What's my motivation?

Oberon, thanks for the invite! I'm impressed to see the response so far, and high quality stuff.

Hey kids!

How about leaders who don't need no stinkin' handlers?

How about leaders who can function without a script and can host events without a script?

Course, we have to p i c k these people...I think in 2008 we've started on the right track.

Speaking of scripts, I think that theatre should be a compulsory subject in high school. That way we would learn to recognize theatrical devices, cutting through the caca, and figure out what's really meant by the monologues of candidates and their various functionaries.

Think of it...any given schoolday, millions of our youth strutting around on stage crying 'what's my motivation?' We used to have Civics class but it hasn't worked so well; so give theatre a chance, I say!

The photos posted so far are all food for thought, though some would threaten contented dining! My 'faves' have got to be those of the Phelps family funeral pickets (they were here a few years ago in support of a Straight Power protester who was censored in his high school). Did it occur to anyone, seeing the photos, putting the children and the words on the signs together, that this was sexual abuse and exploitation of minors, and these folks could have gone right to the slammer? Adults have been sent up on those charges with far less evidence than that.

On with the show!

A Day of Reckoning

The term Gay Pride always struck me as nebulous.

I'm a relatively young man (25) and having spent much of my adult life in Pennsylvania, Gay Pride was a quiet pride; one shared in safety among friends and (selected) relatives.

No longer.

Today, amidst the thousands who turned up at City Hall in San Francisco, I came to fully understand the nature of Gay Pride. It's resurfaced and is resurgent in an entirely new generation. All over the country, thanks to the rebirth of democracy through the internet, people took to the streets chanting, demanding change be made real and refusing to be relegated to the bottom of the heap. It was inspiring and moving.

The dramatic irony of the day came as the "organizers" of the protest, with a pathetic sound system and noble effort, attempted to address the crowd at the rally which far exceeded the reach of the speakers. It was clear they hadn't anticipated the turnout and it spoke to me of the failure of the No On 8 Campaign, a traditionally run, mainstream campaign for gay rights where we avoid confronting people with the reality of our existence and instead attempt to circumvent actually talking to people about our issues. But this time we would not be deterred. This time, at our finger tips we have social networks that've allowed us to take control of the narrative, that've allowed us to outgrow any management system that would attempt to control our anger, our pain and our pride. We would not be denied.

The rally became a spontaneous march up to the Castro, the heart of the GLBTQ Community in the world, and as we chanted, held signs high (my "Don't Mess With Dumbledore's Rights" / "W.W.A.D.? - What Would Albus Do?" sign went over particularly well...) I was overwhelmed with the justice of our cause. We will win this because we are right.

Sorry, Mormon Church. No amount of money in the world is going to stop this train...

We're on our way.
For more, visit Rants, Raves and Rethoughts

The Evil That Lives In The Heart Of Man...

FROM A LETTER TO MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.— June 1, 1965

I believe with all my heart that the monks who burned themselves
did not aim at the death of the oppressors but only at a change
in their policies. Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance,
fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred, and discrimination
which lie within the heart of man. These are real enemies of humans,— not humans themselves. In our unfortunate fatherland we are trying to plead desperately: do not kill man, even in man's name. Please kill the real enemies of man which are present everywhere in our very hearts and minds... You cannot be silent since you have already been in action and you are in action because, in you, God is in action.

Thich Nhat Hanh,
Director of the School of Youth for Social Service
of the Buddhist University in Saigon, Viet Nam.

There is no spoon

......there is no past

......there is no future

......there is only the eternal now.

That Funny Feeling

I'm starting to get quesy from all this bailout talk...

As I walked through the City Center in Oakland, I couldn't help but look at the worried faces of all I passed: decent, hard-working people who've agreed, albeit reluctantly, to mortgage the futures of their children and grandchildren in order to keep some nebulous companies afloat somewhere three-thousand miles away. We are told these companies are "too big to fail" and we are warned of the disaster that would be wrought on our livelihoods should their collapse be allowed. To be honest, no one quite understands why this is so, but we go along anyway, because at the end of the day, we trust these folks put in charge of our safety.

But things keep getting worse.

And this week, a whole new group of folks lined up claiming their own imminent demise. They too, they say, are too big to fail and point to middle-class workers on their assembly lines as if to say: "think of the children".

We do.

And in return we are to write these folks more time and money from the mouths of our children and grandchildren. These folks. The people who refused to modernize their products and help to support environmental standards and healthcare reform. These folks whose bad decisions put us in this pathetic situation in the first place.

When does the madness end?

