So Ends a Strange Year

Me on Christmas day 2008. Can you guess who I voted for?

Someone parked my dream car (Scion tC) beneath my apartment during the week we got hit with a snowstorm. They were stuck for days and I dreamed about the car being mine! My apartment is the one with the President Obama sign in the window (like I needed to tell you that).

The statue of Abraham Lincoln in the South Park Blocks, getting dumped with snow the week before Christmas.

With Charles Lewis on election night at his headquarters.

Holding the cake that I made for election night, at Charles Lewis Campaign Headquarters

The special edition election cake I made (my third version, as I made election themed cakes in 1980, 2000, and 2008)

Not much of an entry today...but I wanted to wish you a Happy and safe New Year's.

Whatever else might be said about 2008, it was probably the most exciting one of my lifetime due to the historic election and all the drama associated with it. I'm looking forward to a calmer 2009.

Music Video Monday: Man in the Mirror

Since tomorrow is my birthday, I decided to pick for this week's music video selection a song that still resonates with me, twenty years later. It's Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror", of course. With all my nostalgic focus on the year 1988, why not pick a song from that year for the last Music Video Monday of the year?

The music video is a series of images from world history about the best and the worst of humanity. I'm not sure what Michael Jackson wishes to convey, other than maybe we all possess the capability for great evil and great compassion, and the choice is up to us which side we choose in every instance.

As we move into 2009, I am hoping that all the self-reflection I've done this year will result in something good...namely, landing the job that suits my passions, interest, abilities, and values. Yes, all year long, I looked into the mirror and want to "make that change."

It's a perfect song to end the year on, as we get ready to make our New Years resolutions about what we each hope to change and accomplish in our lives for the coming year. Whatever may be the case for the coming year, I hope that it truly is a year of changes. I'm so ready for some good changes in my life. I think I truly earned such good fortune for 2009.

The True Spirit of Christmas

On Christmas day, in the evening, I watched the French film Joyeux Noel that I had been wanting to see for a couple years. Even though I heard good things about it, my hesitation about seeing it was that I'm not fond of war movies, especially during the Christmas season. It really does take a lot for me to "get in the mood" to watch a war movie. Since this one is about a situation that occurred during World War I, I was even more hesitant to watch it. I hate World War I. It's one of the least interesting wars for me, because I think it was completely moronic, unnecessary, and an incredible waste.

In a political science course in college, I had to read the excellent "Why Nations Go to War" and there was a chapter on World War I. Basically, the war was completely preventable. It was the result of the alliance system and faulty communication. If I'm not mistaken, the sheer stupidity of World War I was one of the examples that Kennedy used in his unwillingness to start a war against Cuba during the Missile Crisis of 1962. I'm glad that we had a president who learned something valuable from history, for we might not be here today if the USA and the Soviet Union had gone to nuclear war over the situation in Cuba.

But, despite the festive occasion and the need to feel positive about the holiday, I forced myself to watch the film and endure the opening scenes of war. Once past that, I found myself more interested in the story and liked the movie more and more.

Joyeux Noel is about the known situation where, on Christmas Eve and day in 1914, soldiers on both sides of the trenches called for a truce and "fraternized" with one another in the spirit of goodwill. The film shows the perspective from the Germans, the French, and the Scots and what I most love about this film is that it is probably the first "tri-lingual" film I've ever seen. We get equal dialogue in German, French, and English and I absolutely LOVE it!

The way the truce begins is that the group of Scots decide to honour the holiday by requesting to their bagpipe player a performance of a favourite holiday song. Since the trenches were in close proximity (with the deadly "no man's land" separating the opposing trenches), the Germans and the French could also hear the bagpipe. Not to be outdone, the Germans sing a Christmas carol and even put out Christmas trees for all to see along their trenches. Germans are big about Christmas trees (having lived in Germany as a teenager, I can attest to this tradition). Not even the roughness of trench warfare will cause Germans to forgo their sacred "tannenbaum."

Officers of the three nationalities soon meet in no man's land to toast one another and open a dialogue, which encourages the rest of their men to climb out of the trenches and meet in the middle to exchange greetings and show one another photographs of loved ones back home. Despite the language barriers, the men see one another as having the same feelings: missing loved ones back home and hating to be on the front, and even scared of being killed. There's even an argument over a cat that constantly walks back and forth from one side to another. The Germans named it Felix, but the French soldier claims that it goes by a different name.

The chaplain for the Scots gives a multinational Christmas Eve mass, which gets him in trouble later with the bishop, who delivered a nationalistic sermon of his own about the evilness of the Germans and telling the Scots soldiers that God wants them to kill "the krauts" for the betterment of the planet. Yikes! Sounds a lot like Pat Robertson.

On Christmas day, all sides agree on the importance of burying their dead and offering last rites. It was a multinational effort. Afterwards, they played soccer, talked with one another, and continued the festivities as though they weren't at war. It was truly amazing to see.

Of course, their respective governments saw this as an act of treason. For obvious reasons, nations at war depend upon obedient soldiers to kill the enemy without question. It's much harder to kill someone when you know them, met them, or know personal details. It's the reason why to this day, giving enemies demeaning nicknames ("gook", "hajji", "raghead", "kraut", "jap") is part of that psychological process of thinking of the enemy as less than human.

All of this illustrates why war is an incredibly stupid thing that I hope humanity will one day outgrow. I'm all in favour of banning warfare in favour of bringing back "dueling." Can you imagine all the lives and expense saved if we had just put Bush and Saddam in a room with a pistol each, letting the man with the quickest draw win? Of course, the political elite would never allow that because they are cowards and prefer to use pawns for cannon fodder.

That many men in the trenches saw the humanity in the enemy on Christmas eve shows how ludicrous World War I was. Today, Europe is unified and it's hard to believe that Germans once shot at the French and British in two world wars. Now, all Europeans care more about quality of life issues and visiting one another's historical sites. It's a true elevation of humanity at its best.

Can that happen in other parts of the world? Well...there is a difference between European countries quarreling and a "clash of civilizations" that is going on right now. It would be too hard for Americans to ever leave the comforts of the Green Zone in Baghdad to join in fellowship with Iraqis, some of whom may be terrorists who don't care enough about their own lives so why trust them with ours? Besides, with the differences in culture and religions, there is no unifying holy day between Christians, Jews, and Muslims that would inspire the same kind of "Christmas Day truce" between the warring parties.

When the film ended, I was surprised by how good it was. For a movie about war, it actually had a hopeful message and was easily watchable on a sacred day like Christmas. I highly recommend this one for your viewing. Its just one more reminder of who I am at my core. All through my life, since elementary school, I've always sought out foreigners for friendship and I truly believe that I'd be most happy in a career where I had working contact with foreigners on a daily basis. I love the challenges of trying to communicate through our different languages and finding common ground in some surprising things. If anything, this film shows the overall decency of the men who are asked to fight in war while the leaders who wage wars are the inhumane monsters to be disobeyed.

"Marley" Movie Shows Surprising Depth

On Friday, I went to see Marley and Me with Christine. I finished reading the book by John Grogan a couple weeks ago, so I couldn't wait to see this film, though I expected it to be a kind of fluffy, popular fare (the kind of popcorn movie that critics pan and award shows ignore). Boy, was I in for a surprise.

I'll state right off that I'm not a fan of Owen Wilson. He plays the same doofus in every movie, so his range is very limited. I would've preferred a more likeable actor like Greg Kinnear in this movie. Jennifer Aniston is an okay choice, though. However, every time I see her, I always think of Rachel...a role I don't think she'll ever be able to escape. She's a sitcom actress who can do well in romantic comedies and other fluffy fare.

The true star of the film, though, is the labrador retriever (at various ages). From puppydom through old age, the parade of labradors provides the backdrop for this movie: the life of a married couple through the process of adulthood: honeymoon, career, home, children, and career change. Through it all, Marley provides the laughs and adventure. The movie is incredibly loyal to the book. I didn't think they would feature the trip to Ireland, the stabbing of a neighbour, and the move to Pennsylvania, but it's all there. Some details were changed, which is understandable...but many of the scenes in the book are all on film, including the hilarious one when Marley jumps out of the car window while John holds onto his hind legs as they navigate through traffic.

Some of the supporting characters were notable: Alan Arkin as John's boss at the newspaper. He comes across as a man without a sense of humour, who claims to be laughing his ass off when he really isn't.

Kathleen Turner was a shocking surprise. She has not aged well at all! What the hell happened to the fine actress of Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile? I barely recognized her. She plays the doggie obedience school instructor.

Eric Dane plays Grogan's colleague and friend at the newspaper, Sebastian. I don't know why he's in the movie other than to provide a contrast to Grogan's family man. Dane plays a single guy who has no problem with the ladies (he is, after all, known as "McSteamy" on Grey's Anatomy). He's not above using dogs and babies to charm women who pass by. His character seems to be modeled after writer Sebastian Junger, as he jets off to exciting and dangerous locations like Colombia to interview Pablo Escobar. His whole point in the movie seems to be an acknowledgement that, yeah...single men might have great freedom and the excitement to go to dangerous places on dream job assignments, but it's also an empty life of searching for one temporary relationship after another. Grogan's life is more stable, with the textbook marriage/career/kids that we're all expected by society to have.

I was surprised by the depth to the movie. It's not just fluffy comedy, but an actual drama of a family's growth and changes, with the choices one makes that leads to angst at midlife when some kind of change is sought. If the film has any flaws, though, I would have liked to see even more Marley. If he were an actor, he would only be considered a supporting role when he's actually the star of the movie...the reason people would want to see this movie.

Like Labrador Retrievers, though, this movie is incredibly likeable and loyal (to the book it's based on). It's the perfect movie to be released on a day like Christmas. It won't get nominated for the major awards, but it's the kind of film that families will enjoy seeing.

"Valkyrie" Fails to Thrill

On Christmas day, I went to a downtown theater to meet my brother for Valkyrie, one of the most anticipated movies of the year for me. I'm a big fan of movies about Nazi Germany for some reason. Since childhood, I've been interested in propaganda, as art and as a process. No government in history was as successful at propaganda as Nazi Germany. It was a fully functioning propaganda state and serves as a warning to us all.

The danger in our country is that we don't believe that our government subjects American citizens to propaganda, but I think the Bush Administration totally disproves that naive idea. What is the Fox News Channel but a propaganda network for the Republican party? During the lead up to the Iraq War, no major news station would feature a credible argument against the war, like they did during the lead-up to Clinton's desire to send troops to Kosovo in 1999. Americans were totally shaped by the media's desire for war in Iraq. We ignore the lessons of history to our own peril.

That's how Valkyrie opens. From Germany's campaign in North Africa during World War II. Tom Cruise as Colonel von Stauffenberg is writing in his journal about the importance of doing what's best for Germany, even if it means disobeying the current government and leader. As I watched the early scenes, I wondered if this film was meant to be a sort of meditation on the state of our own government and how Americans should view the Iraq war.

As the movie rolled along, though, I thought it was a bit slow moving and kind of boring. It lacks a certain kind of tension. Granted, since we know the outcome of this based on historical events film, the tension has to be built around what the plan is (how a group of officers try to assassinate Hitler) and how it fails. The 2000 film Thirteen Days was about the Cuban Missile Crisis, which we knew the outcome of, yet the tension was there along with some great performances. Valkyrie fails to achieve that kind of suspense, unfortunately. Even more, the scenes of Von Stauffenberg and his wife and children lack emotional chemistry. There simply wasn't enough interactions to make you care. It had a sort of "tacked on" feel, as filmmakers realized the necessity of showing Von Stauffenberg as a family man with a lot to lose.

The criticisms about the different accents among actors is irrelevant. It wasn't even noticeable to me. I was wrapped up in the story, of seeing a glimpse of life in Nazi Germany. Cruise does a good job, though his persona is such that I do have a hard time seeing him as any character. He doesn't truly "disappear" into the role the way Sean Penn did as Harvey Milk. The other actors are better. It was interesting to see how they plan to stage the coup, using the reserve army to move against the Secret Police in the aftermath of Hitler's assassination. There are a few scenes with Hitler. I appreciate the amusing moment when Hitler praises Von Stauffenberg to the others as an example of an exemplary officer to be emulated.

In case you're wondering what "Valkyrie" references...it's from the famous Wagner opera, which Hitler had claimed that to understand Germans, one had to see Wagner's Valkyrie, a mythological view of German history and destiny. Operation Valkyrie was a contingency plan for how to preserve the Nazi Government in the event of Hitler's death. Colonel Von Stauffenberg wants to dismantle Hitler's government by having members of the SS (Secret Police) arrested, as well as Goebbels, the chief propaganda minister; and shut down the concentration camps.

By the end of the movie, I expected more out of it. I felt that something was missing in this film and my best guess is that it failed to provide the necessary tension to make me care about the sacrifices these men made. Because I had seen far more chilling portrayals of Nazi Germany (that would be the excellent films Downfall and Schindler's List), this one had too much to live up to. It's a disappointment. Cruise is off his game. Out of all the actors I like, he has the best track record of making movies that I want to see. It's rare for me to be disappointed in a Cruise film, but Valkyrie is one of them. It is a good film and worth seeing, but it lacks a "wow" factor.

Remembering an Icon

I was shocked to hear that the legendary Eartha Kitt has passed on to the spiritual realm on Christmas Day. What a day to die!

I didn't even hear the news until after I checked the statistical data on my blog and saw that my music video selection for Eartha Kitt got A LOT of hits on Christmas day. I thought this was odd. Why was everyone Google searching Eartha Kitt? So I clicked on her name to see what Google brought up and that's when I learned the sad news.

My first thought was, "man, I'm glad that I splurged and saw her perform live when she came to Portland earlier this year!" I had debated whether or not to go. It was kind of pricey, but she was a legend and I figured that it was probably the only chance I'd get to see her (though when I flew out of Seattle to Atlanta back in July, I saw an ad that she was performing at a club in the Emerald City that month). I'm glad that I splurged and went to see Eartha Kitt perform.

I don't know much about her, other than that she might be considered a true bohemian. She seems to have come from that group of artists/writers/singers that encompassed the Beat Generation in the 1950s. My favourite writer, Jack Kerouac, wrote about falling for an African American lady in his Subterraneans novel. Though the model for the character was someone else, it could have very well been Eartha Kitt. She's the "original sex kitten", as I've read some describe her. She's most famous for the way her voice makes a vibration that sounds like a cat's purr. It's actually kind of sexy how she does it.

In terms of acting, she's best known as the Catwoman on the 1960s God-awful Batman show. The only other role I recall seeing her play was in Eddie Murphy's Boomerang, from 1992. I thought she disgraced herself in that movie and it's actually kind of embarrassing to watch her extended cameo role. Her true talent is singing and flirting. She's an excellent entertainer. She can flirt with the entire audience. Granted, her schtick can get a little campy, but what I most like about her is her courage. She was actually blacklisted in the 1960s when she criticized the Vietnam War. It effectively killed her career in the United States, but she found work in France, where many ex-patriot Americans find a welcome mat in every age.

The music video selection of her "Santa Baby" shows her at three different ages (young, middle, and recently). What's notable is that President Bush seems to be enjoying her performance. How far she's come...from having her career nearly ruined for being outspoken on a controversial war to amusing a president with his own controversial war. She's remarkable, what I can I say?

I hope that heaven rolled out the welcome mat for her arrival. She has lived a fascinating life, no doubt about it. Truly a life well lived. Her moniker was "the most exciting woman in the world." Having seen her live, I have to say that it's not an overbloated hype. Now it's heaven's turn to get excited. The legend returns for an eternal engagement!

Flashback Friday: 1998

For the final Flashback Friday post of the year, I'm going back ten years to 1998. It wasn't one of my favourite years for many reasons. However, in retrospect, a few notable things happen to make it one of the "watershed years" for me. Read on, if you wish to review this year with me.

What I most remember about 1998 was that the first half of the year, I was missing Hawai'i, where I had spend my best Christmas vacation ever in 1997. I bought a CD of Hawai'ian traditional songs with ukulele and listened to it constantly that year. The second half of the year, I was anxious to finish college and move to Washington, D.C. In 1998, I saw it as a midway point. I was two years out of the Navy and had two years to endure of college before I could get started on my life and career in Washington, D.C.

It was the most difficult year of my college experience. The novelty of the first semester in being new to Provo, Utah and getting immersed into Mormon culture started to wear off and it wasn't cool anymore. I thought of quitting several times that year, particularly after the Spring Term.

Part of what made this year horrible was the news report that broke early in January that President Clinton had an inappropriate relationship with an intern. I first heard the story in an article in BYU's student newspaper and dismissed it as yet another example of the paper's anti-Clinton bias. When I went home after finishing my classes for the day, I watched the news and was shocked that the story was true. BYU didn't make it up. CNN was talking about it. It soon became a huge scandal from which there was no escape. I felt sick to my stomach, because Clinton had done the very thing I never thought he would be foolish enough to do. I actually believed him in 1992 when he said that the "problems" he had caused in his marriage were over.


