It makes me sick

If you asked your ordinary American who Jeff Gannon is, they most likely wouldn't know.
If you asked your ordinary American who Mamdouh Habib is, they most likely wouldn't know.
If you asked your ordinary American why Michael Jackson was in court, they would most certainly know.
If you asked your ordinary American if Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston were still together, they would most likely know.

Well, for those who aren't up to date on current events, Jeff Gannon is the made up name that a GAY MALE ESCORT has used to to gain White House press credentials as a conservative journalist. In a time when most normal harmless people probably couldn't get anywhere close to the president, this man, using a fake name and having listings on gay websites, was able to get into White House press conferences and ask "softball" questions directly to the president, who by the way is not exactly supportive of gay rights. If you don't know what "softball" questions are, they are questions that are posed to elicit the responses that the president wants to give and wants people to hear. In other words, he was a planted conservative republican pro-administration fake journalist asking questions designed to make our administration sound good, while at the same time keeping other real journalists from asking questions that may ask actual difficult and much needed real questions, questioning the administration and keeping them in check.

Mamdouh Habib is an Australian born man who was recently released from Guantanamo Bay, after being held in a prison there UNCHARGED for three years. He was arrested without charge on a bus heading to Karachi, Pakistan. He was TORTURED by American soldiers, one of his punishments was having a hooker stand over him and MENSTRUATE ON HIM. There are widespread allegations and DOCUMENTATIONS of abuse by Americans, in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, in fact Alberto Gonzales, who has since been nominated and named ATTORNEY GENERAL, was aware of these allegations and did not deny them, rather he twisted and contorted his definitions of torture and the Geneva Convention in order to make these actions appear to be within the law. In fact, allegations such as these were made public prior to the Nov 2 election.

The fact that these things are and have been in the public domain, and directly point to the incompetence and IMMORALITY of this so called family values administration, yet most people don't know about them and still voted for this excuse for a man to be our president, is disgusting! Once again, I have to believe that most people are just plain ignorant, because I can't see how people would vote for him knowing these things.

I won't bother explaining the Michael Jackson trial or Brad Pitt/Jennifer Anniston's relationship (or lack thereof).

Our government makes me sick. The ignorance and arrogance of this country makes me sick. Our media makes me SICK!

Rainy California

Hello from rainy California! Well, it's finally sunny again. The rain seems to have cleared out for the time being, but not without causing some trouble. Luckily I haven't been affected, and my place hasn't been flooded out.

With all the rain it is just like being back in Connecticut. People born and raised here (in southern California) don't understand weather. I try to explain that this weather we have been experiencing is a normal monthly occurance for most of the rest of the country. Growing up here people just assume that sunny all the time is the norm, so when the sun is gone for 5 days in a row, things are out of wack. I mean, hey, it's winter, we're supposed to have bad weather! At least it's not snow, right?

I do have to say though, the rain here is absurd. Things weren't built here to accomodate it. So what would be a normal rainy weekend in the northeast turns into a disaster here. Any place in a valley floods. Houses slide down the hills. People start kayaking down the street. Roads get filled up with mud. Boulders roll over houses. Sinkholes form in people's front yards (or the road for that matter). It's crazy. I'm just glad my apartment is in a safe area.

And I'm glad the sun is back.

Letter to bush supporters

To all bush supporters:

If the president and the government are trying to crack down on terror and those countries that are a threat to others, please explain to me why it is Iraq and now Iran, two countries sitting on large amounts of oil, that we are concerned with. Also, please explain to me how it is our duty to police the world and dictate who and who cannot explore nuclear capabilities, when we, the United States, have nuclear capabilities ourselves.

What happened to North Korea? What about Sudan? Maybe we don't care because there's no financial benefit in it for us....???

Do you really believe that it's in "our" best interest? Do you not see that the benefits really are only to those who stand to profit.... uhh dubya and dick? Speaking of dick, do you know that he still gets $1million per year from Halliburton, the compnay trying to rebuild Iraq and the company with offices CURRENTLY in Iran, against US sanctions?

Wake up! Or explain to me what I'm missing. While you're explaining, tell me how it makes sense to bury our country in debt without a care in the world, but then suddenly worry about social security, which will not run out of money for another 10 or 40 or 50 years depending on who you listen to. Why the sudden worry to keep SS from going into debt but not our country? And who will privatization benefit? Wall street and rich people! And who will it hurt? Poor people! And what happens? The rich get richer and the poor stay poor!

A story of extreme intoxication

Something really funny happened last night. Well, not really funny, but... funny. I live near the beach, so there's a certain amount of noise and public drunkenness that you get used to. These guys that live across the street from me were being both loud and drunk. As my girlfriend and I were walking from my car to my place at about 10:00 PM, I see them come stumbling out their front door into their yard, being pretty much just belligerently drunk. For the next 20 minutes or so, they were loud and annoying, and it crossed my mind a few times to call the cops, but when you live at the beach, like I said, this comes with the territory. You learn to deal with it. Well anyway, it became obvious within another few minutes that they had in some way locked themselves out of their own place. They proceeded to bang on their door and yell at no one in particular to let them in. At least 10-20 minutes of this incessant banging and cursing ensued, which I'm sure everyone within a one block radius heard. Then, the sound of glass breaking. I was only assuming that they had gone around back and broken a window. Laughing, wood breaking... I'm not exactly sure what they had done, but obviously they had not yet broken a large enough hole in the window/house to get in.

Next thing I hear is:

"Get on the ground. Put your hands on your head!!!!"