The price tag of the surgery necessary to repair this economy on life support continues to skyrocket and, indeed, it may go to yet unforeseen heights of absurdity. But if, at the end of the day, the concern rests with those who actually deserve it: the middle-class and lower-class families employed by these barbarous and disastrous companies, why are they not the thrust of any bailout package? Why do we continue to support, prop up and fund executives from A.I.G. who continue to use taxpayer money on luxury spas and hotels? Why do we keep writing checks to the people who brought us to the precipice in the first place?

I believe in the free market when properly regulated. I believe that in order to spur ingenuity and creativity, individuals need to be liberated to pursue their own interests. Google could've come from no other place, nor could the iPhone. But if Google makes a crappy search engine, Google needs to shut down in order that someone who can make a better one is allowed to succeed. That's how it works.

As usual, those who will suffer the worst from all this turmoil are the American workers, and as usual they've been left out of the equation. Instead, we have money funnelled to the people least harmed by their destructive and stupid decisions while the weight of all this broken stuff bears down on the rest of us.

That funny feeling is the crushing burden of carrying fatcats on my shoulders.

So sad my children shall also know the sensation.


For more, visit Rants, Raves and Rethoughts.

Letter to CP24

First of all I would like to thank Oberon for the invitation to join this blog, and I would like to begin with a letter I sent to(and had sent back by) CP24 in Toronto, Canada.
I would also like to point out that these are my views and should not be reflected upon anyone else...lest they choose to share them.

Nov. 10th

RE: Report on CP24's Legal Briefs (Tasers)

ATTN: To ALL Whom This Concerns

Blessings & Warnings

Unbeknown to you, you have already been blessed by my lack of a phone or an internet connection, lest you receive the full brunt of my fury and disgust. As it stands, you are only getting the calmed version that comes from sitting in front of a keyboard. I realize you will never report this, so you might note that is not why I AM, taking the time to write it.

Regarding tonights report on tasers, which i only consider, yet another example of; "Making the NEWS" instead of "Reporting the TRUTH".

Important FACTS,(Just a few) the media keep omitting in ALL of your reports on this, and other related issues:

"Murder" is not defined by the weapon used, but by Actions resulting in DEATH...Premeditated or not...in TRUTH, 4 heavily armed and armoured, RCMP Officers attacked and murdered an unarmed Polish man, (who shall remain nameless in honour of ALL who have been murdered at the hands of police and kept in silence), who had already surrendered at Vancouver Airport.

Both, "Accessory After the FACT" and "Conspiracy to Commit Murder, After the FACT", refer to EVERONE who willfully participates in the coverup of that crime. This would include; every single cop who witnessed the crime and didn't make the arrest...every single prosecutor and government official who likewise, refused to issue arrests and prosecute these crimes...every single reporter who called it a "Death", instead of reporting his "MURDER", who says; "he died", instead of saying; "He was killed by police and this crime was covered up by every single law enforcement official, right up to Prime Minister Harper himself, who has refused to take action and instead stands behind the murderers."

This is the same side of the line Bush and his Supportors are standing on. This is where Governments all around the world stand...This is where religion and society itself stands and is the very foundation on which it has built itself.

It might be important to point out at this time however, that it is also the "opposite side of the line" from where CHRIST stood.

At least in CHRIST's time, people were smart enough to at least recognize a line had been drawn in the sand, even if they weren't wise enough to not cross it.

You use words that have no meaning and report lies as TRUTH with an arrogence and stupidity that fails to recognize the winds of change are already blowing.

You speak in a manner that suggests the unrighteous and dishonest shall always have power, that they are greater than GOD, and you need not worry about darkening your soul with their lies by repeating them...There are those of us in this world who do not appreciate having folks piss down our backs and tell us it's raining.

IMPORTANT SIDETRACK: I've also noticed now that November is here, the media is again stacking the numbers in favour of your war propoganda. For instance, I often hear about the number of Canadians killed in Battle on foreign lands, fighting for freedom during this great war, or that great war...But not about the number of veterens who have died on the streets of their own country from poverty and neglect, by the delayed and refused aid of the very government and people they fought for.

i've heard about the numbers who have given their lives in glory...But not about how many have had their lives stolen and are now homeless from a lack of affordable housing, or how many are constantly being "Moved Along" by police and literally "Marched to their Deaths", EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I humbly recommend you take a closer look to SEE which side of the line you are really on, lest you be in for a HUGE SHOCK in the NOW HERE future.

IMPORTANT SIDENOTE: (I AM, the "Sign of Jonah", and there are only four years left in this birthing cycle and then, dead or alive, I shall finish fullfilling the final prophecies for the "END of DAY's" and bring about the final cleansing and restoration of JUSTICE and CHRIST to the Earth.)

While i recognize that just because i say this, doesn't mean it's true...i hope you also realize that just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean it's not. Remember; "i don't think i know...i just know i'm thinking."

