Hopefully More

It's another beautiful Sunday here at my job, and although I usually post what I hear/see here in my other blog, Dork in the Corner, I decided to post it here, as well, because it has to do with the news, or rather, celebrity news which should **always** be considered a different breed of animal than **real** news.

I genereally do not get involved in celebrity news. I find it pointless...unless you consider the point being to make the world believe that stupid-inflicted tragedy, self-created drama, and wreckless regard for fidelity, morals, or anything else once considered normal.

I am blathering on.

So my Sunday chat buddy sends me a link to see Kurt Cobain's daughter.

This is the original link he sent me, which has a link to her more....rough side.

At first I thought oh please. Who cares about the daughter of two famous junkies...two famous talentless junkies who made it big due mainly to their stupidity? But I clicked. The first thing that struck me was the painful similarity between her and her father. Don't let that statement fool you. She is beautiful.

Then I read the actual article, which led me to the edgier pictures, which show her tattoos and dark hair and smoking a cigarette. Lovely.

I have tattoos, dark hair, and I smoke, so I am **certain** I sound like a hypocrite here, but the thing is, I worry for this girl. She's not some normal kid who happens to like smoking and getting tattoos. She is the daughter of two seriously debilitated (one of which is deceased) junkies who have no control over their lives and were an embarrassment to Seattle (yes, that is IMHO), Washington state, grunge, rock, America, etc. What makes them even more dangerous (her parents, that is), is that we immortalized a man who made it fashionable to "burn out" rather than to "fade away." We idolized his music, his suicide letter, and on and on.

Then, we gave the junkie whore wife all the attention she could possibly handle, and even as we hated her, we fueled her addiction.

So, Frances Bean Cobain, if you ever read this or someone happens to run across this by pure chance (or mistake), I know you probably hate me for berating your parents, but please, don't follow in their footsteps. Neither one of them is fit to be a role model. And, if it's not too much to ask, if you're going to make music, please have the decency not to rape our ears with trash in the process, like they did.

Can You Read My Mind Yet?

My jaw has dropped, my body cringed, my eyebrow raised, my stomach turning, my pocketbook shriveling.

I ran across this article while perusing sciencedaily.com and could not believe what I read.

I guess it started out innocently enough...a blurb about how donors are helping to relaunch the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), which is part of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) movement. So what is wrong with individual people choosing to donate their money to this? Nothing.

What is wrong is how this ridiculous monstrosity came to be. According to a WikiPedia article, it is a special telescope cost something like $25 million that was paid for by the SETI Institute while UC Berkeley funds operations. Is that really who paid for it though? According to the article from NewsDaily, private donors were sought due to government cutbacks.

Backed by the AirForce to locate debris in space that could be destructive to satellites, the telescope also actively searches for alien life forms, when it is in use.

I am just as fascinated with the night sky as the next person, but putting $25 million into something like this, in California, no less, which is practically owned by the bank because they are so far under, rankles me just a little bit, especially knowing that we are so close to a recession it's scary.

Then I take into account all the millions, if not billions of dollars that fund other programs just as useless as this one and wonder, with all that money, shouldn't they have figured out a way to read my mind or something by this point?

Orange Stuff...And not from Vietnam

The headline read Mysterious Orange Goo Baffles Remote Alaska Village. How could I NOT click on it to read all about it?

This is some serious strange stuff, folks. A neon orange, powder-like substance first showed up floating on the water in the harbor of Kivalina, Alaska. Then winds carried in bunched lines to shore.

The article states that no one knows for sure what it is, hinting a coal mine a few miles away, or orange coral. Indeed, there are types of coral that thrive in sun-deprived areas.

The problem with this, however, is that people have reported it on the ground after rains, and in their gutters. How does coral explain that?

Well, have you ever heard of the book It's Raining Frogs and Fishes? It is a fascinating book chronicling some pretty strange things that happen in nature. There is a neat article on Wikipedia concerning the rain of animals on Earth.

