Suspension of Disbelief

From this photo...

So we have the beginning of a new year, for many a new semester, and a new president. This is a time of new opportunities to get things right a second time around and get new things right the first time. We have the ability to right our wrongs and right others wrongs. What does this mean to us personally? It's simple, albeit something that will leave a bad taste in many people's mouths. We have to forgive. We have to forgive every person who voted for BushCo once or twice, or even three times if they did so do that this time. We have to forgive everyone who voted for McCain. We have to forgive everyone who didn't want Obama to be the Democratic nominee. This is a time for unity. We must repair the fractures that exist in American society. Take lessons from the way that the Bush Administration (and others past) have run this nation on the basis of partisan politics and partisan thinking and actions. We have to find the strength to let go the feelings of hate or dis...

Know this now, that one day your children will read of a time when racism had been dealt a fatal blow and know that then they will ask why it took so very long. Know this now, that one day we will have the chance to look back upon today and ask if we did what was right or what was wrong. In knowing the future, it would be a simple answer. Yet now, it remains as complex as the world itself, because the problems of mankind are tied so closely to the hearts of all the people of the world that they are not so easily untied from the convictions of our hearts and thereby the people of this world itself. Know this, that, come what may, this world has changed forever. On this day, the 20th of January 2009, history has been made. In the coming years it will continue to be made, no doubt, but let us not forget the unity that this nation depends on to succeed. If for one day we can put aside partisanship for the pomp and circumstance of this day, then why not for another or another after th...

If I had one wish in life, I wouldn't ask for riches or fame. I wouldn't ask for health or love. I wouldn't ask anything more or anything less than this: I wish that everyone, everywhere, from this day until the end of the human race would be able to understand exactly how each other is feeling at any point for any reason. Then I realized, we already can and many of us still choose not to for personal gain.

My favorite color is green because it is the color of new life. I enjoy food, granted I used to enjoy a greater variety, nevertheless it is one of my favorite things. Bad food is the sign of a bad day. So, DC food... Haha! I love music. But not all music. Primarily rock, classic hard rock, and classic metal. Of course, there are exceptions. My favorite song/performance of all time is Queen's "Somebody to Love" from On Fire Live at the Bowl (1982). It's just a profound performance and an even more phenomenal back story. I've pasted a copy of it below. Feeling is what matters to me in music. It's hard to explain but the song, performance, or artist has to have feeling. It has to embrace you. You have to be able to sink into it. It has to make your skin crawl. It has to be almost sexual. That kind of connection. A primitive, almost supranatural closeness. My favorite TV show is The Simpsons singularly because of the inclusivity and profoundly lib...

What's the difference between Obama asking Warren to speak at the inauguration and Obama promising to sit down with foreign leaders without preconditions? Is there a difference between two situations, one which we (apparently) support as a group and one which we (apparently) do not support as a group. The first is sitting down with foreign leaders without preconditions. We are willing to do this, to talk to foreign leaders who do not have our best interests at heart, to open dialog and perhaps change their minds. The second is allowing someone to speak at the inauguration who is anti-GLBTQ rights. We are not willing to do this, because "we shouldn't bargain with civil rights" and "he's a bigot who shouldn't be given a voice". Apply this logic to the first statement and we have the Bush doctrine, one where we have no dialog and no chance of changing their minds. Hmm...

Do you know what the best part of this site is? It's that no one can argue with what I say. And if they do, and irritate me enough, I will delete them. HA! That said, here is my two cents on the whole Rev. Warren issue. The fact is that it isn't an issue. The real issue is that a bunch of people who support Obama and "change" do so because they believe that the change proscribed would be pro-them. Who is them? "Them" is anyone who thinks that they were morally or ideologically wronged by allowing Warren to give the invocation ( ie . pre -approved prayer) at Obama's inauguration. "Them" is not the GLBTQ community as a whole, first, because that is cookiecuttering everyone in a diverse community and second, that does not include women whom he also has some less than favorable things to say about. That said, he should be allowed to give the invocation. Of course, I don't think there should be one at all, regardless of who is giving...

Can't say that I've done too much this vacation so far, but I'm surviving so far. I've had a lot of time to think and that doesn't particularly bode well. Usually when I start to think it means I start to get a little sad. Things never quite turn out the way you want them to. Things never quite work out. Just in general. There's always something that we can criticize about ourselves if we can think hard enough. It's probably key to human survival -- the urge to constantly get better and progress further in whatever interests us. I don't know. Maybe it'll be our downfall too. At least on an individual level I'm sure that happens. Specially, maybe. Oh well, enough rambling. I hate Joe the Plumber. If I see him on TV again I will take up voodoo just simply to poke him with pitchforks and hatpins. Of course, I'd have to get the J the P doll and the Bill-O doll to "share a room". It would only be poetic I think. But I dig...

The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know, we know that we can smile! But there ’s a something in this breast, To which thy light words bring no rest, And thy gay smiles no anodyne; Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul. Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel? I knew the mass of men conceal’d Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d; I knew they liv’d and mov’d Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet The same heart beats in every human breast! But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb...

I love New Years' resolutions. Why? Because they're stupid, naturally. It says something about the human psyche that we make them in the first place. Think about the timing for starters. We conform our resolutions to the beginning of the year, yet rarely the problems they are supposed to solve actually begin at the beginning of the year. Rather they begin at any point of the year. Lose weight, get out of debt, find love, etc. None of these ideas are more likely to come to our conscious mind at exactly the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day. We put them off until then though under the premise that somehow the very fact that there is a marker delineating the beginning of the year that we are more likely to go through with the resolution. Of course we don't hold onto them at any better rate than any other "promise" we make to ourselves during the year. Why should we? Dates hold no significance in this sense to our psyche. It's just foolishness....