America is Insane

This whole Don Imus thing has got me thinking. Personally I don't listen to any shock jocks because I think they are all dumb and coat your mind with sludge. (I get enough sludge in other places, I don't have to willingly ask for more.)

But the above sentence is exactly my point. First of all, he is a shock jock. No where in that title does it say paragon of uprightness and champion of morality. His job is to say and be controversial. If you don't like his irreverence, intolerance, lambasting and joking, then don't listen to him.

All the people who are pretending to be shocked (duh!) by his comments need to get off their self-built boxes of righteousness and be honest with themselves. I bet there is not a single person in the United States who has not said, thought, or laughed at a racist or pseudo quasi racist comment. And those who say otherwise are lying to themselves or are too stupid to realize what the definition of racism is.

And to have Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson be the champions of this so called cause makes me roll in the street with laughter. Not only have they both been known to and been caught saying racist comments but they both have the audacity to continue to call themselves Reverends and yet they don't follow what they preach. It says in the Bible that God will forgive whom he will but of us it is required to forgive everyone.

It did not say, only forgive those people who you are okay with forgiving but if they do something that is really bad or you don't like then it's okay to not forgive them. If you believe in the Bible you must forgive everyone, period. There is no leeway. There is no other interpretation.

The people of the United States have forgotten how to be compassionate, how to forgive, and how to let things go. Our country was based on the idea of free speech. But now we have fallen into the trap of Animal Farm. Everyone has free speech, but some people have more free speech than others.

You can't have it both ways. Either speech is free or it is not.

Pests

I'm not a person who likes to have everyone into my personal life. So I really hate it when you have to work with certain people who think it is their life's mission to ferret out every last iota of information about you.

There are three people at work who constantly pester me about any and everything I do like they are the Brady police or something, and to make it worse I've never actually introduced myself to them. We have to have these stupid name tags at work on our desk and since my name is set up in lights for everyone to see they all think that they know me or something.

The other day a woman who sits next to me sneezed, and one of these pests asks to my back; "You got the bug or is it just allergies?" (She does not have a hillbilly accent but her grammar makes you imagine it anyway.)

So I sit there in silence, my back to her, hoping a miracle will happen and she will get a clue that it wasn't me who sneezed, but after about 20 seconds of uncomfortable silence, in which I can feel the laser light of her eye-beams drilling into the back of my skull, I turn my head and say to her.

"Who are you talking to?"

"You." The pest says.

"It wasn't me who sneezed." I say.

"Oh ."

By this point the lady who sneezed breaks in and starts laughing and everyone is happy as a clam about everything except me. So I grumble and go back to working.

First of all I don't know this pest, I don't want to know her, and just because we sit in the same area of work doesn't mean we have to become friends in the mutual admiration society. I go to work to make money, not make friends, especially with people who are always prying into my business.

And if it had been me who sneezed what business of hers is it anyway?

And third, if we have not been introduced do not use my name like you know me. I hate when people use my name all the time like it brings us closer together or something. If you use my name without an introduction, trust me it does the exact opposite of building a relationship.

And fourth, take a hint. If I don't ask about how you are doing and try to pry my nose under your covers to see what makes you tick, what makes you think I want you to do that to me?

Let's just sit in anonymity and do our job and go home. Is that too much to ask?

Change of Direction

Writing this blog takes a lot of time, effort, creativity, and money that I can't spare. And since real life has finally reared its ugly head I've been considering a hard choice.

I am taking on a new project that is occupying all of my thoughts, creativity, inspiration, ingenuity, efforts, time, and brain power. Because of this I am going to have to cut back on my posting frequency.

Instead of posting five days a week I am now only going to post when the mood strikes.

I know that this will disappoint some, but this blog doesn't pay the bills. Since my new project has the potential to pay off and is something that I actually want to do, unlike my current job, I am going to concentrate my efforts on it.

I am being vague about what this project is because in the past when I've announced what I am going to do it seems like the entire world conspires against its completion.

You can still contact me through this blog and make comments because I am still going to monitor and take care of it, I just won't be writing as often as before.

Agent X44

This is some sort of Philippine secret agent show. I can't decide if I should get the dude's hair or the woman's nose plugs. I'm sure both are very discreet on undercover missions.

Battlestar Withdrawals and New Music

Battlestar Galactica ended its season until next year but it took me until last night when my Tivo didn't record a new episode for it to fully sink in. This is seriously one of the best shows on TV. I say one of the best because I couldn't decide between it and 24, otherwise it would be the best. And now I have to wait a full year until 2008 before the next season starts.

But there is some good news. The last 10 minutes of the season finale were simply awesome. It was filled with unexpected plot twists, impending doom, bringing people back from the dead, and more cliff hangers than you can shake a stick at, but wait there's more.

It also had one of the coolest renditions of Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower cutting in and out with lines from the song mixed into the dialogue and plot. The new arrangement was done by Bear McCreary, who scores the show, and his cousin sings the lyrics. And I have to wait until August before it will be released on a soundtrack. (The marketing guys should have had this ready to go, but oh well.)

So instead of getting the version I wanted, I went to Napster (not an illegal music site for many years, despite the out of touch with reality Rosie O'Donnell's assertions on her new show "Believe Everything That Spews From My Mouth and No One Gets Hurt") to find a similar version.

It turns out to be covered by quite a few bands but almost all of them took the Jimmy Hendrix route instead of an original one. Surprisingly, Bob's original version was the closest, so I jumped on over to Pandora.com and built myself a Bob Dylan channel (yes even I can't believe I didn't already have one).

But here's the cool part. Up pops this band that I've never heard of before called the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and they're awesome. So I went back to Napster and downloaded all their songs. So the good news is I found a new band and with Tivo's "don't delete until I tell you to" feature I can replay the end of Battlestar until August, when I can get my hands on that song.

(Lack of links are due to the late hour. But you're smart people Google's just around the corner.)