The theories are few and far between, but they are scientific in their assumptions, and definitely interesting to hear.
I definitely recommend you read both the article, the information on Wikipedia, and the book. I have it if you would like to borrow. :)

Gloom and Doom?

CNN article about the end of the world

Before I start my rant, please note that while some of my recent responses to articles have included Bible verses, it is because of the content of the article. This blog was not started to preach, but to share my own opinions and views on the news/media.

Their caravans state the Bible "promises."
I love when people put things about the Bible when they clearly don't read it. It makes my side of the argument that much more easier to defend.

Matthew 24:36"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."

Need I go on? Yes? Okay, I will.


They quit their jobs. They want to preach that they are acting on Biblical basis, but quitting your earthly duty is not Biblical.

2 Thess. 3:10 "For even when we were with you, we used to give you this command: "If anyone is not willing to work, neither should he eat."

Colossians 3:23-24 “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ."

Why would the proprietor of this circus condone these people quitting their jobs and putting their families at risk? Even if they are not actively advising them to do as such, they have not made an attempt to stop this insanity.

2 Peter 2:1-3
"But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.
And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep."

Galatians 1:6-8
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!"

Who is the perpetrator of this? Well, we find the catalyst to be one Harold Camping, who, back in 1992, said that September 6, 1994 would be the end of days...

That day has come and gone by a long shot. Which brings me back to Matthew 24:36. But still, people....desperate, delusional, dying? They continue to follow him. It's...shocking and sickening. The horror story in this is that this retired civil engineer has his own media company and has the means to spread his theories around pretty heavily, and does so. There is even a website dedicated to this "theology," although in good conscience I refuse to direct you to it with a link.

I may not be an overwhelmingly intelligent civil engineer, I may not be a go-to source when it comes to the Bible, morality, or even being a decent Christian (may not? I am not), but I know foolishness when I see it, and I hope peoples' eyes open before more unwary people drag themselves, their families, even their little children on this doomsday chase.

Emotionally, Racially, Politically, Culturally Charged

CNN Article: Are whites racially oppressed?

:: sigh ::

I don't even know where to begin on this. In management training, I was told to never try to sugarcoat suggestions or advise someone that improvement is needed by starting with their strong points and adding a "but" or "however" at the end because it makes the person feel like their strong points are being belittled. It's a lot like saying "I love you, but...." It defeats the purpose and the ensuing words following the "but" negate the positive feeling. So I am not going to start off with the one reason I agree with some the reasons leading to this article.

The article lists in bullet points indicators of this racial discontent, the first few of which I found mildly amusing if not pointless, until I got to bullet point four:

[excerpt from article]
"U.S. Census Bureau projections that whites will become a minority by 2050 are fueling fears that whiteness no longer represents the norm. This fear has been compounded by the recent recession, which hit whites hard."

At that point, a little fire ignited within me indicating a spark of anger. Unfortunately, there really is no way of telling whether this is really a fear among white people or something exacerbated in fantasy by CNN or another entity. Read it again if you didn't catch it the first time. "fueling fears that whiteness no longer represents the norm." I...don't know how to effectively put my reaction to that into words. Really? I grew up on the cusp of two ages - one where there was still racial tension, and one where everything is gearing toward the destruction of that racial tension.

In the small, rural town in Maine that I grew up in, it was pretty bad. My mother is hispanic and my father is white, and believe me, the residents did not let me forget that I was a mixed breed. But as uncomfortable as it was for me, it was worse for my best friend, Carol, whose mother was white and father was black. Her parents actually had to remove her from school because it was so bad. Thing was, when a Puerto Rican moved to town, he became popular fast. Was it that the residents were partial to Puerto Ricans? I think not. He wasn't half. Both of his parents were Puerto Rican, so there was no iinterracial breeding there. When I left that town at 12 years old and moved to Texas, it was a culture shock. A huge one. Not necessarily a bad one.