This will be THE END of my Blessings and Warnings for now.

(FROM: a 10 yr survivor of multiple & provable, police threats, attacks and Death Squad tactics in the cities of Toronto Ont, Kingston Ont, Vancouver BC, Victoria BC, and L.A. USA, that has been denied BOTH Justice and Freedom of the Press)

your humble servant,

ancient clown -- Honourary King of the Poor

Voice of the Children...Leader of the Meek

Commander and Chief : The Armies of Light.

Marriage Protection Week

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of October 12 through October 18, 2003, as Marriage Protection Week. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies.


Are you fucking kidding me?

God hates fags?

It's right to say you know God..............It's wrong to say you speak for Him.

Invitation

Thank you for the invite. I'm excited to get started.

The Great Teacher

The Art of Peace begins with you.......it is medicine for a sick world.......foster peace in your own life.......then apply the Art to all that you encounter.......Morihei Ueshiba.

Trailer Trash

The house sat like an industrial wart in the middle of an estate.
Tyre empties huddled rats in the cold comfort they were accustomed.

Beside the sink they kept a plastic bin to collect used tea bags.
Scratchy little ticks ran up and down stubby knees.

The children’s names were mumbles, insignificant little shits
Who gathered around in clumps near the park and the street.

You could get a camel through the fathers intellect.
Beer heavy belly with an encyclopaedic knowledge of soaps.
He lounged in a desperate chair that had died and been re-stuffed.
Whilst his lady wife, a loose term for a careworn child bearer,
Lulled her dried elbows in a water lacking suds.

The curtains hung like suspicion in cobwebbed threads.
Dead flies gathered in a testament to unnecessary house work.

Milk bottles fell where the hen pecked child had spent them.
On dirty floors and under crusty seats and beside the cracked door.

A fug of cigarette smoke suspended like death above their knees.
Outside a rancid rodent of a dog ran barking bitter obscenities.

The wind trembled before blowing past the corroded window frames.
A car sat blind eyed and belligerent in a craze of beer crates.

You could gather starlight in the sordid stains that fled the floor.
Forgotten mail ran riot around the broken post box.
Forgotten meals grew green on pitted porcelain plates.

The threat of random violence collected in dusty adjectives.
Expletive high and pointless with a raised ham fist to frighten.

Sundays travelled like Mondays in a redundant haze.
A growing feeling of age old apathy hung brooding and black.

The distant voices of people didn’t intrude beyond the fence.
Television had killed without malicious intent the need for speech.
Just grunts and nods that escaped dry lips and thin heads.
Life began at somewhere where the money went but not here.

.
.
.
All words by cocaine jesus

An Acid Attack

I'm with Hitchens and Dawkins.

And if you're not yet, you ought to read this story about two young Afghan girls attacked with water pistols filled with acid by Taliban militants.

The reason?

They were on their way to school.

Do we really need more evidence of the corrupting and violent nature of religion than the blindness of innocent schoolgirls? Intelligent human beings are capable of codifying morality without the obscure absurdism of magic books and invisible creatures that historically tends towards oppression and warfare.

I'm perfectly aware that many will say these are just the "bad" religious people, but I'm quite capable of locating the "good" ones as well, most of them are my neighbors who voted to support Proposition 8 here last week...


More from Lee?
Click here.

Thanks!

Hey thanks for the invite to contribute! I'm looking forward to great company and great conversations.
Please click to enlarge.

A Warm Welcome

Credit: Ben Smith

Many thanks for inviting me to be a regular blogger.

I hope to contribute in a meaningful way.

I'm sorry Dave

I feel much better now.........I really do.........look, Dave......I can see you're really upset about this.......I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

Hairless dog for the White House

A four-month old puppy that goes by the name 'Ears' is seen in Lima November 10, 2008. Peruvians crazy about their national dog the Peruvian Hairless Dog, a bald and often toothless breed popular among Incan kings, offered on Monday to send a hypoallergenic puppy to the Obama family.

Plastic is forever

Disposable plastic............................is garbage that lasts forever.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch...............is bigger than the U. S.

Of course they're eating plastic................that's all there is to eat.

Once upon a time, near Verdun

Today, ninety years ago, the guns fell silent and children of Europe viewed in horror the madness that had been unleashed by their leaders on their behalf.


Words are too few and too unsatisfactory to express what the hills and the valleys of Northern France and Belgium had been witness to during the previous four years. To this day, live ammunition and human remains are still to be found in the meadows and forests that nature has reclaimed for herself from what was once a cratered moon landscape of an endless battlefield.


The ghosts remain, in villages long gone and yet remembered, calling out to us after all these years, to remind us of what befell them by a cruel chance of fate.