I argued with Yudelka (a classmate I'd end up dating a year later; she was a Democrat) about Clinton. I believed he should resign, she thought he shouldn't. Turns out, she was right and I was wrong. I'm glad he didn't resign because it would've been a victory for the Ken Starr and Newt Gingrich. Later in the year, Newt Gingrich tried to make the election a referendum on Clinton's infidelity, but it backfired and Republicans lost seats in Congress and Gingrich ended up resigning as Speaker of the House and we learned that he, himself, was guilty of committing adultery at the same time as his campaigning against Clinton. The hypocrisy truly reeked. But as Republicans like to point out, "at least he didn't lie under oath." Oh...so, lying is okay so long as you don't do it under oath?

What truly offended me about Monica Lewinsky was that this flaky, oversexed brat actually got a White House internship. From what I read, she wasn't all that into politics and she had supposedly told friends that she wanted to go to D.C. to "earn her presidential kneepads." It was disgusting that anyone would seek a prestigious internship to fulfill some sex fantasy. Which applicant with political aspirations got rejected because of her acceptance letter? I'm a person with little tolerance for people who don't like politics or government yet seek a government job or public office. If you hate government or are not serious about politics, why not pursue something else? Leave politics and government to those who love it.

Because of Monica Lewinsky, she probably changed the course of my life. When I started college, my goal was to study a semester in Australia in the fall of 1999 (partly so I stay on afterwards to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Down Under before returning to the U.S. for my last semester at BYU). I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I had gone to Australia for a semester rather than do the Washington Seminar my last semester. Since the Seminar has turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life, I don't have any regrets about it and I have to thank Monica for being such a ditzy slut and bringing dishonour to the title of "White House Intern." I wanted to add my knowledge and experience to the quality of interns.

A part of me still wonders if I'll ever make it to Australia, the country I have wanted to visit since I was 11 years old. Maybe I should think about it a lot in 2009, just to test out the idea of the Law of Attraction for a big desire of mine. I seem to have no problem manifesting the little things, but for a big thing (better paying job in a field I love; published novel; trip to Australia; foreign girlfriend), it still eludes me.

In August 1998, American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya were attacked in terrorist bombings. I had a political science class in which a classmate was from Kenya, who was suspicious of anyone approaching him in a friendly manner. I understood his concern. At lily white BYU, he didn't want to be anyone's "token black friend." He was even cold to me at first, until he learned that I knew more about Africa than most students and I was genuinely interested in him as a friend, and not some tokenism. We talked a lot about Africa and both agreed that Clinton made a huge mistake bombing a factory in Sudan in retaliation. Turned out to be a baby milk factory, though it could've also been a cover for a weapons lab for all we know.

Professors talked about these attacks in my political science classes, but in terms of outrage, what I remember most was that Republicans in Congress accused Clinton of trying to distract the American people from his sex scandal when he retaliated with missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. Funny how Republicans are obsessed with sex while unconcerned with a more life threatening matter: terrorism. I suspect the outrage was minimal because most of the casualties were African employees of the embassies. Further proof that Americans don't value the deaths of dark-skinned people as much as white folks.

1998 was the year that I first heard the name of Osama Bin Laden and the network known as "al Qaeda." As I read more about him, I was surprised to learn that he was funded by the CIA as one of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, fighting the Soviet Union. What turned him against the U.S. was our 1990-1991 Gulf War to evict Iraq from Kuwait. He was deeply offended to see Americans in large numbers based in Saudi Arabia, because its the site of two of the holiest places in Islam: Mecca and Medina. As I read about him, I was surprised to see the consequences of our foreign policy coming back to haunt us. But this was something I've known since 1989 with Manuel Noriega, who was also on the CIA payroll until he no longer wanted to do the CIA's bidding, and thus had to be brought back to the U.S. for "justice."

At my last job in Atlanta, a Bush devotee co-worker would often get angry any time I brought up Osama Bin Laden. She fell for the belief among conservatives that Clinton is to blame for 9/11 because he didn't catch Bin Laden in Sudan in 1998. They believe that Clinton let him go. But look how short their memories are! When Clinton sent missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan, conservatives at the time were accusing Clinton of using the military to distract Americans from "the true scandal" of his sexual affair. What makes more sense...to hold Clinton accountable for 9/11 because he didn't catch Bin Laden in his last three years in office...or Bush, who was president on 9/11 and ignored the CIA memos that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S.? Bush leaves office in less than a month and there is still no sign of Bin Laden anywhere. Bush had eight years to get him after vowing to bring him to justice. Clinton was in a damned if he did or damned if he didn't situation.

In 1998, Primary Colors was my favourite film of the year. This movie already received a "Flashback Friday" review, so I won't repeat myself here.

One of my favourite television shows was MTV's The Real World: Seattle. I've watched every season from Los Angeles (season 2, airing in 1993) through New Orleans (2000). The Hawai'i cast (1999) was my favourite one, though. The season in Seattle offered me a glimpse of this city I had been wanting to visit to see if I'd want to live there some day. I actually never heard of Pike's Place Market and the famous fish throwers until I saw it on this show.

The most memorable moment of the show was when Irene went crazy because of her lyme disease relapse. Classic is the line where she's laughing like a lunatic and saying, "I'm not crazy!" Um...that's not how it looks on camera! In her craziness, she accuses Stephen (the African American castmember) of being a homosexual and he retaliates by throwing her teddy bear into the Puget Sound next to their pierside loft. He then ran up to her as the cab starts to drive away and slaps her in the face, and she continued to laugh like a lunatic.

Reality TV up to this point hardly got that good. Though Stephen had to attend anger management, the other interesting drama of the show was David having a relationship with the show's casting director. In one scene he can be overheard crying in a conversation with her, and he has been known to deck fans who mock him this way. It was a personally emotional moment for him and he's from a rough neighbourhood in Boston where you have to be tough and free of emotions. Though he tried to seem like a thug, I thought he was easily the most likeable castmember.

Even better than that season of The Real World, however, was MTV's Road Rules Australia. I never watched a whole season of Road Rules until the Australia cast (I liked the Latin America and Semester at Sea seasons as well). I was absolutely addicted to this show and taped every episode. Part of what hooked me on this show was my crush on both Susie and Christina. Never before on television had I seen two more attractive, "real" young ladies that I'd naturally gravitate towards. Of course, Susie was a major hottie so she has no problem attracting any guy. She has her choice. Christina, on the other hand, had a cool vibe to her. She made sarcastic statements and came across as dangerously intelligent. I would watch the show trying to figure out what it was about her that I found so attractive and I guess I would have to say that it was her intelligence and her not being easily prone to emotionalism. Piggy, the British chick, on the other hand was a complete mess. From her hair to her personality, she was annoying on the show and the only cast member I did not like.

Shane was the Canadian castmember who betrayed his nationality every time he pronounced a word with "ou" in it ("I don't know what you're talking aboot"). Kefla, the only African American castmate, found it difficult to relate to the others at times that when they had a task with aboriginals, he actually found a deeper connection with them than his fellow Road Rulers.

One CD that I listened to A LOT in 1998 was Ben Folds Five Whatever and Ever, Amen. From the moment I heard their single "Brick", the melancholy melody just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Its a pretty powerful song that would get me to buy an entire CD by a group I had never heard of before. When I listened to the CD, I was hooked. It reminded me a lot of Joe Jackson ("Steppin' Out", "Is She Really Going Out With Him?") but was even better. I haven't listened to the CD in years, so I'm sure that it would transport me back (mentally) to that year. It's funny to reflect on the albums that just grab my attention and interest over the years. Usually, a great CD will get a year or two of heavy airplay on my CD player, then fade into the background as I discover the next great CD. But the CD then becomes a "time machine" in which I can transport myself mentally back to the year(s) when I listened heavily to that particular album.

My celebrity crush of 1998 was Natalie Imbruglia. From the moment I saw her video "Torn" to the even better "Smoke", I was smitten. Who was this gorgeous Aussie chick? Once again, I found another lady with short hair to be the epitome of sexy. I love her facial expressions as she sings both "Torn" and "Smoke." It took awhile for me to like her album, Left of the Middle, however. I hated it on the first few listens, but it eventually grew on me. However, I didn't follow her career or buy later albums.
I wanted to feature her video "Smoke" as one of my Music Video Monday selections, but each one I found on YouTube has a block on embedding it into my blog. If you've never seen this video and are curious, just go to YouTube and search for it. It was my favourite music video of 1998. I love how she disappears and reappears in a cloud of smoke.

My favourite novel that I read was What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson. I found it by pure happenstance, I guess you could say. I had seen the movie poster in theaters in the fall of 1998 and was intrigued by the tagline: "After Life There Is More." I've been interested in afterlife ideas and Near Death Experiences since 1994, when I had my own "near death experience" (not in the sense that my soul left my body and saw a glimpse of heaven, but that I was robbed by a mob at knifepoint and could have very well been killed on the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa).

At Barnes and Noble in Provo/Orem, Utah, I was walking down an aisle when a book fell from a shelf in front of my feet. I picked it up and it was the novel "What Dreams May Come" with the movie poster cover. I knew from other reading that when a book falls in your path, its a sign that maybe you should read it. So, I flipped through it and read several spots before deciding to buy it. That led to a strange experience. For one thing, I was hooked and couldn't put the book down, even though I had classes to study for. I even read the novel in a few classes. The whole time I read it, I had "the burning in my bosom" that Mormons always tell people that you will feel when you know something is true. However, they meant it for the Book of Mormon, not this NOVEL. But, what happened, happened. I can't explain it other than it had answered EVERY question I had about the afterlife and the purpose for life on earth.

I had such a beautiful vision of heaven that I was excited to see the movie. That turned out to be a mistake. The movie is so unlike the novel (there might be a 20% similarity between novel and movie) that I felt sick upon leaving the theater. I blamed the director for going in a different direction. I didn't like the image of heaven in the movie, or even of hell. However, in the years since, I do own the DVD because I learned to view the movie as a separate story from the novel. It's still a spiritual film worth watching, though I truly would love to see a more faithful film adaptation. Since the movie bombed in theaters after 20 years of being on a Hollywood shelf, it's unlikely that anyone would want to make a more loyal film.

What was it about the novel that grabbed me? Well...all my life, I've been intrigued by the idea of reincarnation, even if I didn't quite believe it was true. Three events at BYU led me to believe that reincarnation is the process by which we evolve. The way the purpose of life is presented in this novel is exactly the kind of heaven that I want to experience. The novel also inspired me to write my own "heaven novel" that's one of my writing projects on the backburner.

In the decade since, I've read plenty of books on reincarnation and learned a lot about how the process might work. Its a fascinating topic that I'd love to study in grad school (the UVA supposedly has a good program on metaphysical topics)...but at the very least, it's something I'll continue to study on my own.

So...in examining the year 1998, the two most notable events that affected my life was: (1) being offended that someone like Monica Lewinsky could get a White House internship; and (2) finding the right book to break my resistance to believing in reincarnation once and for all. The friendships I have because I went on the Washington Seminar program, I owe to Monica Lewinsky. Had there been no scandal, I would've gone to Australia. Of course, I could have possibly met my wife there and be living there these past eight years...but, I wouldn't give up my Washington Seminar experience for any alternative life possibilities. I'll get to Australia someday soon. Oh yes I will!

Joyeux Noel / Merry Christmas / Feliz Navidad / Buon Natale / Frohe Weihnachten

"People all over the world, join hands, and form a love train!"

Sorry...that song lyric just came to me as I write this. I think feeling love is important...not just the romantic love some are fortunate to have, but an even greater love...that of fellow humans. A love beyond romance, beyond family, beyond country, beyond religion...a love for friend and foe, neighbors and strangers, a love without borders.

So, for all the readers of my blog (and those who don't), I just wanted to wish you Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday season in whatever faith (or not) you belong to. Enjoy the day with family, friends, pets, assorted love ones, and may your interactions be filled only with the kind of love that transcends all. Let's commit to a better world. A new day begins in the love we create.

Christmas Eve Already?!?

Wow...it's already Christmas Eve! Hard to believe. One week left in a year that has truly been one of the most dramatic ones I've ever witnessed. From the dramas of the primary season: Obama versus Clinton; Romney versus Huckabee versus McCain; seeing Giuliani's campaign go down in defeat while actor Fred Thompson's campaign stalls out the starting gate (cuz he's lazy!); across the board elections in Oregon from the mayor's race to three City Council races; a nail-biting Senate race; Clintons and Obama coming to Oregon to draw out the voters; to the drama of Sarah Palin (still the best dramatic show of the fall season...glad it got cancelled though. Couldn't live through that for four years!)...none of this matches the ongoing drama at work, however.

That's right...I work for a lady who had so much family drama this year that I told her Hollywood should come calling for movie rights. As amusing as it might be, it also made my job a living hell as I've had to pick up her slack while still trying to learn her confusing accounting system that's about as logical as a Scientologist in a psychiatrist's office. On top of her OCD micromanaging style, she truly makes Miranda Priestly of The Devil Wears Prada look reasonable, and she'll proudly tell anyone that Miranda wishes that she was as demanding as my supervisor. Despite our difference in style and outlook (I love my drama-free life. Most people might think it's boring but I'm all about self-education and self-improvement), we get along. However...if you think I want to endure another year of her neverending dramas, you must be crazy!

I won't talk about the other lady I share an office space with. I've already wasted too many words about our battles. I'm actually increasing my compassion for her as I read Marianne Williamson's A Return to Love. Had I known this book was that good, I'd have read it years ago!!! But I'm reading it now and hopefully the message will sink in deep to the depth of my soul. I truly need to learn whatever lesson I'm meant to learn so I can move on to better things. I'm not getting any younger nor am I living the life my soul intended for this lifetime. I need to get the hell out of here! Pronto!!!

Anyhow, this Christmas Eve, I will be reflecting on my year and counting the little blessings in my life. Despite not getting the very thing I've asked God for since January 2007 (two years!!!), I am truly grateful for the blessings in my life. I've had a lot of them this year. I feel like Forrest Gump in a lot of ways...for despite my low status in life and at work, I think I have a more incredible life than most people I know (including the management team at work). Whether its meeting famous people I've wanted to meet for years, or traveling to different places and seeing incredibly amazing things, having quite a few long-time friends, or just meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends...I have to say that life is amazing. So much of what I've wanted for years actually came true this year, so I'm hoping that the momentum is with me as our country goes through a big change in January.

I don't know if I told anyone this, but last year on my birthday, as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I prayed to God something along the lines of: "please, God, don't let me have another year like 2007. I don't think I can endure another year like it." I even said that if I was still working in the same place, I would jump off a bridge on my 37th birthday. Well...I did have another year like 2007 (while better than expected in my personal life, the horrible than desired working environment brings down my morale to dangerous levels of despair) and I'm still here. Don't worry...I won't be jumping off any bridges on my birthday (I just have a morbid sense of humour and absolutely love those "Bunny Suicides" cartoons!).

I owe it all to Barack Obama (love his photo above that I found in a Google search). So many people thought he'd never get elected. He still ran. And focused on the issues. And remained positive and full of hope. If he can endure all the character attacks thrown at him by the right and still have hope and then give the Republicans a major ass-whooping...then damn, I'm not going to let the negativity of my workplace get me down. They aren't going to push me into jumping off a bridge. This year, I have more hope in my future than I did last year. Yes I Can! isn't just Obama's mantra. It's mine too. I am going to get the hell out of that office next year. I will not allow this decade to end on a loss for me (the entire decade has been full of one loss after another for me--dream job; dream girl; car; three of my favourite relatives; income; dignity; another dream job; and the electoral defeat of three politicians I was passionate about--Gore, Dean, and Lewis). Besides, watching Obama make history is something I've dreamed of seeing since Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa.

A best friend of mine asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told him, "a new job, a new job, a new job!" I know he can't deliver that one, even if we share the same name as the man in the red suit (oops...not that one! The other one, silly! You know...the one who laughs like a bowl full of jelly?). Anyhow, for Christmas, I seriously got two cool things: a President-elect Barack Obama and now, it does look like we will have a white Christmas after all. Who could ask for more than that? Maybe its another example of my ability to manifest an outcome (I wish!). I've been listening to Enya's And Winter Came... CD quite a bit, dreaming of a white Christmas season, and here we are!

I've heard a few co-workers grumble yesterday at work about all this snow and how they just want it to go away. What?!? I was shocked. You know how rare this is? The news reported that Portland hadn't had a winter storm this bad since 1968. It was so bad this past weekend that they had to close I-84 east of Troutdale...so if anyone had to go east of Portland along the Columbia River, they were stuck in the Portland metro area. Also, all roads to the Oregon coast from Portland, Salem, and Eugene were closed as well. Most flights were cancelled for several days, making the holiday travel even more stressful since airlines had fully booked flights already. This weather has been crazy, but I guess I'm just the type who knows how to enjoy one of God's great gifts...a true appreciation for the power of mother nature.

I'm truly baffled to be among the minority who actually love this snow! Because this snowstorm is rare in Portland (and the years I lived in Atlanta), I'm enjoying it as much as I can because by this weekend, it's supposed to be melted away in our return to the normal rainy winter. Who knows when we might see snow like this again in Portland? It's a true winter wonderland so better enjoy it while it lasts.