However, my eyes were young, and it took a while for the reality to set in. Sometimes communities get really good at hiding things, sweeping things under the rug, disguising. After high school, I began hanging out at Starbucks for long periods of time, making friends from all places, religions, races, cultures. There were my Arab "uncles" who once protected me from a wanderer who had had coffee with us then followed me to my car, there was Peter, the Army soldier who had a thing about people not telling him about their foot fungus, there were Sylvia and Ferrell who worked at the Barnes and Noble, Sarah, the barefoot redhead with the huge dog, etc. etc. I couldn't see their religions, their backgrounds, just friends drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes together.

That is, until 9/11. Then one of my Arab friends' stores got broken into and tagged with some not-so-nice names. A week later, another one of their stores was hit....by a truck. The last straw was when we were all sitting outside drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes - the lot of us, diverse group that we were of mixed everything - and this cop passed us, went around the parking lot, came back, parked in front of the Starbuck's (not in a parking space), and sat there...watching us for more than an hour.

After that, my Arab "uncles" slowly stopped coming around.

Ferrell, the guy who worked at Barnes and Noble, he got me into Leonard Cohen. He was Cherokee and had a thing about having his picture taken. He believed it stole part of his soul. But we had fun sitting in his apartment with his roommate, David, listening to Leonard Cohen and talking about nothing.

David, Ferrell's roommate, was a white supremecist. Go figure. I don't know. Maybe that's not what he called himself. Neo nazi. Something. In any event, David and I invariably got into heated, uh, "discussions" about his views on inter-racial relationships. I worked at a convenience store down the street from their apartment, so I ran into them on a regular basis. One day, a bus driver, who was a regular, walked into the store, and this black man looked like a tomato. I asked him what was wrong, and he starts talking about this guy on the Via bus he drives making racial remarks at him and how he kicked him off the bus and the guy was outside. Guess who walked in?

Now, since David was Ferrell's roommate, I felt close enough to be able to speak my mind and tell him off right there in the store. He just laughed and left.

As poetic justice would have it, after all his talk about how races should not mix in marriage and how the border needs to be more secure because the Mexicans are taking our jobs, David fell in love with a Mexican waitress at the Denny's he frequented and I could not shove that in his face enough for my liking.

I birdwalk. I digress. I branch out, even twig out, into memory lane and such.

Back to the article. My problem with that bullet point was...who cares if white is not the norm? Who would want white to be the norm? What is the big deal about another race being the norm?

The next two bullet points, about Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, seemed half irrelevant, half instigating upset about this white-minority debate. The bullet point after that, about the New Black Panthers intimidating poll voters...had absolutely nothing to do with anything else in this article.

This whole article seemed geared at fueling a war between white people who feel status-quo challenged and....well, everybody else.

Now, the thing that I can say, is that I understand, to a point, why some caucasian folks might be feeling a bit, let's say, left out. Partially, though, because I live in Texas. Let's take a look at the job market. You get paid more if you're bilingual in English and Spanish. This may, at first, seem like a reason to irk people who don't know Spanish because it makes them feel less qualified...or whatever, however let's really re-think that feeling.

These people who are bilingual in English and Spanish....had to learn both languages. Even though my mother is Hispanic and my boyfriend constantly jokes he does not understand what she is saying, and her father didn't speak a lick of English...I don't know Spanish. I tried. I took 3 years of high school Spanish and the entirety of the language I retain to this day I learned working for Valero and communicating with the construction workers who went in so I could offer them peanuts for 10 cents with their soda. But if someone goes into a government position knowing English and any other language and gets a job as an interpreter...no one blinks an eye. Why should we be biased against people who speak Spanish?

In addition to that, the amount of help that is offered for "minorities" definitely outweights that which is offered to "white people." I knew someone who used this excuse exasperatingly as to why he could not land a job, go to school, etc. etc.

He was a quarter Cherokee and just did not feel like filling out the paperwork to prove it. Most "white people" in this country can (easily) trace their heritage back to some ethnicity or another instead of just saying "I'm white." Why white? Why not the emerald green of Ireland? Why not a red Russian?


