’m well versed in politics, growing up in the Los Angeles School District will have that effect on people. During middle and high school, I found myself in and out of the principals’ office with the same charge each time, “defiance.” Defiance in California Schools is defined as anything that disrupts classroom activity. Debating the teacher’s and making them look like idiots in front of their students may or may not fall under this criterion. For example, I had a teacher senior year that came in and immediately began to complain about her pension. Her lecture was about American government and how “the government takes X amount of money out of my paycheck and I only make Y amount of money per year because only Z amount of taxes goes into education and I’m left with XYZ of money at the end of the month. That isn’t fair to teachers.” I remember I raised my hand and calmly said something along the lines of “excuse me, teachers get paid what they’re worth because good ones are able to get jobs at private schools while crappy ones teach high school because they couldn’t make it in their professions. I came here to learn government, not to listen to some union-rat complain about her pension.” Yeah, that was pretty bad. Turns out it was also wrong, but the general idea is that education in America is so FUBAR (for those of you who’ve seen Saving Private Ryan) that no one knows what’s going on. I thought I had a few ideas, so I started writing them down.

The experiences I had in the public education system shaped my views of society. If you think about it, society begins in the public schools, and could the fact that our schools are so problematic have any connection to the problems we are having in society? I’m not sure, but one thing I am sure about is that my experience didn’t have to be as “problematic” as it was. I was a student-athlete, scored 100% on the College English Placement Exam my freshman year of high school when senior AP English students had trouble scoring a 90 yet I didn't graduate, played 6 sports and hold the unofficial record in one but never made a varsity team because I don’t know how to play politics, was the only girl on my football team and shaved my head for hell-week, wrestled for 2 years on the boys team and got screwed out of a varsity spot because of discrepancies in course eligibility, got thrown out of more social clubs, sports teams, classes, and IEP meetings than a convict gets thrown in jail, and I'd probably be in jail right now if it weren't for some really really really patient people at my local YMCA. I’ve been around, I know a thing or two about injustice, and it really sucks thinking about it sometimes. That’s where the name of this blog plays in.

”I’m Not Bitter BUT…” also Alison’s idea. Implying that I’ve moved on from the past, but that it still sucks.

Now that I’m out of High School, no one can send me to the principals office for saying something that some else doesn’t like. No one can tell me what to think and what not to think, I can think for myself. This is my little jump for joy in the big bad world, my freedom of expression. Hopefully I have something to contribute, and haven’t just been being a discipline problem all these years. Feel free to tell me what you think of me now. Lets set this roof on fire!