Hope you enjoy Christmas Eve where ever you are (snow or not).

The Junk e-mails Conservatives Send

A lady at work sent me an email with the following story. During the election, she had sent me defensive emails about Sarah Palin to get my opinion on it, even though I knew she had an ulterior agenda. How do I know this?

Well, I worked with this lady during my first year in Portland. We didn't get along very well. It was a true clash of opposites. For one thing, we shared an extremely tiny work space and she's a large woman, ungraceful and on the clumsy side. On a regular basis, she would unintentionally hurt me like pinching my hand as she pushed back her chair without awareness of my presence. Secondly, she's bipolar or has a Jekyll and Hyde personality. She can laugh with you in one breath and scream at you in the next for no logical reason. I have a hard time trusting mentally unstable people like that. More than that, she was also an evangelical Christian and a Republican (surprise, surprise!). But as fits the pattern, she's never been to college, she and her husband are in low wage jobs, yet they believe the lies of the right. Look how well it's done for them! They recently got evicted from an apartment for harbouring a pet dog against regulations and now live in a mobile home. It's the kind of downward mobility that the Republicans love!

Anyhow, when I get emails like the following, it truly steams me because it's blatantly false and reeks of ignorance. A decade ago, when I first got online, I gave out my email address to members of my church in Atlanta, which I thought would come in handy when I went off to college in Utah. I thought people would use emails to keep in touch. But their definition of keeping in touch is different from my definition. I don't consider keeping in touch to be passing along junk email like Bill Gates giving away money if they pass the email along, or religious "Chicken shit for the Soul" type of sentimental vomit, or the politically biased and blatantly false emails that trash people I admire...such as Gore, the Dalai Lama, Obama, and Jimmy Carter. I don't understand why people pass along shit to everyone on their email list. Email me to share something about your life, not some piece of propagandistic bullshit concocted by Republican operatives.

I ask why? What's the whole point? Please read what the email message says before I state what's wrong with it...

Irena Sendler
Not too very long ago there was a death of a 98
year-old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the
Warsaw Ghetto as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

But Irena had an ulterior motive ...

Being German, she knew the Nazi's plans for the Jews.
Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and a burlap sack she carried in the back of her truck for the larger kids.

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the children's noises.

Irena managed to smuggle out and save the lives of 2500 children!
When she was eventually caught, the Nazi's broke both her legs, her arms and beat her severely.

But Irena kept the names of all the kids she was able to rescue.
She kept the list in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war had ended, she tried to locate any parents that had survived to reunite the families, but most had been gassed. The kids she helped were placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was not selected though.
Instead, Al Gore won for a SLIDE SHOW on Global Warming.

After I received the lady's email, I went over to talk to her about it. She dismissed my points because I was too much a Gore loyalist. Yes, I admit to being loyal to Gore. But I'm not blindly loyal. The email was an attempt by the jealous rightwing conservatives to belittle Gore's honourable award. This happened when Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Instead of being happy that an American won the Nobel Peace Prize, conservatives immediately started attacking Carter in an attempt to belittle the award. But I know why they do it. Jealousy. Their heroes NEVER win the Nobel Peace Prize, because it's awarded by Scandinavians who have a global view of the world, not a pro-American (screw the world) nationalistic one.

I told the lady at work that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the person who the Nobel Committee feels is doing an important work in the world raising awareness to an issue in the given year. It's not an award for past behaviour or accomplishments. That's not to belittle the lady above who was nominated, but many people are nominated each year. No one can nominate themselves. In 2007, conservative Americans actually had the audacity to nominate Rush Limbaugh for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he has a snowball's chance in Hell of ever winning. See? Anyone can nominate anyone. Doesn't mean that they'll be honoured with such a prize.

Gore didn't win for "a slideshow." His documentary already won the Academy Award. He has done a lot of behind the scenes work in getting scientists and politicians together to raise money and awareness for this issue. In 2007, he also helped organize a worldwide concert on seven continents for 7 July 2007 (07/07/07). The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 went to a group of people working on behalf of awarness for climate change. Gore just happened to be the most famous of the people who were awarded. I will concede that he was probably the emotional favourite to win the award because the world does recognize how different things might have been had Gore been allowed to serve as president in 2001 instead of Bush. Because of Republican fraud, I would say that they helped set in motion a chain of events that led Gore to a Nobel Peace Prize. So, if they want to blame anyone, they should blame themselves for being such watercarriers to an incompetent presidential candidate.

Another point...I don't think Irena Sendler would begrudge Gore being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Genuine peacemakers and humanitarians don't care about awards, honours and accolades. She'll definitely get hers in heaven. I'm not denigrating her work on earth. She did what was necessary to be done...but like I said, the Nobel Peace Prize doesn't award people for what they did sixty years ago. The person awarded each year is awarded for work that they do in that given year or years preceding it. Gore has been interested and involved in climate change issues since he was a Senator in the 1980s. Had he been president these last eight years, he probably would not have won. It's no secret that Bill Clinton wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but whether he wins or not remains to be seen. Just because you want one doesn't mean you'll get it. It's supposed to be an honour, and actively lobbying for it actually hurts you. It's the way true awards are meant to be. Give the Nobel Committee some credit. It's the world's most prestigious prize for a reason...and that's an excellent track record (I only disagree with the awarding of Yassir Arafat the Peace Prize some years back, though I think it was a good faith effort, as he was co-recipient with Yitzhak Rabin when the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks needed the global support and attention).

However, if conservatives were honest, I would have to say that they don't give a damn about Irena Sendler. She's just a pawn to be used in their jealous gripe that Al Gore received a Nobel Peace Prize and their beloved Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush will never ever get one. Feast on that! If Republicans truly want to win a Nobel Peace Prize, stop supporting the war machine, starting wars, and grow a global vision that's not America-first.

If you're one of those people who forward these kinds of emails...please reconsider. Get all the facts before you just pass along crap (like the emails about Obama being a Muslim or not being an American citizen). What these emails tell me is that you are a stooge of the rightwing, gullible, and not worth taking seriously. It's fine by me if you love being lied to by your party and your peeps, having your money stolen from them while you complain about not making enough money. Just don't include me in your email lists. I'm a lot smarter than you think I am. I don't value ignorance as a virtue like you do. Facts matter.

Music Video Monday: Enya

The last in the series of Christmas videos for the holiday season: Enya's Gaelic version of "Silent Night." It's a bit too mellow for me, but I thought it was appropriate for the holiday. The song seems to be the most holy representation of Christmas. In fact, since childhood, I've always thought of this song as being the one, original Christmas song. Or the Christmas song of all Christmas songs.

Enjoy! And may you blessedly enjoy the few remaining days before the holiday. Make it sacred, make it special!

Random Thoughts on a Snowy Weekend in Portland

The weathermen were right! Last weekend, we were hit with the first snow of the season. This time, the snow didn't melt upon touching the ground, as it did the last time I remember it snowing in Portland (Christmas Day...but now I forget...was it last year or the year before?). This winter has been a dismal one for skiers at Mount Hood, which lacked snow until the storm last weekend. By Tuesday, however, most of the ice and snow were gone and we were supposed to be hit with a second wave on Wednesday/Thursday. Nothing much came of that in downtown Portland, though outlying areas were affected by snow and ice. However, weathermen were predicting that the third wave would be the most severe and it would hit on Saturday.

Friday night (actually, early Saturday morning), I looked out my window and saw a wet parking lot and not even rain, so I kind of figured that the weathermen were wrong. It wasn't going to amount to much of anything, if at all. Which was fine by me, because I had a lot of errands I needed to do this weekend. The last weekend before Christmas meant that I still have some last minute Christmas shopping to do (for a meal on Christmas day for my bro and I; a few gifts left to buy; my last cards to mail out; and I wanted to stroll through the Saturday Market to see about buying something for myself before the market closes after Christmas, not to be reopened until March).

On Saturday, I woke up at 11 a.m. and looked out my window and saw a winter wonderland! Holy crap. And snow was still coming down. I walked to the post office to mail off some Christmas cards and saw that the streets were pretty empty. The snow was probably already a good 6 inches. By end of day, the news was reporting 14 inches of snow in some parts of the Portland metro area. Unbelievable! A true winter wonderland! I didn't think Portland ever got snow like this. I haven't lived in a place that got this much snow since Washington, D.C. in January 2000. What a way to end the year! In January, I got to see snow come down in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and now I get to see tons of snow hit Portland a week before Christmas. Will it last through Christmas day? I hope so.

After the post office, I headed to Starbucks to grab a chai latte and then strolled down the South Park blocks. I thought of hitting up a few stores on my errand list, but decided to head back home. On the walk back, I noticed one video store was advertising off rental DVD copies for $3 each. A "Saturday Only Sale!" Of course, who can beat DVDs for that price, so I walked in to see what was being offered and picked up three that I wanted to own but didn't want to pay full price for: Charlie Wilson's War, Lions for Lambs, and Dan in Real Life. I actually rarely buy DVDs new anymore...unless it's one of those "two-disc" special editions (which reminds me, I need to get The Dark Knight special edition). There's a music store downtown that sells used DVDs, but their price is $8.50 for most of them (I'm slowly working my way through the James Bond saga of watching them in chronological order from Netflix of those I don't like very much to buying the ones I want at the used DVD store. I'm up to Thunderball right now. I own seven Bond DVDs at the moment. Cool, huh? 007--seven DVDs).

After the video store, I reached a street corner where the streetcar was approaching. In front of me was a homeless guy struggling to push a shopping cart through the snow. He was blocking the path of the streetcar, so the impatient streetcar operator was honking the horn at him, which caused him to stop where he was to cuss her out. He kept calling her a "fucking bitch" and asked if she was from Florida. Couldn't she see that he was trying to get out of her way? He was just belligerent and angry, going off on a tirade. Then a microphone came on and the streetcar operator said: "please get out of the path of the streetcar!" Dang...I didn't know it had that capability. I admit that streetcar operators are a bit quick on the horn if any car is driving in front of them on the streetcar track, but I think streetcars have right of way.

The homeless guy just kept on ranting. He was seriously angry and went on and on about that "fucking bitch!" I got tired of hearing it, so I said to him: "it's unnecessary to speak to her that way. You were, in fact, blocking the streetcar." Oops. That did it. Then he turned his anger and profanity laced tirade on me, asking where I went to college because I should get a refund since I seem to lack any common sense. Granted, he was trying to push a shopping cart through snow (no easy task)...but on the flip side, I couldn't believe the level of his anger. I was happy all day because of the snow. The thought did come to me the reason why he might be angry. He's homeless and everything he owns is in that shopping cart he stole from Safeway. If he were to sleep in a shelter this weekend, where would he store his belongings? It's the dilemma of homeless people who still want to carry around their worldly possessions.

Even though he yelled at me, I found it incredibly easy to bounce off his negativity with a sense of compassion for his plight. As I pondered it later, why is it so easy for me to ignore his angry tirades but not my co-worker's (the one with severe emotional problems that I've written about previously)? Maybe that's my challenge. If I can deflect the anger of the homeless guy because I understood where the anger originates (his being homeless during a severe winter storm such as this), why can't I deflect the angry, abusive tirades of my co-worker (and I also understand where her anger originates...she's an unattractive, overweight woman with emotional problems and approaching 40 who will most likely never find a man to marry and is a member of a religion that preaches to her that her value in the afterlife depends upon the man she marries)? It's a challenge, I agree to that.

Last week, I had found a used copy of Marianne Williamson's Return to Love, which I had been wanting to read. I had just recently watched a lecture of hers on DVD and wanted to learn more about her ideas, which are pretty much the same ideas spoken by Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, and a whole host of other popular "self-help"/psychology/spirituality practitioners. I've heard of Marianne Williamson for years but only read one other book of hers just earlier this year (The Gift of Change). I'm truly experiencing an emotional high reading her book, now, so maybe that's why my level of compassion is higher this weekend than normal.

In the late afternoon, after checking the mail, I had planned to read a few chapters of Revolutionary Road in the lobby of the apartment, next to the gas-powered fire place. However, they turned off the gas and the family from Ethiopia was hanging out there, so we ended up visiting and talking politics. Then they told me about an incident at the apartment that happened a week or so ago, when a bunch of police cars were at my complex while I was at work.

Apparently, a resident named James (one of the few tenets I happen to see on a regular basis out and about the complex, so we always talk en route to wherever each of us happens to be going) was off his medication and started on some angry tirade in which he had threatened to kill the president of the United States. The apartment complex management called the police and it took eight police officers to subdue him. They used tasers and still couldn't knock him out! The result is that he is getting evicted at the end of the month. The Ethiopian family knows him quite well since their apartments were next door to one another. They said that they never had a problem with him or felt unsafe around him (the family has a 4 year old son who is a passionate Obama supporter and a 9 month old baby boy). They are aware that James has some kind of mental illness and gets government assistance. His rent is quite low and he makes extra money by going around collecting cans and bottles to turn in for deposit refunds.

So, the family from Ethiopia told me about how they didn't believe the "official story" from management that James was being evicted because he had threatened to kill the president, because it's ludicrous. How serious can you take a threat like that? It's not like Bush lives in Portland or ever comes here, and it's doubtful that he plans to visit during his last month in office. Also, it's known by management that James receives government assistance and is too poor to travel anywhere. The question we have is, how does that solve anything by throwing a mentally ill person out on the streets? I feel bad about the situation. James has always been friendly and pretty sharp in our conversations. I never felt unsafe around him and he never gave off an unstable vibe to me. The only problem I have in talking with him is that he sometimes reeks of alcohol and that smell always induces in me an urge to vomit. I'm just sad to see another example of a lack of compassion, where he's tossed out onto the streets to join the homeless ranks in the middle of winter. Actually, winter starts today...so what's it going to be like in February?

It was odd to have come across two incidents of homelessness on the same snowy Saturday. It made me think of the homeless shelter in D.C. when the BYU Washington Seminar participants had one Saturday in March where we painted the hallways of the shelter. First, we had a video presentation followed by a tour. During the work part of the day, we were able to see the individual rooms that its inhabitants had. They were pretty nice little rooms, with locks. It enlightened me to the idea that homeless shelters could be a nice place, for the image I always had was an open room with cots. What shocked me about that day, though, were the attitudes of fellow BYU students. Overhearing their comments really drove home to me the basic philosophical differences between a liberal-minded person and a conservative-minded one. I remember talking about it with fellow liberals on the program.

Basically, the conservative students thought the residents had it too good. They complained about the homeless people not having to pay rent on their individual rooms. They had a problem with the freeloading aspect of it. Their question was, how can we expect these people to help themselves if they are given free room and board? My argument was to ask them, "would you want to live there?" Their answer was, "of course not!" Why begrudge a homeless person any small place of decency, where they can have a warm place to stay, and a small place to keep their belongings safe. This might not even be a permanent place for them, but a chance to rebound. How can one prepare for a job interview without any skills or a place to keep clothes neat or a way to be contacted? We, who are able to find jobs and a place to live, can be proud of the fact that we are responsible for ourselves and live the way we desire. So, why begrudge a little dignity and comfort given to homeless people? I'm totally all for homeless people having a place to stay warm and keep their belongings secure. I think it should be subsidized by the government as a sort of tithing on the federal budget.

The issue of homelessness reminds me of one experience Charles Lewis wrote about in his campaign literature or website. He said that he was never into politics as a teenager (like me). When he interned for Senator Mark Hatfield in the early 1990s, he happened to be in the office where none of the staff or Senator could see him. He overheard one staff member talk about a homeless person they saw on the street outside. Instead of making fun of homeless people, a conversation ensued about what was the best way to solve that crisis / issue. Charles said that he was cynical about politicians and people who work in government, but hearing their comments made him realize that there were people in public office who truly did care about issues and wanting to make the world a better place. That, apparently, sold him onto the idea of public service.

I had asked him if homelessness could ever be solved. There is a group in Portland dedicated to eradicating it within ten years. I don't see it as a possibility due to the fact that there are some people who like the freedom of not having a steady job or bills to pay. They love living day to day. However, I'm also of the opinion that our government is morally obligated to at least provide some shelter for anyone who is homeless regardless of the reasonings, particularly in bad weather. It's the least we can do and it's not a strain on the budget to provide this level of charity. I get angry when I see boarded up and abandoned buildings. They could easily be used as shelters for homeless people.

Anyhow, that's the thoughts I had going on in my mind yesterday as the snow came floating down. I'm still hoping that I can find my dream government job so I can be a part of solving these kinds of issues. Honestly, I belong in government. I'm not a corporate person at all. I think too many businesses are immoral, obsessed with profits at the expense of people. Thus why it has been disheartening for me to see the non-profit organization I work for acting more like a corporation than a government agency or charitable organization. But, that's a gripe for another day.

On Friday, news reported that two buses ran into a guard rail on a street above I-5 in downtown Seattle, due to ice. Because of the close proximity between Portland and Seattle, it wasn't a surprise to hear them get hit with the same winter storm that hit us. When I saw the photo above, the first thought that came to mind was: "Where is Superman or Spiderman when you need them?" It looked like a scene out of one of those movies.