I have a friend who constantly remarks he can't understand people with accents and states he fought for this country so people could learn English. This rankles me to no end, and I keep reminding him that "this country" was stolen from people who didn't speak English, founded by people who did not all speak English, as a refuge to people who were being religiously persecuted. The point seems moot on him, but I refuse to give up.

I did get one thing out of this article. Now I want to read Peter Brimelow's book "Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster" so I can write a book in response.




In conclusion, I'd like to make a shout out to someone who will probably never read this blog, whose face is anonymous, but whose comment mirrored an opinion closest to my own:
laminjatta
"If we’re ever to rise above racial problems, we need to stop being racist. We need to stop assuming that all blacks are underprivileged, that all whites are oppressors (or are privileged directly because of the former racism of their ancestors), and now, apparently, we need to stop asserting that all whites are an oppressed minority.

"The grandstanding and rabble rousing of Limbaugh and Beck aside, they are onto something. We do need to fight racism no matter which way it goes, and there’s no reason to say only whites can be racist. At the same time, we need to be careful not to assume all whites are discriminated against.

"Grouping all people of a color into these broad groups is exactly the kind of thing that caused our racial problems in the first place. Let’s face the reality without stereotypes. Some blacks ARE underprivileged (and sometimes that IS a lingering effect of slavery and the jim crow era)..... but so are some whites – albeit for other reasons, but similarly reasons out of their control. Should we treat those whites differently from the underprivileged blacks just because they are white and therefore their ancestors must have been racist? (Affirmative action and many minority scholarships would say yes. That is one example of reverse discrimination.) I say no.

"Whites should not be punished on the assumption that they are benefiting from the wrongdoing of their ancestors, nor should we assume that they are privileged above all black people because of past racism. They may not be privileged at all. Help should be based on need, not color. Is a white child born to a crack addict homeless parent any less underprivileged than a black child born to a poor black family that has never climbed out of poverty since their great great (....?) grandparents were slaves? Is the white child any more responsible for his situation than the black child? Why exactly do we treat the black child as more needy?

"Conversely, due to the growing racial equality that we have managed to achieve, some blacks are quite privileged. That needs to be acknowledged both to encourage further progress and to prevent further discrimination. Further discrimination how? If a multimillionaire black child applies to a college, our system assumes he is still suffering the lingering effects of racism (clearly, because he is black, he must be underprivileged) and needs a special hand up because of his skin color. According to our current system, it doesn’t matter that he got a ferarri for his 16th birthday, the important fact to us is that he is black and clearly needs affirmative action if he is to compete “fairly” with blue collar white children in the admissions process.

"We should help underprivileged people, not people of a certain color; assuming the two are synonymous is the same racism that got us into this mess in the first place and it’s what whites are now complaining about. In fairness, to assume all whites are now discriminated against is to make exactly the same mistake. It needs to stop."

A Letter to a Photograph

There is an article on CNN.com about picketing outside military funerals by a church protesting homosexuals. On that article, there is a picture of a person wearing a sign around their neck that is cut out of the picture, whose shirt says "God hates fags..." and I think that is followed by .com but I'm going on assumption here.

Whether or not I believe homosexuality is right or wrong or that morals are relative or whatever and whatnot, there is a truth that needs to be addressed here.

If this person were a Christian, then perhaps, during their endless hours of reading the Bible to become closer to God, they missed a few verses.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
—Romans 5:8, New International Version

"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
-John 8:7, King James Version
(and for the record, no one could cast a stone.)

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...."
-Romans 3:23, New American Standard

And for those who are about to argue about venial sins and mortal sins or whatever they are called and the difference and about abominations...please spare me.

Because 1 John 3:15 states that anyone who hates his brother is a murderer and Matthew 5:28 states that a man who has looked at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

So, dear person standing at the most tragic day of a parent's life, when they have to bury their baby who fought so that you could have the right to picket at their funeral, if you're going to protest using (a) God as your backup and reason, make sure you at least have it right. Because according to Christianity, God does NOT hate, as you so eloquently put it, fags. If you are so adamantly against their lifestyle, then that is one thing, but at least have the decency to just state that YOU hate the person and not try to sugarcoat and waterdown the reality.

