nothing new under the sun

Someone or other perhaps some philosophical Greek dude a long time ago once said there is nothing new under the sun. Meaning that nothing will change and it’s all been done before. In a sense that is true. Really the formula one racecar is nothing more than an improvement of the first wheeled cart which is really just an improvement to dragging something that is too heavy to carry.

However the improvements are nice.

Looking at the world as it’s all been done before is like sitting in a room where all the windows have been bricked or boarded up and the doors sealed. Nothing in or out… nothing changes.

Don’t get me wrong stability isn’t a bad thing… yeah ... random thought but that is a whole other story … still really???...beyond stupid. I digress.

The idea that no change is sometimes great and other times fatal.

The trick I guess is to figure out which things to change and which ones to leave alone.

When giving advice about what to change in someone else’s life though are you giving the advise as what you would do or what you think they should based on how their life is not your own. Who benefits by your advice? Do you or do they?

minutes

We fill our days with things we think are worth the minutes. Then we find we don’t have the minutes to do the things that fill us.

Bitter?

Bitter?

Not really, why do you ask?

Why is it that when ever someone expresses a level of disillusionment with how others behave and act toward you, our assumption is to label that person as bitter.

Excuse me????

Bitter is not seeing your own faults in your failures and giving up. Being stepped on, used, lied to and taken advantage of and other things is not being bitter. It may be whinny if it goes on continually. However, bitter it is not.

I’m confused, exhausted, baffle, bamboozled, done in, sold down the river, lost my faith in humanity at times.

I know I’m not perfect and I make mistakes. I admit to them albeit sometimes reluctantly but I will say I’m wrong and mean it when I am wrong and not call the person a bad names when I am wrong.

So with that let me emote my emotions and express myself.

In other news

I saw a movie in the first week it is out - The watchmen.

I did not read the graphic novel and I may not or I may I have not decided if I’ll jump on that band wagon or not. So not being familiar with the source material I can’t say if the movie was true to the source or not.

I did do some reading about who was who before hand.

So some characters I think were true to the source and others were not. I think the movie portrayed a look at our lack of culture and misplaced ideology and worship of immediacy rather than prosperity.

I did like the movie as a whole. I think Jackie Earle Haley is deserving of high laurels for his portrayal of Rorschach. He was believable in every regard to the character’s essence of an unyielding steadfastness to his beliefs even to his own destruction. Better to be dead than to compromise your beliefs. Which I think is something we don’t see often any longer so many of us, including me have a flexibility in your morality and beliefs we dare not stand up for them for fear of a backlash.

I give it a 4.5 on the invisible don 0to 5 scale for movies.
Good action, great effects, and there is a message there too.


Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,

Confused?

Confused

Why is that when a man knows how to take care of housework, clean, shop, do laundry he isn't a worthy person to consider as a person to be in a relationship or is otherwise unmanly. Women as much as men feel he is an open target of ridicule for being willing to do these things.

However these same women will bitch, moan and complain that their significant male other is a worthless, piece of crap that doesn't cook, clean, shop, do laundry or other helpful things around the home?

If someone can give me a valid answer for that I would really like to know.

The natural world is not a theme park

Today Stunt-boy was sick and didn’t go to school. He is feeling a bit better now later in the evening however now I’m feeling like I’ve gotten what ever it is that he has gotten.

Yay, that’s exactly what I need. I do not have any problem taking care of my children when they are ill and if I’m work place wants to complain about it I’ll have something to say which won’t be fun to hear.

However, I hate being sick myself.

With that said was reading about a book I’m still trying to get finished. “Into The Wild.” I had the same problems with another book by the same author, “Into Thin Air.” The point is that I’m not particularly fond of the writing style or really the point that Mr. Krakauer attempts to build an epic level sympathy for the main character, Chris “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless, as if he did some great thing by falling off the grid then dying in the middle of nowhere Alaska.

I know this has been said by several thousand voices before me. I don’t the Mr. McCandless is a hero, in fact I think his death was due to his own arrogance that he was smarter than most people he came across and felt that he could do anything that he heard or read without attempting any practical application of what he was attempting to learn.

I do admire his attempt to cutting himself off the grid in a sense but he didn’t really but more so than most people ever do in their lives. There are people who live off the grid and we don’t hear about them - because they don’t end up dead in the woods. Do I have what it takes to live in the wild. No, I don’t. I recognize my limitation and realize that I could live without many of the things I have and I’m working on eliminating the excess from my life.

The truth is that the corporate world wants us to crave and think that we need all the crap they are putting out there. While I can agree that the world that McCandless was running from needs to change and the frustration of seeing just how corrupt the corporate world really makes most people feel like running away. However, shouldn’t you try to fight the horrible world rather than runaway from it but if you do decide to run away from the world do it with a bit more sense.