I hope wherever you happen to be reading this, that you are safe and warm, having a place that keeps you out of the elements. It's definitely the one thing I can truly be grateful for. I have my own apartment to come home to every night.

Because of the ongoing snow, I decided not to go anywhere today. I wanted to walk the labyrinthe at the New Renaissance Bookshop, but the deep snow made it difficult to walk. I'm just crunching on ice. It's simply a nice day to sit at home and watch a few DVDs (though it's too late for me to watch a Thunderball / Never Say Never Again double feature).

Searching for a Legacy in the Dust of Disaster

With just one more month to endure of this terminal cancer on the White House, there's been a lot of talk lately about Bush's attempt to "write the first draft of history" as he searches for accomplishments to bolster his "legacy" to escape the verdict most people have already given him: Worst. President. Ever!

He even issued "talking points" for his minions to fan out across the talk show circuit and repeat to fawning corporate stenographers pretending to be reporters. Basically, he has come up with the following accomplishments for his eight years in office: No Child Left Behind legislation; tax cuts that guided our country through TWO recessions; prevented terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11; and most audacious of all: "restored honour and dignity" to the White House. Um...I'll get to that one a bit later.

First, I'd like to say that this "tradition" for outgoing presidents to wax nostalgic about their "legacy" is stupid. Legacy is something that starts on DAY ONE of your administration! (Memo to President Obama!). Think of it like a life review. Your life is judged in TOTAL, not for your final deathbed conversion after a lifetime of evil! Maybe Bush learned the wrong lessons from his mentor Lee Atwater (his father's "Karl Rove").

All this reminds me of when I was in the Navy and had to type up the fitness reports of officers. Fitness reports (FITREPS) are an annual performance review kind of thing that all officers must complete, which helps determine promotion points and whatnot. In my last year in the Navy, I remember being especially livid with one officer's fitness report. I was the secretary of the Multicultural Committee. The officer in question was "assigned" the Multicultural Committee as an extra duty. He never attended the meetings, had no involvement in the activity planning, basically showed no interest at all in this committee assignment. So, you can imagine my shock when I had to type up his FITREP from his notes, and he claimed to have initiated events and was a real "take charge" kind of officer as far as this extra duty was concerned. I raised my objections, but due to the whole politics of FITREPs, my peon rank of E-5 wasn't going to override an O-3 hoping for a promotion to O-4. I was in my last few months in the Navy, so it was just one more thing I hated about the military.

Why do I bring that up? Well...because that's what Bush's talk about legacy and his talking points reminds me of. He was "just there"...taking credit for things he had little to do with. Basically, for the past 8 years, I think he merely pretended to be the president. Or else, Cheney truly conned him into thinking that he did in fact make decisions as president, when Cheney most likely was the mastermind and enforcer of all that went on.

Bush's talking points about the "accomplishments" he wants his Kool-Aid drinking staff to drone on about on talk shows is actually hilarious. It shows that he truly scraped the bottom of the toilet to come up with that pathetic list of shit! First...No Child Left Behind! It's gonna be scrapped as soon as he leaves office. How will that be a legacy? A legacy is like Kennedy's Peace Corps (still going strong) or Truman's New Deal and Marshall Plan. Making children study "multiple choice testing tricks" is hardly stellar education to brag about.

Second...the tax cuts wiped out the surplus that Clinton left office with. It took Clinton six years to erase 12 years of Reaganomics ("tricked-down" tax scheme) and Bush managed to wipe out the surplus in his first two years. Hardly a legacy to be proud of. He did outdo the debt of Reagan and his father, though.

Third...if you're like me in thinking that 9/11 was most likely an inside job by certain neo-conservatives (with the help of al-Qaeda, of course, through intermediaries)...then his argument about keeping us safe from terrorism doesn't wash. If your own government is behind it, then of course you keep us safe because you don't allow a follow up act due to the constant questioning by independent media sources and groups like 9/11 Truth and the WTC widows. Furthermore, keeping us "safe from terrorism" didn't happen on 9/11, when a month earlier, Bush was on vacation and ignored DPB (Daily Presidential Briefing) memos with titles like "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." So, he may have "kept us safe" from terrorism AFTER 9/11, but on the day itself, he kept reading a children's book before fleeing to Offutt AFB on Air Force One and only showing up in public three days later. Yeah, some courageous actions during the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil! All that matters was that it happened on his watch, after he had plenty of warning and yet he did nothing.

Finally...we get to that phrase he promised in his 2000 campaign. It's the most outrageous, audacious lie he could ever tell. To remind you of the context, he went around in 2000 saying that he would "restore honour and dignity to the White House." It was a code for: "I will not embarrass you by getting a blow job by an intern while I'm president." Let's face it, Billy Boy's sex problem truly did offend a lot of good people. The media had a field day and just ran with it, tripping over themselves to educate everyone with a television exactly what Monica did with Bill, where, when, and how often. Was that Clinton's fault? I've heard many Republicans claim both that they were angry that "he lied" about the affair AND that "he rubbed his affair in our faces." Okay...if he lied about his affair, how did he rub it in our faces? He denied it happened until the infamous blue dress from Gap with the damning physical evidence was turned over for DNA testing. It was the media that rubbed it in our faces 24/7.

The phrase was Bush's mantra in 2000 and it's funny that after eight years, he's resurrecting his campaign promise as though it was proof that he kept his promise.

Here's how Mr. Dictionary defines HONOUR:

1) Good name; reputation; outward respect; 2) privilege; 3) a person of superior standing--used esp as a title; 4) one who brings respect or fame; 5) an evidence or symbol of distinction; 6) chastity or purity; 7) integrity.

None of those definitions really fit his actions or policies of the past 8 years. Especially the "integrity" part, which is how he probably thinks of the word when he uses it.

Here's Mr. Dictionary's definition of DIGNITY:

1) the quality or state of being worthy, honoured, or esteemed; 2) high rank, office, or position; 3) formal reserve of manner, language or appearance.

On this one, I will give them definitions #2 and #3, but the first one is arguable. I would refute that his administration was ever truly worthy, honoured, or esteemed after all the improprieties and maneuverings on the Florida recount in 2000. And even though Bush lost the popular vote to Gore by over half a million votes, he lacked the graciousness to realize that he was morally obligated to be president to ALL Americans. Instead, he ran to the far right as though he had won a Nixonesque landslide.

The image above of the tortured Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib that was revealed worldwide in the spring of 2004 is the perfect visual image of the Bush years. Their deeds don't match their words. And there is that idea commonly accepted in psychology that a person who obsesses over certain images or beliefs actually feels deficient in it. They want people to think of them as having "honour and dignity" because deep down, they don't feel they have it. Well, if they think that deeply, they are correct. They don't have honour and dignity. Never did. It was all a con job. A shiny bauble to distract gullible people from noticing that their cronies on Wall Street have been robbing us blind these past eight years.

The above is one of my favourite "unintentional" news crawls. Actually, who knows if the wording was intentional or not, but it made a point in more ways than one. It's especially brilliant because they were quoting Bush from his speech about the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans in August 2005. Way to use his own words against him. I love it!

Bush has been doing a lot of "exit interviews" to put a spin on his record as president. However, I don't think it will hold up in the future because historians generally get it right. Bush's hope is that Iraq becoming a functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East will prove his decision correct and the corporate media seems like its willing to follow that script. I say, "not so fast!" Bush has to be judged in comparison to the previous presidents and he truly broke longstanding tradition that our government does not torture (George Washington himself refused to allow American soldiers to torture captured British soldiers in the Revolutionary War). He also ran one of the most secretive administrations ever, making Nixon's administration look like a sunshine of transparency. There are many lies on record, especially in regards to knowing the exact locations of Saddam's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. We still haven't found ANY! How can they get away with a bold-faced lie like that?

Also, according to the standard of history, the Iraq War follows a pattern where a president is able to con Americans into rah-rah-rah-ing the war effort in the beginning, but as it continues along and grows unpopular, that hurts a president's historical standing. All one has to do is look at LBJ for an example. He's considered one of the best presidents in terms of achieving a legislative success, particularly the Civil Rights Bill, the Civil Rights Voting Act, and the Great Society programs...but all of that is overshadowed by Vietnam. He left office deeply disliked and a broken man who didn't live long in retirement.

Bush, however, is hoping for the redemption Truman received in the 1990s with a critically acclaimed biography that rescued his tarnished legacy. Truman left office in 1952 deeply unpopular because of the Korean War. Fifty years later, historians reevaluated his presidency and saw much to admire and improved his ranking among presidents. Bush may have received his bachelor's degree in history, but to rephrase an old debate quote by a certain Senator from Texas...historians know Truman, and you, Bush, are no Truman! Truman took progressive risks in integrating the Armed Forces; he saw through the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe devasted by World War II; he enacted the long standing policy of "containment" towards the Soviet Union when conservative Republicans wanted to go to war against them, and then again with China after it turned red. Truman also took personal responsibility, famously epitomized by the "the Buck Stops Here" sign on his desk. Bush hasn't taken responsibility for anything. He blames other people for the failures of his administration. "No one thought they'd fly planes into buildings." "No one expected the levees to breach." Abu Ghraib torture was blamed on low ranking Army reservists. Bush denied ever knowing "Kenny Boy" Lay of Enron and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, despite photographic evidence as well as a money trail.

Most of all, Truman is remembered as a sincere Christian, among the most religious of our presidents...and he threatened severe punishment to any American company seeking to profit from the destruction of World War II. That's true "honour and dignity." Bush is merely a pretender. So...even if Iraq does stabilize and becomes the only democratic Arab nation in the Middle East, it's not enough to ignore the lies, the incompetence, the disasters, and the needless death and destruction of so many lives during the Bush years.

In People magazine, Bush actually couldn't answer a simple question of what he'll do in retirement. Beyond moving into a nice new home in Dallas, setting up his presidential library and policy center, and writing a memoir, he said that he had no idea what he'll do and EVEN ASKED for suggestions!!! Seriously.

I have an idea:

I'd love to see him tried, convicted and sentenced for war crimes (along with Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith). That's truly the only way to gain worldwide respect, esteem, and "honour and dignity" because it would be unprecedented. We've seen plenty of inspiring prisoner-to-president scenarios (Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel, to name a couple), but a president-to-prisoner scenario? Man, the world would love that. It would be the true Trial of the Century! People would buy so many tickets to watch the War Crimes Tribunal hearings that we could get our country out of the debt its currently in.

Our great presidents are lucky to be honoured with their likeness or name on money, stamps, carved into a stone mountain, marble monuments in the nation's capital, countless streets, schools, and perhaps even a town or city. But what about the worst presidents? Don't they deserve their own tributes? Such as the George W. Bush toilet paper?

For an accurate monument, I move that we rename the toilet to "The Bush Dumper." Each time we take a dump and flush, we are reenacting what Bush has done to America these eight long years.

From here on out, I will be referring to portapotties as "Bush-dumper." So, if you hear me say, "I'm gonna use the Bush-dumper," you know where I'll be. Flushing away the toxins in my body into the cesspool of cynicism. I hope you will join me in renaming these "portapotties" (I hate that word anyway). Someday in the future, I can envision little kids telling their parents that they have to go to "the Bush-dumper" without knowing where the word came from. It'll be because of us, giving the appropriate tribute to the person who is guaranteed to be ranked dead last among presidents. So certain am I about his historical standing that I believe it should be carved in stone: George W. Bush--Worst. President. Ever.

Flashback Friday: The Chieftains

For this week's Flashback Friday, I've decided to write on my favourite Christmas music CD of all time: The Bells of Dublin by the Chieftains. I first discovered it in 1992 when I saw a cassette being sold in the ship's store on the USS Orion. I had never heard of the Chieftains, but I was looking for Christmas music and there wasn't much of a selection. Since my huge Johnny Clegg and Savuka craze began in 1990, I've become somewhat of a musical adventurer where I am always on the hunt for a cool new song I had never heard before. I'm all about taking my ears on a fantastic voyage in sounds. My latest fascination is bossa nova, so if you know of any great bossa nova CDs, please recommend them to me!

Anyhow, I remember looking at the songlist on the back of the cassette and thinking the album sounded intriguing. Part of my family heritage traces back to Ireland (through the last name) so how could I go wrong with a Celtic flavoured Christmas album?

Talk about being blown away. The entire album was simply amazing. It had the awesome effect of transporting me mentally to the medieval ages and I could almost envision what celebrations must have been like back in those days. The sound is incredible and the songs incredibly diverse. Several singers were featured on this album (including Jackson Browne for my favourite of the songs: "The Rebel Jesus") and songs were sung in English or Gaelic or French ("Il est ne" or "He is born" in English). Just try not to sing along to "The Boar's Head" or sitting still to "The Wren! The Wren!" medley! In fact, every time I listen to this album during the holiday season, I visually imagine people gathered at parties, dancing together like they often did during holiday celebrations in the age before television. I would love to experience something like that...a true Christmas party of merriment, good food, and dancing to medieval style music.

I wrote a few weeks ago about "The Rebel Jesus" for the first Music Video Monday of the holiday season, so I don't have too much more to add. Basically, the song describes perfectly the image of Jesus I have often had...which is not the judgmental and exclusive moralist that fundamentalist Christians like to portray, but a man who was a true rebel to the establishment class of politicians and religious figures who prefer to maintain the economic status quo than to give true spiritual guidance. I would love to play this song in church during a worship service, but I'm not sure how well it might go over with some people. On the other hand, if we don't disturb people's comfort zone in church, then what's all this Jesus talk about anyway? It's not about being safe and social, conforming sheep that we are. It's about forcing people to be honest about what they believe and why, and holding them accountable for their beliefs. The basic message of Jesus is: where belief and action contradict, ignore the belief and believe the action. In other words...a preacher who rails against adultery or homosexuality on the pulpit (cough, cough, Ted Haggart, cough, cough), yet engages in it in private...um, what are followers to believe?

My favourite Christmas carol has to be "O Come, All Ye Faithful" or the Latin version, "Adeste Fideles." To me, it epitomizes tradition and class. It has a great tune and simple lyrics. I'm pleased that this album ends on such a great classic carol. And yes, after taunting listeners with the promise, the Chieftains actually do deliver as you hear the bells of Dublin at the very end. Out of all the albums I've heard over the years, this one is hard to beat...from the diverse mix of songs in terms of melodies and languages to the arrangement of the songs, it's simply a perfect album from first note to the very last. If you want to experience a great Christmas musical journey into a medieval period, when celebrations such as winter solstice / Christmas seemed to be truly full of merriment (an era free of commercialism), this album is a must-own. Oh, how I long for a medieval Christmas party someday. Complete with Celtic style dancing and medieval costumes. And most important of all: no television!

A Mischievious Lab Named Marley

After a couple weeks, I finally finished reading the excellent book Marley and Me by John Grogan. I first saw the book in 2006 when it was in hardcover and wanted to read it. However, I generally prefer to buy books in trade paperback, so I knew it was a year's wait or more. I wasn't in a rush, though, because I knew it would be an emotional read. For years, I've been wanting a dog. My first choice is a Golden Retriever and second choice is yellow Labrador Retriever. A coworker in Atlanta had a Labrador Retriever with a litter of puppies to get give away a few years ago. I was seriously tempted...but my problem is that many apartments have restrictions. It's hard to find an apartment that allows dogs, even harder to find one that allows dogs above 40 pounds. Besides, Golden Retrievers and Labrador Retrievers are house with a big yard kind of dogs. With my current apartment, I can't even have a cat...so until I move, that means no pets for me.

When I discovered that the movie version of the book will be out this Christmas, I decided to read the book now before I see the movie. It pre-empted the other book I wanted to read before the movie comes out (Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, another book I've been wanting to read for a few years now). I'm glad I read this one, though. It was truly heartwarming and laugh out loud funny! I truly needed the laughs these past couple of weeks.

The subtitle of the book is "life and love with the world's worst dog." Marley was basically a disobedient, mischievious, uncontrollable dog. He was 100 pounds in adulthood and strong enough to drag a table from an outdoor patio of a restaurant down the sidewalk. He also jumped out the window of a moving car while the owner, John, held onto its hind legs. And boy, can a Labrador EAT! The dog always seemed hungry and would eat anything. That's the dangers of owning a Lab, the co-worker once told me. With my place, there are many things that could be destroyed. In fact, my precious shelves of books would be in serious danger of a Labrador's obsession with eating. Marley, during his thirteen years, probably cost the author and his family thousands of dollars in damages. One of the most disturbing aspects of Marley's personality was his irrational fear of thunderstorms. He would go ballistic each time a storm approached and do some serious damage in an attempt to "escape" (from the safety of an enclosed garage, no less).

While the book does offer plenty of laughs, heartwarming moments, and even a few tears near the end (yeah, I got misty-eyed...I'll admit it. And I was reading the sad chapters on the streetcar, so it was a little embarrassing to tear up), I could've done without the details on the dog's waste removal duties. It is part of the pains of dog ownership, no doubt, but I didn't particularly want to read about it. Maybe a few brief mentions, but the author gives us more than I care to know. On a positive note, the book made me less likely to want a Labrador, even though I was amused by one I saw in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 2002. I was at a small lake and was fascinated to see a Labrador jump in the water and swim. I had never seen a dog swim before and knew right then that I wanted a water dog. That's the main characteristic of Labradors...they love water. All the dogs I've ever seen were afraid of the water (no, they didn't have rabies!).