Huh.

Rage Against...the Rules of Miss America Pageant?

We all saw the videos about the protests in Egypt...the uprising against the corrupt administration of President Hosni Mubarak. The protesters were standing against the shamelessly blatant abuse of power in their government, and, from what I have read at least, so they should have. It is tragic and sad to learn of the numbers that were killed or injured during the civil unrest that is now being called a revolution.

Then Libya, protesting their own crooked government and leader, Muammar Gaddafi, with such violent reactions from their government that within a matter of day 200 plus people had been killed in Benghazi alone. From the Abu Salim Massacre that took place at a prison in capitol Tripoli to the arrest of Jamal al-Hajji who asked for support of a better Libya, the now violence-wracked Libya, indeed, has a reason to stand up and fight now: for their lives.

I take a look at these protests, this clamoring against corruption, then I turn on the news and see rallying taking place here in America, and our own demonstrations seem...petty and silly in comparison. There is a, well, we'll call it a debate, going on about Miss America being under 18. There is resistance growing in the northern states of Ohio and Wisconsin about the state governments talking about interfering with the business of workers' unions due to extreme shortages on funds. The NFL Combine.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder how much of a joke we must seem to the rest of the world.

Sheen Brilliance?

I turned on the news...and there was Charlie Sheen. On Anderson 360 nonetheless. I went to CNN.com and...
There was Charlie Sheen.


They had a video showing Sheen talking to Piers Morgan. I have to admit, the clip was quite humorous. Listening to the first approximately 40 seconds of the clip was almost painful because not only did Charlie Sheen sound like he was high and stupid, continuously lose his train of thought, and insert those annoying "uhs" and "ums" incessantly, he looked like he was near death.

"But it's uh, no I just I I I'm on a mission right now um it's an operation actually to to to write some some terrible wrongs because there's been some things that have happened as a result of of uh you know of of of rehab and crisis management....the shows temporary suspension uh thus far and um and I just think it's important that that people hear the truth and hear it from me because I'm at the dead epicenter of every single moment...."

If that is not blatant narcissism, then please refrain from showing me a more fitting example. I just don't think I could handle it.


My issue here is that, while I enjoy watching Two and a Half Men every now and then, it doesn't mean that I want my news hour invaded with Charlie Sheen. It seems like every time I have turned on the television in the last month or so, there was Sheen. Sheen partied with sluts and cocaine. Sheen went to rehab. Sheen claims he's clean. Sheen says he is the reason the cast is paid as much as they are. Sheen Sheen Sheen, and I can't help but wonder....is this a Sheen brilliant plan?

They say any attention is good attention when you're famous. Indeed, we've all seen the tricks celebrities will play on the couch potatoes of America to drive their ratings up. But this is getting out of hand. Not only is he over-exposed in a light that makes him seem like an iconic idol whose acting career is more than it really was, but this really belongs in a certain section of the news:

Sleazy Celebrity News That Should Not be Taking Precedent Over More Serious, Important, or Otherwise Relevant Matters



I can't stress it enough. If you want to turn on the television to hear about Charlie Sheen, Lindsey Lohan, or Paris Hilton, there are celebrity TV shows for that - TMZ....I'm sure there are more. If you want to read about them, there are magazines aplenty and websites, too, for all your up-to-date information about your must-have stars.

Case in point: one of the most read articles on CNN.com the other day was about Vanessa Hudgens' new butterfly neck tattoo.................

Please, for the love of real journalism, stop shoving the lives of these losers-turned-stars (or stars-turned-losers?) in our faces when we're just trying to get our daily dose of, to quote Judy Davis' line from the 1994 movie "The Ref," "the world beyond our problems, which is now our problem."

But, in the end, I AM blogging about him, after all, and no one in America who does not live under a rock and has access to television, radio, internet, has a newspaper or magazine subscription, or otherwise utilizes any type of media can say they are unaware of the carnival that is Charlie Sheen.

Or Lindsey Lohan.

Etc.