Well this was enough for me. I immediately went outside to get a front row view of the action. Their was a police cruiser in the alley, and it seemed that these fools might be about to get arrested for trying (in their own drunk way) to break into their own place. And someone else apparently called the cops, whether to report drunk idiots or a break in, I'm not sure, but I'm assuming the latter.

"Officer, we live here!"
"I don't care, get down on the ground, and we'll sort that out later!"
"Officer, we're drunk and we're locked out. And we're trying to break into our own house!"

Another cruiser pulls up. Lights flashing. Another cruiser. Two more. And another. So 7 police cars in total. For 3 drunk fools. At this point my girlfriend and I are laughing/starting to feel bad that these guys will get arrested.

The part I'm not clear on is this. They weren't in the front of the house. (I was assuming they were in the back.) Their back yard is fenced in. So I had assumed they had gotten in/around/over the fence. But it turns out that the wood breaking that I heard was them tearing about a 3 foot section out of the fence that encloses their back yard. If they had already broken a window, I'm not exactly sure how tearing down a fence helps, but who knows. Eventually, after about 20 minutes of this, and all 3 guys finally in hand cuffs, we wait for an officer to walk over to the police car closest to us. He walks over, and we say "Officers, they actually do live there..."

"They do? Can you identify them. They have no ID on them and no way to prove that they really live there."

"Yes, we're not friends with them but we can identify them by face."

So we did our duty and saved our neighbors from getting arrested, although after all this I am seriously wondering if we should have let them. But the best part of the whole night was when the officer walks by us as we're walking back to our front door and says:

"When we searched them, one of them had the keys in his pocket."

Ignorance is bliss?

I get endlessly frustrated by the ignorance of some people. I know old people always complain about the "younger generations", but I really wonder sometimes. My generation is a generation which has grown up never lacking anything, never facing any real hardships, and now I wonder what the result of it will be. (Or are we already seeing it?) I am always seeing little kids who throw fits because their mommy or daddy won't buy them their 50th game boy game, and it makes me mad. I'll be the first to admit it. I can be selfish, I complain when I don't get a hot shower, I complain if I can't afford going out to eat. But then I feel guilty inside, thinking about the grandparents and great grandparents who suffered to make this country what it is. Who had to live their whole lives without credit cards, who had to not eat or not shower for days because, well, that's just the way it was. I think about those who left their countries to come here and give me all that stuff which I now complain about.

The first major world event that I was old enough to be affected by was 9/11. It made me wake up and realize that the world is not a utopia, that things are not perfect. I realized that the hardship of our past here in America is now for a lot of the world. I know there are many people my age (and all ages for that matter) who are concerned, who try to see to the heart of issues and don't buy into much of the bullsh!t we are fed on a daily basis, but there are still too many disaffected people.

People who think that the planet is theirs, and don't see that conserving it and sharing it is an obligation to the future. People who think that the government always has our best interests in mind, that we shouldn't worry, that we should trust them. People who think voting is pointless, who don't realize that people DIE and people are DYING for that right. People who don't understand that war is not a game, that it's not something that only goes on in other parts of the world.

I overhear people at work talking about how successful these Iraqi elections were... Successful? Did they suddenly forget about the past two years there? These people who proclaim "Success!" are the same people who sit in their comfortable chair in their living room and watch the news or people who surf their blazing cable internet connection and see the headlines and truly believe that someone driving a Mercedes to work and sitting in a comfortable air conditioned studio can tell them what it's like to be living in Baghdad, to worry if it will be your house that will be blown up next. That someone might mistake you for a terrorist and kill you. Or maybe these are people who don't even follow the goings on, but just assume "mission accomplished". People don't wonder how they would feel if there were 150,000 Iraqi troops patroling the streets of NYC or Los Angeles. They don't think about the anger and the hatred and the emotions that would be fueling them and driving them and making them crazy. I certainly can't imagine these things, and that's why it is disturbing to me how people are so supportive of this war. (Note: Even though Iraqis were able to vote for the first time in 50 years, I don't feel the war is justified. But this is not the focus of this post.)

I think a major contributer to the problem is our media, and also that we are too spoiled. The news is too filtered, we given the kind and gentle version of things. Our media is too tight. If people would actually see the things going on in the world, the people who are starving or the people who are being blown up or the people who are living in filth pissing in the corner of their hut, then maybe they wouldn't be so indifferent to them. When a little town gets bombed in Iraq, I want to see it. I want to feel it. If it makes me sick, then I should be sick. If we watched the news and were sickened by it, maybe we wouldn't be so quick to discount the losses. Maybe we wold think twice about if we are helping the world or hurting it. Maybe our holier than though attitude would get knocked down a notch.

Maybe then we would be less ignorant to the things going on around us. Maybe then we would appreciate our lives and everything that we are lucky to have.

The weather is here

Ahhh... San Diego. How many places are there where February 1st is just as nice of a day, perhaps even nicer, than June 1st, or even August 1st? I spent my lunch break yesterday sitting in a nearby park. I had the place to myself. (Note: having anything to yourself in Southern California is rare). I sat at the picnic table and ate my PB&J Sandwich, and enjoyed the nice 70 degree breeze, and wondered why on a day such as that no one else would be out and about.

Today, went out and rolled down the windows and reclined the seat in my car and tried to take a nap. I relaxed and almost got my little catnap in, but either way, it was nice. I put on some music and stared at the sky and the trees and the leaves (yes, leaves, in February) and felt the breeze and daydreamed of places I'd rather be (places other than work, not places other than San Diego) and generally just enjoyed myself.

Now I'm back in the office. Is it still nice out? I can't tell through my cubicle walls. If I lived anywhere other than here I just might stand up and look out the window and make sure. But I'm pretty sure the weather has not changed.