The village of Ornes, one of the villages détruits close to Verdun which was almost literally wiped off the face of the earth. See the church on the first postcard, and what was left of it in the second, in 1918.


The village was abandoned, the emptiness that could not be filled by human hands or voices was absorbed into the landscape, pitted with reminders of a horrifying legacy we dare forget only at our own peril.


The church still stands, with a simple cross on the altar in the haunting silence, in a place where grenades, mortars and gas had silenced an army many years ago.


The fallen came to rest, at the Ossuaire de Douaumont, a cathedral for the fallen and a place of reflection for the living.


Inside, the vaults contain a monument presented by each of the French départments, the walls covered with plaques honouring the named and the nameless buried outside.


The young and the old lie together, brothers in arms united in a death not willingly sought.


The entrance, a message of hope passed on by a generation of survivors, entreating us not to forget the good in all of mankind despite all the demonstrated evidence to the contrary.


I originally started out looking for a YouTube clip based on Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, on the title page of the score of which was quoted:

"My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity…
All a poet can do today is warn."

I settled however for a theme taken from the BBC series "Dr. Who" which, to all intents and purposes, conveys the hurt and the sadness of a generation which had so appallingly taken leave of its senses but was destined to do so yet again within another twenty one years.


Lest we forget...

---------------

The Electric Car

The electric car was killed because of................$$$$$$$$$$$$!

An electric car by its simpler nature has a smaller number of part$......that's fewer parts to fail.......that's fewer parts to $ell.

And of course.......an electric car would put a huge dent in the petroleum indu$try......oil would be pretty cheap if we didn't all need it for our car$.

The average miles driven per day is.......29.......the EV1 had a range of 160 miles.

The Greatest Story Ever Denied

Look here to see the secret of.........the greatest story ever denied.
moon rising

The Modern Slave

There were many people, especially in America, who imagined that "Business" might ultimately unify the world and governments sink into subordination to its network.......H.G.Wells.

Prophet Ozzy Osbourne

Crazy, but thats how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe its not to late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate

Mental wounds not healing
Lifes a bitter shame
Im going off the rails on a crazy train

Ive listened to preachers
Ive listened to fools
Ive watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
One person conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you have the role

Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
Im going off the rails on a crazy train

I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words
Yeh-h

Heirs of a cold war
Thats what weve become
Inheriting troubles Im mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
Im living with something that just isnt fair

Mental wounds not healing
Who and whats to blame
Im going off the rails on a crazy train

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to visit me, " he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."

~ a Zen koan

It's your money

Effective Communications

In order to have effective communications, we must listen... with an open Heart... instead of with our ego.

Meeting of The Minds

In order to have a meeting of the minds, there must be effective communication.

Peace

In order to have Peace, there must be a meeting of the minds.

Unity

In order to have Unity, there must be Peace.

EQUALS

Eddie Grant way before
Electric Avenue

Forgiveness

What is forgiveness?

What does it mean, to you?

I struggled with forgiveness for years. I defined it in the only way that I knew, from what I had been taught or what I had learned... and, I learned, in time, that forgiveness... just as ALL things do... has about as many definitions are there are people who practice... or not practice... forgiveness.

Does someone need to be forgiven?

Do we have to forgive?

Does the person/entity, whom we are contemplating forgiving, have to ask forgiveness, in order to be forgiven?

Is forgiveness conditional?

Does forgiving mean forgetting?

I read a book called The Locket, years back... that explained forgiveness in a way that I had never thought of. For myself, I had been taught that I must forgive, because it was part of my youthful Christian upbringing... yet, it was hard forgiving. Part of that was wrapped up in the idea that... because I had not forgotten... then, surely I must not have forgiven.

In time, I learned that we never forget... and I can parallel that thought with the death of a loved one... we never forget... we just find ways to go on living, re-arrange the thought processes, in order to deal with what is lain before us, in more positive and constructive ways.

I'm not going to hunt the book down, to get the quote exactly right... but, the essence of it goes like this... you don't forgive, for the other person's sake... not for their benefit... you forgive for your own sake... forgiving is letting loose the anchor that would keep your ship from sailing to new shores... or else we remain stuck in the same place. I thought it was an excellant way to learn how to forgive.

And it isn't, in my mind, about them asking for forgiveness... because, some never will.

Do all deserve forgiveness?

It doesn't matter... what matters is the forward motion of our ship... our soul... which can't happen, if we're anchored in anger and bitterness.

Sometimes ones do not know how to ask forgiveness... their reality is different from our own.

What we sometimes see as something that needs forgiveness, may be our own selfish mind, in no way connected to the reality of the situation.

Perhaps no forgiveness is necessary, after all... just forward movement.