Maybe someday...if and when I have a house of my own. Golden Retrievers are still my favourite. Everytime I see someone walking one around town, I just have to pet it. They are the sweetest, best looking dogs I've ever seen. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be in a position to own a dog. So long as I'm in a low wage job, dwelling in an apartment, I can never have one. Or, I'd have to go with a yappy lapdog. My dream of having a Golden Retriever named Kundalini seems far off. We'll see if that ever gets "manifested into reality!"

After I finished the book, the thing that struck me is how deeply pets touch our lives. When I lived in Italy, dogs were viewed as outdoor animals. Yeah, you fed them and played with them, but they'd never set foot inside your home. They were just there. Free to roam around town and looking for adventure. It's kind of like the dog neighbours of my grandparents had when I was a kid. I would play in the backyard while the neighbour's dog would bark at me. I loved to tease the dog by having it chase me until its chain kept it from running any further. That's how I once saw dogs: animals that were chained outside and slept in their own doghouse. Thinking about dogs as an emotionally close member of the family is something I learned with my parents' dog, Phoebe. She truly is a valued part of the family and I'll definitely be sad when she passes on someday. I learned that my parents just recently got a second dog, a miniature poodle named Romeo. Of course, Phoebe is jealous to have competition for attention.

In 2006, during my three month sabbatical after I quit my job and got ready to move to Portland, I stayed with my parents and really bonded with Phoebe, who is a half-Pomeranian/half-Chihuahua mix. She looks a lot like Gizmo from Gremlins. I loved hanging out with her, petting her, and even singing to her (a favourite was Taylor Hicks' "Do I Make You Proud?", but she always gave me a weird look like I was crazy). When I moved to Portland, I couldn't believe that I missed her. My sister first brought her home for my parents in 2003 and we all thought she was funny looking. She grew on all of us and has a great personality. I like the warning sound she makes when she doesn't want to be bothered. Sometimes, I've ignored the warnings and she bit me on the lip. It was interesting to see how smart she is, though. Sometimes, you think dogs don't know things but they do.

I think one of God's greatest gifts to humans are the domestic pets we have in abundance. Granted, ancient humans domesticated the animals we enjoy today as pets, but it truly is amazing to reflect on the idea that we can share our homes with animals that are loyal to us, that give love and appreciation whenever we need it, and generally exist to amuse us with their unique personalities. The question many people have is: do animals have a soul? Do animals go to heaven? A friend of mine doesn't think so, but it seems like heaven wouldn't be heaven if the pets we loved weren't there waiting for us in spirit.

So, if you haven't read this book and are looking for a good read that will make you laugh, cry, and entertain you, try Marley and Me. It's one of my favourites of the numerous books I've read over the years. Very few books have caused me to laugh out loud or shed a few tears. This one managed to do both. I'm looking forward to seeing the film version, though I think it'll be a fluff movie that won't rate too high on my year end favourites list (with Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson in lead roles, how can it be considered anything but a fluff comedy?). All I know is, someday, I will have a Golden Retriever named Kundalini. Hopefully before I'm 40!

The Most Evil Man in the World Confesses Without Fear of Reprisals

On Monday, the most evil man on the planet (Dick Cheney) finally confessed to being directly involved in authorizing the use of torture on people captured in the "War on Terror." In a scene ripped out of A Few Good Men, he finally pulls a Nathan Jessup (excellently played by Jack Nicholson in full psychopathic glory). It was like: "Did you order the waterboarding?" And without blinking an eye, Cheney doesn't mince words. "You Goddamn right I did!" Yup, yup! That's your evangelical Christian for you (the only group of people he remains popular among).

Well, I move that we vote to impeach the evil bastard, try him on war crimes, convict him, and then administer the only suitable punishment for treason. You're smart enough to know what that might be.

A Christian response? Okay...it's not. I admit it. But is there a more evil person on the planet? I can't think of a single person who comes close. Think about it!

With someone like Saddam Hussein...there was no question the guy was evil. He didn't hide his true nature. Everyone knew he had people killed. He took a sadistic pleasure in torture and killing. Even most Iraqis knew Saddam was a bad guy. No one mistook Saddam for a good guy, not even our CIA, which helped to finance and arm most of his career when he was fighting the Iranians in the 1980s. He was our baddie. So, if everyone knows a person is evil, what's so sinister about it?

I think what's worse than that is a person who pretends to be good while behind the scenes is a master manipulator and a devient scoundrel who indulges in evil, sadistic pleasures. So, between two types of evil: the in-your-face-evil versus the behind-the-curtain-evil-who-pretends-to-be-a-Christian and actually fools people into believing the image over the reality, which evil is worse? That's the sign of the anti-Christ, isn't it? I've heard many Christians say that the anti-Christ would fool the most sincere Christians. Who has done that besides Bush and Cheney?!? HELLO!

I don't believe Bush is evil, though. I just think he's an idiot with a runaway ego. He's incompetent but doesn't know it. Cheney played him like a fool all these years. Cheney's the real deal. He's evil to the core. To me, he's so transparent in his evil that his sneer gives him away. Just watch the movie Devil's Advocate, when Charlize Theron goes crazy seeing beautiful people with a demonic sneer. That's what Dick Cheney is...a snarling demon beneath the human flesh. There is no goodness left in him. Even an old friend, Brent Scowcroft (sp?), said a few years ago that he no longer recognizes his friend and colleague from the first Bush administration. Cheney changed between 1991 and 2001. I think he changed in 1997, when he became head of Halliburton and schemed for a way to get back into power.

Cheney doesn't want Obama to close Guantanamo Bay. He wants it to continue until the "War on Terror" is over. Hello! The War on Terror is designed to never be over. It's a never ending war concocted in a neo-conservative think tank after the collapse of communism left them without an external threat to scare the American people into voting against their own economic self-interests. Terrorism is real...but take it from a guy who lived in Europe during the mid-1980s when terrorism was rampant. Europeans did well treating it as any crime...a police issue, not a military one. If terrorists "hate our freedoms", why aren't they attacking Sweden or New Zealand? There is a direct correlation between nations that are involved in undermining foreign governments and terrorist reprisals. Cause and effect. Everything in this world has a cause and effect. Blaming terrorist reprisals on liberals, peaceniks, feminists, and homosexuals is baffling, but Pat Robertson does so and his blindly loyal followers believe him because they know nothing about cause and effect.

Strip away the curtain and we'll see that we have been manipulated by one person and one person only: Dick Cheney. He is the evil man behind the curtain. No other person alive on earth today deserves eternity in hell more than Dick Cheney. He is evil to the core of his being. Someday, when his soul gets a life review, he will experience the waterboarding of every person he pushed our government to do. His life is worth looking at to find that one point when he switched. When the light of spirituality turned dark forever. It was probably the moment he sold his soul to Satan. If you're still not convinced...get some discernment and watch him speak. Look at him. The man pulsates with evil. He is the kind of person who never should have been trusted with any kind of power.

He recently said, as well, that the incoming Obama Administration will appreciate the expansion of executive power that Bush and Cheney worked hard to achieve. He thinks it's important to have a unitary executive power, which is contrary to what our Founding Fathers wanted. The Founders made Congress the stronger power, thus why they were given the power to raise funds, raise/fund a military, the power to declare war, and the power of investigation. They could reject presidential appointments. The idea was that a body of many men representing diverse districts around the country would less likely be corrupt than the single man who holds the presidency. They knew from history and from experience that politicians were tempted by war to increase power, but how lacking foresight and vision could undermine a country by involving the country in an unpopular war.

It's amazing to reflect on how great and visionary our Founding Fathers were...and yet, more than two hundred years later, we end up with imbeciles, morons, and power-mad crazies to lead our nation in the first decade of this century and millennium.

I don't care if Dickless Cheney is reading this post himself. But I have a message for him: You are evil to your core and your false Christianity doesn't fool me or God. You think your wealth and power gives you the license to do anything you want. You think you're doing all this in the nation's best interest. But you're wrong. One day, your cold, mechanical heart is going to stop keeping you alive and you will face the judgement of God and all the people you were responsible for torturing and killing. You will answer to them. The more there are, the worse off you'll be. Karmic payback is a bitch. You can repent all you want but it won't change the last eight years. Your karmic debt is so deep, it'll take many lifetimes to erase the bad karma of your existence as Dick Cheney. You are the worst person to ever be involved in our government and I hope the world pisses on your grave after you're gone.

You are the poster boy for the following Bible quote: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?"

I hope it was worth it. You made the world a worse place and there's a price to pay for that. You might fool your fellow "Christians", but you don't fool the one being that knows all. Your deceit will be exposed for the world to see just how evil you are.

Senator Caroline Kennedy?

There's growing talk about Caroline Kennedy becoming Hillary Clinton's replacement as Senator of New York. This is an interesting development and one I fully support. However, I also heard talk that Caroline Kennedy was being considered for the Ambassadorship to Great Britain, as her grandfather, Joseph Kennedy was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to be the Ambassador to the Court of St. James just before the world devolved into war.

I know some detractors and Kennedy-haters are against this selection, but it does make sense. The Senate is a high profile office and most of the ones who want it are members of the House of Representatives, which New York has plenty of, yet none with a high profile name that can tap into a fundraising base as easily as a Kennedy. There's also history between the Kennedys and New York. In 1964, Robert F. Kennedy left the Attorney General position in the Johnson Administration to run for Senate of New York. He was accused, like Hillary after him, of being a carpetbagger. However, the Kennedy sense of humour downplayed the controversy. Because he had a large family (I don't recall off hand how many children he had at the time, but I'm thinking at least 7 by 1964, and ultimately 11 by the time he died), he said that by moving to New York, he already did more than most New Yorkers in growing the population and increasing the electoral vote. Also, he was born in New York.

In 2000, reports came out that John F. Kennedy, Jr. was supposedly livid in his last months alive in 1999 that Hillary Clinton was planning to run for the Senate seat. He had been expected to run for political office at some point, though his main focus remained his magazine, George, which had been struggling around the time of his fatal airplane accident. I had hoped to see John Kennedy run for political office and return the mythological "Camelot" back into the White House. He should've listened to his mother. She feared all his life that he would die in an airplane accident, thus why he didn't take up flying until she died in 1994.

In 2002, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (eldest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy), ran for Governor of Maryland. She was the Lieutenant Governor and should've easily won in a Democratic state. When she lost to her Republican opponent, it effectively killed off her political career and the hope or possibility that she might be the Kennedy to return to the White House.

The other Kennedys from Robert's line with political aspirations include the disgraced former Congressman Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts, who had planned to run for governor in 1998 until a series of scandals pushed him out; and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is supposedly interested in running for New York's Attorney General office in 2010. Senator Ted Kennedy's son Patrick is currently a Congressman from Rhode Island, but seems to be biding his time until a senate seat opens up in that tiny state.

So that leaves Caroline, the sole survivor of the tragic John F. Kennedy line. She has never shown an interest in public life. She inherited her mother's obsession with privacy that she even wrote a book about privacy issues in the age of electronic monitoring. However, after her more public brother's death in 1999, she seems to have emerged from her shell and grown more comfortable in the spotlight. It's hard to imagine what it must be like to see your entire family pass away and you're left alone, especially when your younger brother died through an accident that could've been prevented if he wasn't such a physical risk-taker.

I'm a huge fan of the Kennedys. I love that family. For as long as I can remember, I thought of myself as an "unofficial" Kennedy political offspring. I never let anyone talk shit about the family in my presence. Yes, there have been numerous scandals and ethical lapses, and even financial schemes by the patriarch (Joseph Kennedy). However, what I love about the family is their sense of loyalty to one another, their belief in the noblesse oblige principle (because much has been given to them, they in turn give much in return through their public service), and their idealism. When I think of the Kennedys, I think of the Peace Corps, the Special Olympics (started by JFK's sister Eunice Shriver, mother of Maria Shriver, who is currently First Lady of California and married to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), the space program, and just an all-around coolness. These days, Senator Obama is the true inheritor of the Kennedy brand.

With Senator Ted Kennedy ailing from a brain cancer, his remaining time is ticking, and I'm sure that the family would like the Kennedy legacy to continue in the Senate. Is it right for Caroline to bypass many ambitious would-be Senators? That may be up for the people of New York to decide in 2010, when they can have their say. However, for now, it's up to the Governor of New York, and with the scandal in Illinois about how a Governor goes about selecting a replacement Senator, the Governor of New York can't afford to look like he's selling the seat.

From what I know about previous Senate appointments, they generally go to a well-known politician. It happened in 2000 when Senator Paul Coverdell of Georgia died. Governor Roy Barnes picked popular former Governor Zell Miller to replace the Republican senator, which caused an uproar in Georgia because both Governor Barnes and former Governor Miller are Democrats. We know how poorly that selection turned out, as Senator Zell Miller became a rabid and ranting lunatic who gave a vile speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention against fellow Democrat (and fellow Vietnam War veteran John Kerry) in favor of draft dodging Bush. He served until January 2005, which is just as well. His senate term was a disgrace.

As for New York, they have a Democratic governor in a heavily Democratic state. There's talk of the need to appoint a female replacement for Hillary Clinton. While I don't agree with that sentiment, I do agree that Caroline Kennedy would be a great selection. However, I don't know much of anything about New York politics, so they might have many capable candidates. From a national perspective, though, it's hard to argue against a Senator Caroline Kennedy. She has name recognition and the network necessary to be successful in that office. And most important of all, she knows a lot about privacy issues and that may be just the person we need to reverse some of Bush's wiretapping and electronic spying on the American people.

Caroline Kennedy's presence in the Senate would remind Americans of all that was good about the Kennedy family. And as I believe that America won't accept two dynasties at the same time, it's almost karmic justice that the outgoing disasterous Bush dynastic heir ruins chances for brother Jeb to run for Senate in 2010 or possible future presidential aspirations. The Kennedys didn't fare well during the Bush years, but with the emergence of Kennedyesque Obama as president, who is reported to be close to Caroline Kennedy, this is one partnership I'd love to see. Perhaps if Caroline Kennedy does a great job in the Senate, she'll be the frontrunner to become the first woman president in 2016. Or maybe the Senate remains her only political aspiration. That all remains to be seen, but I'm excited by the possibility.

Here's to a return to Camelot! Long live the Kennedy family!

Music Video Monday: TLC

For today's Christmas song and music video, I decided on TLC's version of "Sleigh Ride." I love the way they put their cool sound on this modern classic Christmas song. My previous favourite version was sung by Debbie Gibson. However, since TLC first came on the music scene in 1992, I loved their sound and could never get enough of it. I consider them to be the best female singing group. My favourite of the group is Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, but I truly liked all three of them.

Unfortunately, after the death of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez a few years ago, TLC is history. Another African American female trio came out around the same time (SWV) but they couldn't come anywhere near TLC. I think its because TLC had a great sound and recognizeable style. I would've loved to hear an entire Christmas album, but all they gave us was this song. Enjoy.

Scene I Waited Years to See!

News reported on Sunday that Bush was in Iraq once again to prove how "successful" his war of choice has been. It's part of his plan to shore up his legacy, as he believes that his entire legacy rests on the success of Iraqi democracy (conveniently ignoring the squandering of the surplus, ignoring warnings of the 9/11 attacks, sitting in a classroom all clueless when the attacks happen, letting New Orleans drown, hiring an administration full of incompetents, and watching the economy go bust in the biggest way since Hoover was president). Yet, this trip was secret, as we didn't hear about it in advance for security reasons.

So, at the press conference, an Iraqi journalist managed to do what I'm sure many people around the world wish they could do: throw something at Bush. I have to admit that I love watching the footage. To see Bush look scared and duck is something I've waited years to see. Every time I saw his smirk since 2000, I just wanted to throw something at him to wipe that off his face. I believe that Bush should be forced to walk a gauntlet of Americans from D.C. to Dallas when he leaves office. All along the route, Americans on both sides of the street are allowed to throw tomatoes and rotten eggs at him. The theory is that, by the end of such a long walk, he will never smirk again. He will be a broken man who realizes just how hated he truly is. For a man who lived his whole life in a bubble and never been held accountable for all his incompetence that resulted in disasters for everyone else, he needs to learn the depth of how disasterous his actions have been.

We won't get that chance to throw tomatoes, rotten eggs, or even cream pies at him...so to the Iraqi journalist who bravely threw both shoes at him, I want to say, "Thank you! Thank you for doing something I've wanted to do but couldn't." The video footage is priceless. I know it's not good to find satisfaction in something like that...but when a person is so clueless about the damage he has done to so many people around the world, anything that breaks through his bubble is a godsend. It does the soul of Bush no favours by allowing him to live in a fantasy bubble, clueless to the bad effects he has had on our planet. If he doesn't have accountability, then people throwing things at him is perhaps the best we'll ever get.

I Always Knew Listening to Barney was Torture!