The natural world is not a theme park, you don’t buy an admission ticket from some teen in a cage working for spare cash so they can buy x-box live membership credits. It’s the real deal out there and mother nature doesn’t show any mercy, she doesn’t feel sorrow or remorse for taking the lives of those who do not respect that life is cruel. McCandless died and that is sad, and his family surely lives with so many unanswered questions as to why and what if, however if he had used his obvious intelligence to take some preparations he would perhaps be alive today. He is not a hero in my eyes just a person who failed to realize their own limitations and was poisoned by the very society he was running away from that if you go you get to ride all the rides. Well you don’t get to ride all that rides and if you try to ride the rides which you aren’t ready for in nature you just might die.

Perhaps you can get through the book better than I can. The movie was ok and would give it a three over all.


Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,

Gemmah, Recon!!!!!! and other random stuff

GEMMAH, RECON!!!!!!!!!!! And other random stuff.

The title has nothing to do with anything. Except that it is the all encompassing thing for some people. If you have no idea it shows the insignificance of it all however if you do know what it means then it is a kin to the templar treasure.

Fred on you tube is funny.

I’m still protesting the RIAA - because they are horrible people but I really want an I-pod so I can block out the noise at the office but I don’t really have the money for an I-pod or to get a subscription to I-tunes and a lot of people I know say I should just steal music. Hello! That is way I’m in a protest of the RIAA they said I was a music pirate. Stealing music is bad. But stealing money is bad too, so why does the RIAA steal money from the artists. I guess technically they steal music too by pressuring artists to sign contract which force them to give up the rights to the songs they write and give a majority of money derived from those songs to the RIAA. Hmmm. Who is the pirate here?

I have had a weapon pointed at me at least a dozen different times that I can think of.

People have shot at me from a distance a few times.

I’m not sure if I’ve shot any one or not and there is a whole chain of things that go from there.

I have a lot of scars some you can see and some that only I feel.

Wow and other things

I think this one person is probably having an affair but it’s not my concern because I don’t know either person. But that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

The new cat is doing well

The old cat is also doing well

The yard cat doesn’t seem to complain either.

The dogs are still missing.

I have saw. But I have not seen my saw

My dreams still disturb me.

I many be A.D.D. I don’t think I’m O.C.D.


Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,

It isn't that day anymore

So how do you explain something to someone who has no real frame of reference for what you are saying without it sounding like an excuse or pathetic. I know there are things I don’t really get but I do try to be empathic about where others are in their lives. We are free to choose but our choices are limited sometimes by others or by circumstances where we find our lives.

So today I was asked “Why don’t you do this or that?”

I gave lots of reasons why, but really it‘s only one. Mainly I choose to try to be a good parent and be there for my kids and I still choose them over things for myself. Do I regret this, no I don’t regret this choice.

Has it changed my life? Yes it has and mostly I think in a good way. I don’t exactly how it has changed my life but it has. I know I have memories of my children doing things with me and me being there for them and their having more opportunity because of my choice. Now I see them making choices that I would make and choices I wouldn’t make. Doesn’t make me a failure as a parent when they go a different way. I also know that I tried to empower them. I also know I’m not the only one teaching them. Could I have chosen not to be there for them. I certainly could have chosen that path. Where would that road have taken things?

I can only speculate. Would things be any different? Perhaps, they would be maybe they would be exactly where they are now but for different reasons. At least then I could look to myself and know that I made things this way.

Still it’s a choice that has an impact far more reaching than this day and those gone by.

Would I want things differently, certainly. However other people make choices too. Their choices have impacts, either in the reality of someone’s life in that moment of then and there or in the choices of others and our own choices either create or limit opportunity/choices for others.

The choices I made were impacted by the choices of others in my past, and in my present.
While my choices were limiting to my activities they created opportunity for others. My hope is that making the choices today will open more opportunity later. I don’t have a crystal ball, I won’t read my own cards because the crone said it was bad luck to do that, and my dreams only show me pain which is likely to occur or is occurring. So right now I’m creating opportunity for them because I want to do this. Not because I have to, you don’t have to do anything but die. I wouldn’t have the job I have today if people had to make this choice. So I choose.

I justify with other reasons too which are more choices, being shy AKA not being overly confident, being burned by others a few too many times, taken advantage of by others, used, and lots of other unpleasant things. Lack of money which everyone seems to have a bit too much of the lacking today. Yet lots of people want more money for less goods/service than yesterday. Which makes the lack even worse.

You choose it though. Yes I choose. Why don’t you do this it doesn’t cost that much or something else. Well I choose not to have the debt for that because I would like to be able to pay my heating bill. I turn the heat down so I can pay to do something fun a few times a year. Choices or excuses. If you can’t be empathetic they are excuses if you can the are choices.

Maybe I’ve made the wrong choices and I’ve gotten it all wrong. Perhaps when I was six if I had just looked at the cars instead to the trees, it would have all been different.


Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,