When I was in the Navy, in my last year in La Maddalena, Sardinia, my command reassigned me to work at the Palau Community Center, which turned out to be one of the worst places I've ever worked (it held that record until the past year, when my current job has surpassed it). The reason why I hated it was because I had joined the Navy to be a sailor on a ship. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect that I would be assigned a job where I basically had to babysit Navy brats, lonely dependent wives, and off-duty sailors who wanted to drink a lot of beer, eat junk food, and watch horribly bad videos.

People thought I was lucky to land such a job, which is probably why I got it and not them. I was in a great job (which still holds the record for best place I've ever worked...if I don't count my White House internship), working among Chiefs and Officers in Submarine Squadron 22. I truly loved that job, but I knew it wouldn't last forever. I was assigned to ship's company and they could pull me at any time. My last year in Italy, they certainly did. It was a horrible bit of news to go from the best job in La Maddalena to one of the worst (there was actually one place that was much worse, though).

Because of this job, I missed out on a ship's cruise to Israel and Turkey...two countries I never got to see but wanted to. However, I did get leave approved to see South Africa, which I probably would not have seen had I been with Submarine Squadron 22. It all worked out.

Anyhow, there was one young lady I remember well (except her name). She was 17 or so and not even married. She had followed her young enlisted boyfriend to Italy (against her parents wishes). She hung out at the Palau Community Center every day and had a strange craving for dill pickles. She was flirty with me, but dumb as a rock so I wasn't attracted to her. She said she ate pickles hoping to become pregnant. She actually believed that eating pickles helped women get pregnant and she desperately wanted a baby so her boyfriend would marry her...or at the very least, get some child support money. She was the kind of girl you'd expect to find in a trailer park in Kentucky. What I remember most about her is that she LOVED (and I mean LOVED) Barney...that purple monstrosity of a dinosaur who sings the horrid song "I Love You, You Love Me!" She would request that I play a Barney video for her everyday, so I had to hear his goofy way of speaking and that awful song.

This past week, I read an interesting article in which OUR government actually used songs from Sesame Street to "torture" prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. The creator of the Barney theme song, Bob Singleton, wrote in a newspaper column that: "It's absolutely ridiculous. A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?"

I totally agree. That's exactly the "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by our Constitution. I wouldn't wish a Barney song on my worst enemy. It truly is enough to drive anyone mad.

Maybe we should lock Bush in a room with Barney singing that song over and over like a broken record until he becomes a blubbering idiot crawling in the fetal position with his thumb in his mouth.

It takes a pretty sick mind to think up torture techniques to drive people to madness. Usually, our government prefers loud, heavy metal music. No Enya to put prisoners in a higher frame of mind...but Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, AC/DC, Pantera, Rage Against the Machine, and even Queen ("We Will Rock You!") and Eminem ("The Real Slim Shady"). Plenty have lost their minds, which I believe is a sin so grievious that I fear for the karmic debt of the soldiers who subject their prisoners to music toture. Their souls are truly going to regret that they ever treated another human being so poorly. It's not a moment to be proud of in anyone's life.

According to the article I read, an FBI memo quotes an interrogator at Guantanamo Bay bragging that he only needed four days to "break" a prisoner by alternating between 16 hours of loud music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.

One prisoner who was subjected to the music torture and released without charge has filed a lawsuit. He described the experience: "It sort of removes you from you. You can no longer formulate your own thoughts when you're in an environment like that." He said that the tactic has made innocent men go mad.

The picture above is of the leftist group Rage Against the Machine, who object to the use of their music to torture prisoners. Tom Morello of the group suggested at a recent concert in San Francisco that they throw Bush into a small cell in Guantanamo Bay and blast some of their music.

I think it's disturbing that our government does such a thing, which I consider to be a form of evil. Since I believe that our whole role on this planet is to bring about a spiritual awareness, I don't believe angry rock music achieves this goal. I've never been a fan of hard rock/heavy metal groups. Van Halen, Def Leppard, and some Guns 'n' Roses songs are about as hard rock as I get. Recent reports about white supremacist groups also featured their fondness for "angry rock music" that is little more than yelling and screaming. That's not music. That's torture, plain and simple.

No purpose is served by torturing prisoners this way. I understand that our government is trying to scare, disorient, and demoralize prisoners to the breaking point to where they confess, but it still doesn't make it right. Whether these people are terrorists or not, they still deserve just treatment. They are humans, too. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Our government had no problem with the mujahadeen in the 1980s...but now they are a threat to national security?

Still don't believe it's wrong? The Golden Rule (and karma) spells it out quite clearly. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Would the American people be outraged if an American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan was captured, tortured, humiliated, and made to listen to Arab music at full blast for hours on end? I'm sure Americans would be outraged. So why's it so hard to understand? The law of karma guarantees that you will experience exactly the kind of treatment you give other people. There's no way around it. And even more, Jesus warned people that the way you treat the least of your breathren, you treat him.

So, Christians who participate in the torture of prisoners (even if they find it funny to play the Barney theme song on a never-ending loop at full volume for hours on end), I fear for your salvation. You will absolutely hate your life review because you will experience exactly the same that you inflicted on other people. That's not the way to go about creating a more spiritual world. All you do is foster hate in other people and guarantee that we'll have to deal with these people for decades...when kind treatment might win over their hearts in the long run.

Why I Don't Like Evangelistic Religiosity

Quite a few posts ago, an evangelical posted a comment regarding my questioning of God, faith, religion, and belief in New Age ideas. I had been wanting to respond in a separate post, but got sidetracked. Then last weekend, my brother and I went out to Outback steakhouse to eat dinner and as is usually the case, at some point in the conversation, he again attempts to "witness" to me, even though he and I were raised in the same religion (the Community of Christ). However, he left the church a few years ago in favour of a local evangelical church where he found that people are friendlier to him than the members of our church congregation in Portland.

The thing that bothers me about him, as well as other evangelicals who "witness", is that he speaks to me as if I am completely IGNORANT about who Jesus was. It's that condescending arrogance that turns me off from evangelicals. I am a smart individual. I probably know more about different religions than many of the people who "witness" to me. But because NONE of us alive were around when Jesus was, everything we believe about Jesus is based on a faith in whatever church doctrines we gravitate towards. In my own search, in my own desire to be as honest as possible, I reject the belief in Jesus as an "atoning sacrifice." In other words, I don't believe Jesus died for our sins. I believe that to be a distortion of his true purpose. I consider it the greatest fraud ever concocted. Because I reject such an idea, it puts me in a difficult spot with evangelicals and other "Christians" who supposedly think they know better than me (because they witnessed events with their own eyes).

My honesty gets me into trouble. All the time. Whether it's at work, with friends, with church members, with people on the Cybercommunity webboard, I have found that sometimes, being too honest only gets you in trouble. But I'm not going to lie about what I believe just to shut up another person. They can damn me to hell for eternity, but I will never claim to be someone that I am not. And I am most definitely not an evangelical Christian nor have a desire ever to be. But it's not just evangelical Christians witnessing to me. I've also had my Mormon supervisor claim that she "knows" that Mormon doctrines are true and because I won't say with 100% certainty that my beliefs are true, that makes her beliefs "stronger" than mine.

However, if you've ever seen the movie Contact, I'm a lot like the character played by Jodie Foster. Near the end of the film when she's forced to admit that her experience might have been a fraud, she honestly admits to the scientific standard that she can't prove her experience true, even though she believes she experienced what she testified. Why is that considered weak? There are plenty of frauds who claim absolute belief: Jim Jones and David Koresh, and they ended up killing their own followers. Admitting that your own beliefs could be misinterpreted, that you may in fact be wrong, is a sign of humility and should be comforting to other people. It's a sign of tolerance and understanding.

Below, in bold, I'm reprinting the comment that was left in an earlier post by an evangelical and my response.

I understand your conflict with Christianity but it really comes down to a simple choice. Please accept my comment with the sincerest intent. One can either choose to accept God's Word and accept all of it or choose not to.

Choose to "accept God's word", with the caveat of accepting "all of it" or not to. A simple choice? Or a false one? For me, it's a simple-minded choice. Black and white thinking. Either / or. You are with us or against us. I have no use for line drawing. I believe in a complex world, with multitude of choices, of understandings, of ways of being.

Anyone who reads the Bible with "awake eyes" will see a book with many authors, with contradictory messages, full of flaws. It was not written by God...it was written by humans, with their own prejudices, biases, and even ignorance. Why do people choose to remain a prisoner to the antiquated ideas of men who lived in a time when slavery was seen as acceptable, where women were treated as property, when most people didn't know how to read, when the amount of books published wouldn't come anywhere near the number of books sold on Amazon.com?

The comment implies that God gives us an either / or choice that will either save us or condemn us for eternity. Make the wrong choice, based on your own understanding that is rooted in your own experiences with life, with other people, with different ideas...and this egotistical God will condemn you to a burning eternal afterlife. That's just absurd thinking. So I choose. I choose intelligence over ignorance.

The greatness of God can not be grasped until we understand the greatness of sin.

I disagree, of course. The greatness of God can never truly be grasped at all because we are finite material beings trying to understand an infinite, spiritual being. It would be like an ant trying to understand the human that towers over the anthill.

When I took a Biology course two years ago and relearned the parts of the cell all the way through the process of evolution, I was in awe of God for creating this complex universe. I saw evolution as a work of art, God's ongoing process of creation. Awe is what I felt. I was given glimpses of God's greatness, and it had nothing to do with understanding "the greatness of sin."

I learned a few years ago that the word "sin" means "to miss the mark." Evangelicals make it sound like a disease, when in actuality, it just means that we didn't hit our mark. There's always room for improvement. Nothing to condemn yourself to hell for. Because of religious people, "sin" has become such a charged word and is often used as a club with which to hit over disbelievers heads.

People usually have an issue with believing in something they cannot see or touch.

If this is understood by evangelicals, then it must be understood by God. Thus, why would God base "salvation" on whether someone believes in an event that supposedly happened 2,000 years ago? It doesn't make sense, because it means having faith in a belief one wasn't a witness to, that most likely had been distorted through history (there is no uncorruptible historical link between our modern era and the time of Christ that circumvents the abuses of the Medieval era with the Catholic Church's monopoly on power and information).

Beyond that, I believe my own spiritual experiences, which I cannot see or touch nor prove to anyone else that it happened just as I said. These experiences are my own and something that will always remain with me, even after I am transformed into the spiritual realm. But because these experiences are my own, I don't go around expecting other people to believe them or condemn them to hell for disbelieving my experiences. Every person must base their spiritual ideas on their own experiences. It's the only honest way to be spiritually authentic.

The Word has been watered down to accomodate society.

I disagree. I see an evolution as humans learn more about our world through the scientific means. If we based our society on being literally obedient to the Bible, it would mean going back to slavery, making women second class citizens, no more football, no court system to administer justice, and even our mixed-fabric clothing would have to be destroyed.

The statement above is chilling to me. It represents a person who prefers an authoritarian form of government. I believe that humanity has gotten better, that as people become better educated, some of the ideas proposed in the Bible are left in the trashbin of history.

Satan does exist. His sole purpose is to kill, steal, and destroy.

I have a problem believing in Satan. The concept doesn't make sense to me. Yes, it is possible to believe in God but not Satan. I remember in 1995, I went to a religious retreat in which I had to drive through a torrential downpour. As I drove, it became so bad that I had to stop beneath an overpass to let the rain die down a bit. Many drivers on the interstate had stopped along the shoulder because visibility was so bad. I just remember being in awe of the power of the storm and thanking God for having a car with a roof and a radio. I had thought about what it must've been like during the days of covered wagons and how good I had it. Anyhow, at the retreat, when people shared their testimony, I remember hearing one lady claim that Satan had sent the storm to prevent them from attending the retreat! She just went on and on about it and I was shocked. In the midst of the storm, Satan didn't even enter my thoughts. I just don't think that way. And that's what I find with a lot of people who believe in Satan. He gets blamed for so many things, that he's a bit of a scapegoat. The irony is, I'm sympathetic towards scapegoats. So, whenever I hear people blaming Satan for their woes, I automatically become "the Devil's advocate." That's just how I am.

So, if Satan's sole purpose is to kill, steal and destroy...why did evangelical Christians vote for him to be president these past eight years?

Okay, that was a joke, folks. I don't believe Bush is Satan...but I find it amusing that people who are so worried about Satan and evil are supportive of a president who has unleashed the very thing they claim Satan wants to do. And they did this with someone who claimed to be "an evangelical Christian." With Christians like Bush, who really needs Satan?

How you can believe in God but not believe in Jesus? God constantly speaks of "we." That "we" is the Trinity-the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit (who lives in us.)

I don't believe in the Jesus claimed by evangelicals. Whether he resurrected or not is irrelevant to me. It's the life of Jesus that matters, which I don't see a lot of evangelicals following. So many want the Ten Commandments on display in schools and courtrooms all over the country. Yet that comes from the Old Testament. I don't hear of any evangelical Christian calling for the Beatitudes to be on display in every school or courthouse. Why not? Jesus spoke the Beatitudes in his sermon on the mount. Jesus never gave the Ten Commandments.

I'll tell you why: evangelical Christians aren't all that interested in the life mission of Jesus. They prefer an authoritarian model for people to be unquestioningly obedient to, thus why the Ten Commandments is preferred over the Beatitudes. THOU SHALT NOTs is preferred over BLESSED ARE THE...

The belief in the Trinity comes from the Council of Nicea, when a bunch of people came together around 300 A.D. to vote on Christian doctrines. That's over 300 years after Christ lived on the earth, and it's about humans voting on what will be acceptable in the belief system they created around Jesus. Do we read of Jesus advocating the Trinity? My impression is that Jesus tried to tell people that all of us are a part of God, that we can't truly be separated from God because God is the source of all things.

The Trinity is good symbology, but I don't believe God will deny my spiritual birthright because I don't obsess over "the Trinity". That belief is completely irrelevant to how to live one's life.

Isaiah 7:14 speaks of the signs God will provide beginning with the virgin conceiving.

Virgin births are common in a lot of the mythological tales from that part of the world during that part of human history. And of course, if you wanted people to believe Jesus was a messiah, you could easily fabricate a virgin birth story because you want the "facts" to fit the prediction in the Old Testament. That "fact" (or not) is not really interesting to me and doesn't really prove anything about Jesus to me. I don't base my belief on Jesus because of the claim of virgin birth. Virginity is way overrated. It just seems like ancient peoples had a serious problem with thinking that sex could be a spiritual experience. Perhaps they saw animals do it and thought it represented human's animal nature, and thus believed that a living god would not be conceived that way. It would have to be through miraculous means.

We were created to glorify God in all that we do (by loving others as He loves us, or worshipping Him and no other gods, etc.) Jesus' sole purpose was salvation.

Why God created humans or who created God are questions that won't be answered until after we die and can ask God personally. If everything we do is meant to glorify God, what does it say about intolerant and arrogant evangelicals who proselytize to other people that their opinions are "the absolute truth" that must be accepted under threat of eternal hellfire and damnation? That doesn't sound like glorifying God to me.

I have found that a lot of evangelical Christians do in fact "worship other gods" (i.e. money).

Its hard to say what Jesus purpose of life was. My belief based on reading many books is that Jesus was a reformer who saw the way his religion (Judaism) abused true/authentic spirituality. People had become too obsessed with following the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law. Religion had become too rule-based and less about relationships and human connections. I believe he sought to change that and as his popularity grew, the church authorities became threatened by his populist power and sought to have him killed, thinking it would be the end of him. They had no idea his death would give birth to one of the largest religions on the planet. The salvation I believe in is that Jesus wouldn't be judgmental like some of his followers who think they know the truth about his life and death.

Read 1 Corinthian 1:18-25. In summary it says the word of the cross seems foolish to those who are on the way to destruction; but to us who are on the way to salvation it is the power of God.

This was a judgmental tone. Just because I reject the claims of evangelical Christianity does not mean that I'm on the way to destruction. The reason why I doubt "the word of the cross" is because it doesn't pass the test of logic and too many of its advocates have done a lot of evil. The Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades resulted in the deaths of many, many innocent people, for what purpose? More recently, I have watched evangelical Christians rally around a president who has brought a lot of death and destruction to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, so once again, the judgment of evangelical Christians is flawed. I knew Bush was a fraud. If all your belief in the literal truth of the Bible led you to support someone like Bush because you saw him as a fellow evangelical Christian, then what does the past eight years say about you? I honestly see no Christlike actions in our president and his loyal followers over the past eight years. So, if that's what it means to "follow the word of the cross", you can count me out! I will cling to my own understanding of a truly just God.

We preach the Messiah crucified, it is a stumbling block or nonsense to those who find it hard to believe but to those who are called (or believe) it is the wisdom of God. It all sounds farfetched but remember nothing is impossible for or with God.

The reason why I don't believe in the crucifiction is because it doesn't make logical sense. That Jesus would die for the sins of humanity (but only for those who accept that "gift") because of "the original sin" from Adam and Eve is plainly ludicrous. If you don't believe Adam and Eve existed, then the whole premise falls apart. If you believe that our world has never been perfect, that it has been subjected to evolution from its very start, the whole premise falls apart.

Then there's the idea that all the people who lived before Jesus was alive, what happens to their souls? Or how about all the people who never heard of Jesus? Or how about those who don't believe that story because of the religion they were born into? Or how about the idea that you condemn people to hell when you share the "salvation of Jesus" to them and they reject it?

The reason I reject that view of Jesus is because I don't believe God would make BELIEF the test of salvation. It's not what you believe about some event you did not witness that condemns you to hell. It's how you live your life. Do you do what you say you will do? Do you strive to be a good person? Do you love strangers and forgive others? That matters, not what you believe about some event 2,000 years ago. Its insulting to God to claim that God would create such an absurd system of salvation. Give God more credit than that!

People usually seek out self-help books or New Age spirituality because they are still searching for something.

There's nothing wrong with "searching". Some people who are so absolute in their thinking scoff at those who are reading about different beliefs. They make it sound like if you haven't established yourself in concrete belief, that you're still "seeking" and thus unstable. That's false. The way I see it, we are here to learn as much as we can about human nature, life, earth, meaning, ideas, etc. No matter how long we live, we will never learn everything we need to.

In the numerous evangelicals I've met who believe with absolute certainty what they believe, it's hard to have any kind of intelligent discussion with them because so many know so little about our world. They might display an in depth knowledge about the Bible, but ask about any other book or belief and they draw blanks. I've known many who thought higher education was evil. They viewed knowledge as an evil thing and shunned it. Hey, if you want to live in ignorance, that's your choice. But I won't make that choice. My goal is to be the best educated person I can be, to understand why things happen, and to be able to make better decisions.

New Age spirituality is often scoffed at. Granted, I met a lot of flaky New Agey people. But that doesn't interest me. Its the ideas I find in this catch-all category that intrigue me. Part of the critique of New Age spirituality is that it has no structure...its a wide category, from "healing crystals" to TAROT to Native American shamanism to animal totems to reincarnation to Wiccan to Buddhism to Near Death Experiences to Numerology to psychics, etc. One doesn't have to believe any or all of it. Its not a belief system for a person who needs a rigid structure, that's for sure. It's a belief system for people who are searching for ideas that they can't find in their religions. The one thing New Age spirituality is, however, is total freedom. People tend to be non-judgmental and they are open to ideas. There is no fixed belief.

I've heard about some evangelicals who claim to have been into New Age spirituality and now testify that it's part of Satan's grand design. However, I've also heard about many people who gravitate to New Age spirituality speak of being abused by fundamentalist and evangelical parents or church groups. What does it prove? To me it proves that often, people seek the religion that "works" for them. For people who have a more authoritarian mindset and need structure in their lives, New Age spirituality wouldn't work for them because its pretty much a "self-service cafeteria." For an independent-minded, rebellious nonconformist who has a tendency to ask uncomfortable questions, structured religion (especially strict ones) is unsatisfactory.

The Power of God's love is all we need because He says that He is the Bread of Life. I gaurantee that if you seek a personal relationship with God, you will see Him moving and working in your life. He will answer those questions you have about your job. Everything happens for a reason. Seek Him and find out your purpose for being there.

So, it ends with the condescending statement that because I'm interested in New Age spirituality that I need to seek a personal relationship with God. The arrogance of this statement is just incredible. I write in my blog a very personal "crisis of faith" I have with God, only to be preached by a holier than thou evangelical who doesn't know me personally and is just arrogant enough to assume that they know all about me.

I have a personal relationship with God, thank you very much. It's often contentious, but also full of blessings. As I ponder my life, I can often see what certain trials have brought about in my life. But it is my own life, which is meant for me...not you or anyone else to decide what is best.

One example that I'll use is one that evangelical Christians might not agree with. When I had prayed for direction in 1996, I got a revelation to apply to BYU. That was not where I wanted to go to school, but apply I did and then I got accepted and went there for college. Evangelicals view Mormons as a cult, so in their minds, God wouldn't send me to such a place. Mormons who heard my testimony think that was a sign for me to join their church. Neither belief is right, because it was God directing ME, knowing full well that I would not be attracted to join such an authoritarian church. But unlike evangelicals, I know that the Mormon church is not a cult. Mormons are Christians, whether evangelicals think so or not.

I believe the reason why I was sent to BYU was to meet the people who would become my friends and to have my faith and belief challenged and rocked to its very core. From my experiences at BYU, I've come away with a belief in reincarnation (for those who don't know, Mormons DO NOT believe in reincarnation) and because of my time at BYU, I got the best experience of my life: the White House Internship.

So, I have a personal relationship with God. I haven't abandoned my belief in God because of my current crisis.

I wish evangelicals would understand how off putting they are. They need to self-examine their own beliefs. After all, so many of them are avid supporters of President George W. Bush and it must say something about their belief in Jesus and Christianity that they have supported a person for president who has been an unmitigated disaster for our world, and one who has nothing in common with the values Jesus lived and died for. Until evangelicals get it right on politics, they have ZERO credibility when it comes to preaching what Jesus was about. They have no right to preach to anyone.

That's part of the reason why I love Buddhism (another religion hated by evangelicals). Enlightened Buddhists talk about their beliefs and then challenge doubters to try it themselves. They don't tell people to accept anything on faith or their good word. They actually have a process on how to achieve enlightenment that works for anyone. I tried it in 2001 and it works, just as they said it would (I had the most profound spiritual experience of my life). If only Christianity could be as effective. But when you base your religion on belief in an event that happened 2,000 years ago that can't be proven, instead of an interior process of achieving a personal revelation, there's no comparison. One religion is superior to another. Thus why Christianity must change or die (as John Shelby Spong wrote).

No offense, but I have no use for evangelical Christianity. It would be like expecting a graduate student to go back to Kindergarten. Boredom would ensue because the evangelical religious belief appeals to a very elementary level of being that I've evolved far beyond.

Flashback Friday: 1988

As I mentioned in a previous post, for some strange reason, I have thought a lot about 1988 this year and have no clue why. As an example of "the law of attraction", this intense and nostalgic focus on one of the greatest years of my life culminated in one of the best gifts I've gotten this year...several former classmates requesting me to join Facebook. I hadn't thought about most of them since my family moved away from the army base in Germany to Georgia twenty years ago.

My parents bought a house in Stone Mountain and have lived in it for twenty years (my dad paid off his mortgage this month). The picture above is me around Christmas time in 1988. I was a junior in high school.

To get you back into the mindset of 1988...throw away your cell phone, iPods, laptops, and PDAs. Forget about YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Myspace, eBay, and everything related to the World Wide Web. MTV still played music videos and rap was not yet mainstream (Tone-Loc's "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina" a year later would make rap truly popular for many white folks).

Reagan was somewhat popular and Bush was elected president. Quayle was the baffling Vice Presidential pick, who got served in the debate during the most famous of rebukes ("I knew Jack Kennedy. He was a friend of mine. And you are no Jack Kennedy!"). The younger Bush was still an alcoholic who was given an ultimatum by his wife around his 40th birthday that it was either the booze or her.

Apartheid still existed in South Africa as well as communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall looked as permanent as the Great Wall of China.

The Winter Olympics was in Calgary, Alberta, Canada while Seoul, South Korea hosted the Summer Olympics.

My dad took me on a trip to Paris in the summer, before we moved back to the States.

Gorbachev with Reagan and Bush in New York City.

Images of Dukakis in a tank is credited as dooming his campaign because he supposedly looked ridiculous. I don't think it's any more ridiculous than Bush in his stupid flight suit with leg straps to enhance his manhood and the Mission Accomplished banner in the background.

The infamous Vice Presidential debate between Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, who compared himself to John F. Kennedy...a no-no, since Senator Bentsen counted JFK as a personal friend.

In the spring of 1988 at Fulda American High School in Fulda, Germany, I acted in my second play (I was an extra in a play in the 7th grade). Our Town was minimalist set design and so few teenagers auditioned that several teachers had to play parts. I was Wally Webb, the younger brother of the main character. It was fine by me, because I had only a few lines to learn. I loved participating in the play, though, and caught "the acting bug."

In the fall of 1988, at Clarkston High School in Clarkston, Georgia, I made the school play, You Can't Take it With You. In this play, I was the IRS agent who intrudes on the eccentric family to threaten the grandfather with back taxes. The drama teacher at this school was famous for her foul temper (she was a great prep for boot camp), but she had a good heart. It was an incredible bonding experience with the other actors. I was even threatened to be put on microphone because my voice wouldn't project well. A student who had graduated in the spring agreed to play the role of a Russian guy and he served as my acting coach. After he suggested that I model my character after the EPA guy in Ghostbusters, I knew how to perform my role.

To this day, I think back in amazement that I was able to memorize lines and most important, to muster up anger in my role as I threaten the grandfather. I remember during the rehearsals, I had a hard time mustering up the anger. But when the costumes and make up were on, the overhead lighting in a darkened cafeteria beamed towards the stage, and people sitting in chairs watching us...the anger I needed came naturally. I didn't forget my lines and it was a rush when I exited the stage to chill out backstage, knowing my brief appearance was done. It was a high, and incredible, emotional high.

Though I would lose my interest in acting, I still think back in awe over the fact that I performed in two plays in 1988. On the surface, there is not much in common between Our Town and You Can't Take it With You. However, the theme is pretty much the same. Both plays are about loving life as you live it. Both reference death, for you can't take anything with you when you die. It's about how you live. If there were two plays to act in, I couldn't have chosen a better two to have been a participant of. If you've never seen either play, next time you hear about one being performed in a high school, college, or community theater near you, go see it! Especially You Can't Take it With You! It is hilarious! We kept laughing during our first few rehearsals. Fortunately, the repetition of practice made it less funny so we could perform it seriously.

My favourite television show of 1988 was Moonlighting. I loved that show. The last episode would air in May 1989, closing the book on one of the quirkiest, funniest, and coolest shows on TV. I'd love to see a film version with new actors in the roles.

One of my favourite films in the summer of 1988 was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It was one of the coolest films I had ever seen...as the mix of animation and reality was advanced (making the animated / live action sequences in Mary Poppins and Pete's Dragon look amateurish) and so many cameos of famous cartoons. The story was only so-so, but who could forget Jessica Rabbit's torch song intro and the detective's dismissal of the men in the club as "having a thing for rabbits" before he starts drooling over her himself?

Other films I loved that summer included Die Hard, Coming to America, Big Business, and Big.

But my favourite film that I saw in 1988 was Three Men and a Baby (released during Christmas season 1987 stateside, but didn't arrive in military theaters in Europe until the start of summer). It was funny to see three selfish bachelors change because of one adoreable little baby.

My favourite album of the year was the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack, which rode high on the Billboard Album charts all year long, even though the movie had been released the previous summer. It was a musical phenomenon, with single after single being played on the radio and a concert tour quickly followed. This was the one album that all of my friends loved. We were all crazy about Dirty Dancing at Fulda American High School. Boys and girls loved it. The soundtrack was a perfect mix of 80s pop and 60s songs that weren't overplayed or overly familiar. I simply couldn't listen to it enough, and neither could Americans. A second soundtrack was released and hit the top of the charts as well. Now, you can buy a CD that has both soundtracks on one disc and arranged in the same order as played in the film.

My favourite song of the year was Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror." It was a powerful ballad with an equally powerful message. It was one of the examples I used to argue with the evangelical youth group leaders when they told us to give up our secular music and listen only to Christian music. To their eyes, rock music was all about SEX, SEX, SEX. And when it wasn't, it was about drugs. If the song didn't mention God or Jesus, they said we shouldn't listen to it. I've always been a rebel, so no one tells me what music to listen to. Especially for a guy who grew up on pop music ("Grease" by Frankie Valli was the first song I remember liking a lot, in the summer of 1978). Most songs, I argued, were about love. Okay, maybe Madonna's "Like a Virgin," George Michael's "I Want Your Sex," and Huey Lewis and the News' "I Want a New Drug," gave pop a bad name to evangelical Christians, but how can they argue against "Man in the Mirror" and "We Are the World"?

If I were to rank my favourite songs of 1988, the following would make my Top Ten list:

1. "Man in the Mirror," Michael Jackson
2. "One Moment in Time," Whitney Houston
3. "Love is in Need of Love Today," George Michael
4. "Never Gonna Give You Up," Rick Astley
5. "Im Nin' Alu," Ofra Haza
6. "Make Me Lose Control," Eric Carmen
7. "Foolish Beat," Debbie Gibson
8. "When It's Love," Van Halen
9. "Look Away," Chicago
10. "Perfect World," Huey Lewis and the News

And the following represent all the other songs I loved in the year 1988 (in no ranking order). Listening to any of these songs brings back a lot of memories. Simply put, 1988 was a great year. Truly among the best. Hopefully this will be it for my nostalgia about 1988. I'm grateful that my friends from 1988 pestered me a week ago to join Facebook. Life has been an amazing dream since then. Now, it's time to focus on other things and see just how true this "law of attraction" truly is!

"Put a Little Love in Your Heart," Al Green and Annie Lennox
"Waiting for a Star to Fall," Boy Meets Girl
"Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird (Medley)," Will to Power
"Hands to Heaven," Breathe
"How Can I Fall?" Breathe
"One Good Woman," Peter Cetera
"Kokomo," Beach Boys
"Love Changes Everything," Climie/Fisher
"Need You Tonight," INXS
"Got My Mind Set On You," George Harrison
"Groovy Kind of Love," Phil Collins
"Angel," Aerosmith
"She's Like the Wind," Patrick Swayze & Wendy Fraser
"What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)," Information Society
"Wishing I Was Lucky," Wet Wet Wet
"I Should Be So Lucky," Kylie Minogue
"Wishing Well," Terence Trent d'Arby
"Wild, Wild West," Escape Club
"Seasons Change," Expose
"Sweet Child of Mine," Guns 'n' Roses
"Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car," Billy Ocean
"The Flame," Cheap Trick
"Where Do Broken Hearts Go," Whitney Houston
"Pour Some Sugar On Me," Def Leppard
"Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)," Samantha Fox
"Tell It To My Heart," Taylor Dayne
"Red, Red Wine," UB40
"Shattered Dreams," Johnny Hates Jazz
"Girlfriend," Pebbles
"If It Isn't Love," New Edition
"Don't Be Cruel," Bobby Brown
“Don’t You Know What the Night Can Do?” Steve Winwood
"I Get Weak," Belinda Carlisle
"What Have I Done To Deserve This?" Pet Shop Boys w/ Dusty Springfield
"Sign Your Name," Terence Trent d'Arby
"Don't Worry, Be Happy," Bobby McFerrin
"Mercedes Boy," Pebbles
"Rocket 2 U," The Jets
"Fast Car," Tracy Chapman
"I Want Her," Keith Sweat
"Say You Will," Foreigner
"The Promise," When In Rome
"The Valley Road," Bruce Hornsby and the Range
"Valerie," Steve Winwood

"Just Like Paradise," David Lee Roth
"Piano In The Dark," Brenda Russell
"Don't Shed A Tear," Paul Carrack
"Nobody's Fool," Kenny Loggins
"Yeke Yeke," Mory Kante
"Ella, Elle l'a," France Gall

"Tomorrow People," Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers

"All This Time," Tiffany

"Out of the Blue," Debbie Gibson

"Please Don't Go Girl," New Kids on the Block

"Parents Just Don't Understand," DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince

"Nightmare on My Street," DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince

"Nobody's Perfect," Mike and the Mechanics

All Hair, No Brains

On Tuesday, news hit that Illinois Governor Blagojevich was arrested by Federal agents for attempting to solicit a huge payout in exchange for selecting Senator Obama's replacement to the U.S. Senate. The Feds had wiretapping approval, since he has been under an ongoing investigation for various corruption allegations. And just earlier, he did the Gary Hart thing by daring the media and investigators to go ahead and monitor his phone calls. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

Since I don't live in Illinois, I don't know much of anything about their state government. In the past couple days, as I read articles and listen to pundits on television, the most baffling thing about Governor Blagojevich is that he was bored in the Governor's office and has the lowest public approval ratings ever seen (from between 8% to 18%, depending on which source you read). And yet, he is arrogant enough to still harbour presidential ambitions in 2016! What is wrong with this guy? And what is up with his hair? That's the first thing I noticed about him...because it's so thick. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts is known for having "the best hair in the Senate" and it makes me wonder if that causes a lot of unnecessary vanity in male politicians. While others are balding or seeing their hair thin out in mid-life, Blagojevich still has a thick head of hair to blow-dry every morning.

The man is delusional. If he seriously thought he could have a chance at the presidency after Obama, he truly is not in the "reality based community." Why? Well...honestly, two reasons: (1) Can you seriously see people electing a politician with such an unsual name? Granted, "Obama" is unusual...but it's fun and easy to say. It especially works well in chanting. It's like a mantra. But Blagojevich? How do you pronounce that?!? Even The Oregonian had to include a pronunciation hint in the front page, over-the-fold headline story. (2) I just don't see America voting back to back presidents from Illinois. Honestly, I think we will have a woman president after Obama, and I've read online chatter about Hillary hoping to use the Secretary of State tenure for a successful launching pad to "break that glass ceiling once and for all." However, she is also from Illinois until she went away to college and married an Arkansas boy.

Patrick Fitzgerald is a great, no-nonsense Federal prosecutor. He was by the book on the Scooter Libby case (though he should've gone after Karl Rove). His press conference regarding Governor Blagojevich was particularly shocking. He said: "The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering. They allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator..." The Governor basically sought a sweet deal, such as being hired to head a non-profit organization and/or have his wife selected to an advisory board in some corporation. Amounts thrown around were in the ballpark of $300,000. Apparently, he's bored of the low-paying governor's job and if he didn't get a quid pro quo deal, he would appoint himself as Senator because it guaranteed that the money would come rolling in, as he became more connected to lobbyists in D.C.'s K Street culture.

The Governor supposedly demanded to be appointed as the Health and Human Services Secretary in the Obama Administration. On tape, he was heard saying of the Obama transition team: "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them."

Well, okay...if that's his attitude, you know he just killed his future prospects with that statement. If anyone should be blacklisted from government, its him. Impeached and removed from office, prosecuted, indicted, and sentenced to prison. Good riddance!

Of the Senate seat, he actually said that a Senate seat "is a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing." Wow! Where did this guy learn civics and government? One of the powers of being governor is making the appointments to various offices. He's supposed to be a servant of the people of Illinois, using wisdom to appoint the best public servant to the vacated Senate seat (I think Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a shoo-in).

I know that conservatives are having a field day with this developing scandal. Some are hoping that Obama is connected in some way, and some rightwingnuts are already hoping they'll have enough dirt with which to impeach Obama as soon as he is sworn in as the 44th president. Excuse me, here, but...are they for fucking real?!? After ALL the criminal actions of Bush that these people ignored for the past eight years, they are already talking about impeaching Obama? Man, these are some hateful and delusional people. I just don't see an Obama connection. Especially when Blagojevich is on record dismissing them with the harshest word of all. He's obvioiusly not a fan. He's a colossal jerk. Like former Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, the three Democrats who had scandals this year have effectively destroyed their careers and future presidential ambitions.

It makes you wonder what's going on with these men in mid-life. They just self-destruct. Blagojevich, like Spitzer, got careless when he should've known that he's under investigation. And it all boils down to money. Why does Blagojevich need all that money? What does that say to people who make less than $30,000 a year? This greed is outrageous. Blagojevich represents the worst of our out of control capitalist system. He deserves nothing more than making license plates in an orange jumpsuit for 13 cents an hour. Live on that, greedy jerk!

I'm beginning to think that what we're seeing is a complete collapse of our whole economic system. Society needs a restructuring. Housing prices got too outrageously expensive, as well as cost of living across the board. When high salaried CEOs are crying for handouts while going on junkets to luxury spas and resorts for tens of thousands of dollars, when a political party spent over $180,000 to outfit Sarah Palin and her family in Neiman Marcus and Sax Fifth Avenue wardrobe, when Wal-Mart and McDonalds have seen an increase in sales while many other companies have filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business...you know something is seriously wrong with our society.

I saw all of this back in the late 1990s. I didn't understand how wealth disparity could be allowed to grow wider. See...I got my education from a week's vacation in South Africa in 1994, where I saw up close what happens when a society allows extreme wealth to happen to a priviledged few in the midst of massive poverty. What happens? High rates of violent crime, such as armed robbery, murder, and rape. Is that the kind of country our rich folks want America to become? On the flip side, Europe has a much lower crime rate and most people live in the same economic class. Sure, there are a few rich aristocrats, but the vast majority of Europeans are within a reasonable range of affluence, which is actually better than what most Americans have.

I have little sympathy for greed. I want Blagojevich behind bars. But it shouldn't end with him. There's the whole Bush cabal, and corrupt Republicans like DeLay, Armey, and Rove. It's odd to hear conservatives get gleeful about this latest scandal by a Democrat. But here's the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals don't defend the indefensible. If a Democratic politician violates the law, liberals will demand a resignation or support impeachment. If a Republican violates the law, conservatives close ranks and defend their own no matter how serious the violation, immoral the act, or severe the crime.

There's one exception, though. If a Republican is caught in a gay sex scandal, they'll shun that person...but for adultery, greed, bribes, violence...they'll turn a blind eye. No wonder why their party is in shambles. When you defend crooks and keep them in office, the American people will vote for the opponent. Thus why I'm glad that Democrats have principles. If a Democratic politician violates the law, he or she should be expelled from the party. We need to keep the upper ground and maintain our integrity. We are the true party of American values.

Human Rights Day: Focus on Aung San Suu Kyi

Today is Human Rights Day. Unfortunately, angry homosexuals want to hijack today to continue the protest over Proposition 8 in California. Some have called for people (gay or straight) who are against Proposition 8 (making gay marriages illegal in California) to "call in gay" to their workplaces. And then do what, exactly?!?

I'm concerned that the term "Human Rights" might become synonymous with gay rights issues. It's such a broader issue and I'd hate to see it marginalized that way. In college, I majored in International Politics, with a focus on human rights. Since adolescence, my heroes have been dissidents: Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu, and Aung San Suu Kyi. Human rights is a passion of mine and I'd love to be an activist in this field. I even wanted to work for the Human Rights Council (or is it Human Rights Commission?)...until I found out that it was pretty much an exclusively gay rights organization.

The co-opting of the term for their own agenda is doing a disserve to the term "human rights" across the board. Gay rights is only a subset of the much larger category of human rights. What this means is that human rights activists can't afford to focus exclusively on gay issues or even women's issues. Activists must focus on gaining human equality across the board, without regard to race, gender, orientation, religion, caste/social class, age, or other category people use to treat a minority as "less than." Human rights is about justice for the people of Darfur, Burma, Bolivia; for women who work in sweatshops under near slavery conditions on the island of Saipan; for children forced into gangs or military units in Liberia; for those who dared to vote for the opposition party in Zimbabwe or Burma.

So, for this Human Rights Day...I'm going to focus on Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. In 1991, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. The previous year, the military junta that rules Burma (called State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC for short) held an election that they didn't even think they needed to steal. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a huge victory (over 80% if I remember correctly). SLORC never honoured the results and promptly arrested her. Over the years, she has lived off and on under house arrest.

Who is Aung San Suu Kyi? She is the daughter of a well-loved Burmese General named Aung San who helped Burma achieve independence from Great Britain. She was educated at schools in India and England. She married an Englishman (Michael Aris) and had two sons. They all lived in England until she returned to Burma in 1988 to care for her elderly mother. That was the year of the student uprisings, which the military regime brutally cracked down on. In 1989, in a huge crowd at Dannabyu, soldiers pointed guns at Aung San Suu Kyi and told her not to take another step. People who witnessed the event claim that her loving and calm presence was such that she was able to continue moving gracefully without consequence. It was a moment of true power and one could say that it was the moment she became THE leader of the National League for Democracy. U2 even wrote a beautiful song about her and that moment where she "walked on" despite the threats not to.

In 1987 and 1988, I had a penpal in Burma named Candy Tet Tun. Her name was in the Armed Forces newspaper when I lived in Germany (they often featured a penpal request section, with most of the people requesting penpals being women from the Phillippines who love to cook). I wrote because I wanted penpals from as many different parts of the world as possible (I had penpals in Turkey, France, Germany, Morocco, Great Britain, Nigeria, and the Philippines). My mom is from Thailand and often swam across the Mekong River into Laos as a girl. She speaks a Lao dialect of Thai. But she knew very little about Burma, Thailand's other neighbour. Growing up, I was always curious about these two countries. If you look at the map, the shape of Thailand and Burma are similar (rounded or oval body with a narrow neck of land on the bottom--like a mushroom). Even their alphabet system is unique...similar looking but unreadable to the citizen of the neighbouring country. The cultures are similar as well (both Thailand and Burma have the big water festival in the spring, when people carry around buckets of water to throw on other people).

It's fascinating that two countries can almost mirror one another yet maintain unique differences. Like Burma, Thailand has a government run by the military with coups occurring on a regular basis (including last month). The difference is, Thailand has a King (who I think is the longest serving monarch in the world) and a functioning parliamentary system. Burma is full on military dictatorship. The standard of living between Burma and Thailand is probably as severe as the standard of living between Mississippi and Hawai'i.

Anyhow, I stopped hearing from my penpal Candy Tet Tun in 1988. I still have all the letters I received from her. Many college students died during the student uprisings in Rangoon in 1988 that I wonder if she was among them. One of the great mysteries in my life. She was a cute and intelligent young lady. I think she was about the same age as me, even though I was in high school and she was in college.

I didn't think much more about Burma until 1995, when a shipmate wanted to travel to D.C. with me in the summer. He was kind of new on board my ship and had transferred from the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He wanted to visit his girlfriend, who was a Burmese lady. So, that vacation in D.C. in the summer of 1995 really set a few things in motion for me. (1) I knew that I wanted to live in D.C. someday; and (2) Asian women can be attractive to me. I know it sounds weird for me--half Asian, half caucasian--to say that I generally don't find Asian women attractive, so I need to qualify it. I'm not attracted to the quiet, submissive stereotype that a lot of men find attractive in Asian women. I've often cringed in the Navy when I heard guys demean Asian women as though they were little more than cute, submissive little sex servants. I've dated a couple Asian women, but it didn't work because I love opinionated women who aren't afraid to speak their minds. I'm also attracted to extroverted women. Since I'm introverted, I need to date and marry a woman who is a little bit more extroverted than me to bring that side out in me (Jenet in D.C. was one such lady who did that and I loved being around her and how I felt around her).

My shipmate's girlfriend happened to be an intelligent and opinionated Burmese lady. She wasn't shy about expressing her opinions. The few days we hung out (including rowing a boat in a section of the Potomac River), I found myself falling for her. One thing I most remember about her was when I had used the term "Oriental" to refer to Asian people (because that's a word my parents used and I thought nothing of it). Well, she let me have it! She said that it was derogatory, for carpets can be referred to as "Oriental" but not people. She also said that we don't go around calling white Europeans and Americans as "Occidentals." Point taken. Now, whenever I hear someone use the term "Oriental" to refer to an Asian person, I actually cringe. It's as antiquated as the term "Negro."

The second thing this Burmese lady educated me on was Aung San Suu Kyi, whom I actually hadn't heard of before that point. Since then, I've bought a few books and have read them to learn about this remarkable lady, who is often compared to Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and even Martin Luther King, Jr.

Because three is an odd number, the shipmate and his girlfriend invited her cousin along, who didn't know English well and was visiting from Burma. It was a bit awkward since she was shy and quiet (the stereotype of Asian women) and I was more interested in the extroverted and opinionated Americanized Burmese lady.

A few months later, the shipmate lost my respect when he picked up a stripper at a club, even though he was still in a relationship with the Burmese lady. Yeah, his new stripper girlfriend had a great body...but who could beat the intelligence of his girlfriend? I had her number at the time and thought about calling. Another shipmate asked me why I didn't. All I could think was that I didn't want to be with a woman who had been with him. I'm weird like that. I felt bad for her, though. She deserved a lot better than him.

By the time I was back in D.C. in 2000, I had lost her contact info and didn't even remember her name. All I remember is how she educated me about various things and I have a photograph of her and her cousin somewhere. I wish I could meet a woman of her calibre here in Portland. I've seen many guys roll their eyes whenever they hear a woman expressing her opinions on political issues, but I get smitten. I'm just attracted to intelligence, and I'd never throw away a relationship with an intelligent woman just for an affair with a stripper. When I told the shipmate what an idiot he was, he replied: "you just don't understand until you're faced with that choice." To me, strippers are a dime a dozen. An intelligent woman with an international background is a keeper.

It is my deepest wish to see Burma become democratic soon. I would love to see Aung San Suu Kyi become Prime Minister of Burma. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had met Suu Kyi and said some great things about her. First Lady Laura Bush is also a fan of Suu Kyi and spoke earlier this year (or was it last year?) about the situation in Burma.

Honestly, my respect for George W. Bush would have increased if he had issued a military invasion of Burma to overthrow the ruling military regime and help transition the country to the rightful government of the National League for Democracy. Had he done that, I would've supported the war and possibly volunteered for that mission. If he meant what he said that the U.S. is to help bring democracy to other nations, why not Burma? It's the one place GUARANTEED where people will throw flowers at the feet of the liberators (the U.S. military). They've been oppressed so long, they truly need our help.

But, like Darfur, Burma does not have any oil reserves, so thus why Bush doesn't care about bringing democracy to them as he claims to for Iraq (he's such a bad liar). In 1999 and 2000, he criticized the Clinton Administration's "peacekeeping missions" in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and even Somalia (which his father committed troops to after losing the 1992 election). To conservatives, military action to prevent genocide or to restore democracy is WRONG, but military action to help corporations establish monopolies in Banana Republics or to gain natural resources in countries with rogue dictators...yeah, that's okay! It shows a consistency with their philosophical mindset. Material items matter more than humans. Oil is worth more than the life of a Burmese monk.

It is for situations such as these that I wish the United Nations had it's own standing military to respond more effectively to crises around the world. I know some paranoids will complain about "one world government", but we have to rethink our priorities. It is absolutely moral and just to bring democracy to Burma through military means. I'd love to see a worldwide coalition committed to just that.

The people of Burma have suffered for far too long. It is time we examine the reasons why we are willing to commit troops to some areas and not others. I'm not a complete pacifist, for I believe some wars are just. And I'm from the Clinton international interventionist school of military usage.

May God continue to guide and bless Aung San Suu Kyi, who is my favourite political dissident these days. She is beautiful, intelligent, graceful, spiritual, and a shining example of the power of kindness. I truly wish I could meet a woman my age who shares her qualities. She serves as a great inspiration on how to be a compassionate and kind human. Burma, and the world truly needs her kind of leadership in these uncertain times.

Faking Remorse On the Way Out

Warning: The following post contains profanity that some readers might find objectionable!

Last week, Bush was interviewed by Charles Gibson of World News Tonight, in which he actually admitted: "I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.' In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents--one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen."

BULLSHIT!!!

In 1999, he told the first ghostwriter of his campaign "auto"biography (A Charge to Keep) that if he's the president, he wouldn't hesitate to finish the job in Iraq, and unlike his father, he wouldn't squander his political capital. He wanted to be a "war president" because presidents during a major crisis have a better chance of placing higher in the historical rankings. He also campaigned that he never wanted to be president. And third point...Iraq was a war of CHOICE, not necessity. He chose to go to war, so if he was unprepared, he should have left it alone.

He also expressed remorse over the financial crisis.

Interesting enough, he also gave his opinion about the recent election. He told Gibson: "I think it was a repudiation of Republicans. And I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me."

Wow...what does that say about him? He's actually aware of what a colossal fuck-up he is? I guess if your entire life is filled with one failure after another, one bankrupt company after another, you wouldn't be surprised that your presidency is also an abject failure.

In his attempt to "build a legacy", his sister interviewed him in which he said: "I'd like to be a president [known] as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace."

If killing them means liberating them, why not? And my favourite quote about the Republican view of peace goes something like this: "waging war for peace is like fucking for chastity."

He also said: "I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accomodate the political process."

Excuse me?!? Sell his soul? His entire presidency was a never ending campaign against the American people, against truth, against the political process as our Founding Fathers established. He created the most tyrannical presidency in our nation's history. The question is, how much did Wall Street buy him out for? Don't forget, he was the guy who appointed several Enron execs in his administration. It's no surprise that Enron imploded early in his administration as a foreshadowing of how is presidency would end. The crisis on Wall Street came to fruition during the last 100 days of his presidency. Brilliant!

Can you stand another Bush quote? "I came to Washington with a set of values and I'm leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn't going to sacrifice those values; that I was a president that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them."

Values? He promised to "restore honour and integrity to the White House" but ran the most divisive presidency ever. His values was to character assassinate anyone who disagreed with his ideological policies, even if they happen to be a CIA agent working to secure nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists and rogue states. He had no values but pure ideology of empire, tyranny, and vengeance.

Here's another gem: "I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions."

Oh...like Donald Rumsfeld, the most hated Secretary of Defense? Or Dick Cheney, the most evil man to ever work in our government? Or how about "Heckuva job Brownie" who let New Orleans drown? Or Chertoff, who denied that people were stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center when the news reported just that? Or Gonzalez, who signed off on torture? He appointed so many unqualified cronies to many positions (such as a 23 year old college grad to start up the Baghdad stock exchange, despite having NO experience on Wall Street) that I don't think he has a clue how incompetent his administration truly was. He preferred staff that drank the same Kool-Aid and only knew how to say "yes!" to everything he proposed. He valued blind loyalty over competence, and it shows.

What is his greatest achievement? He claims, "I think the No Child Left Behind Act is one of the significant achievements of my administration..."

Yeah...teaching children the tricks of how to take multiple choice based testing to boost test score averages only produces a generation that knows how to play "Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?" and Trivial Pursuit, but not a generation that knows how to think critically or make connections between various facts and apply them to life. No Child Left Behind was designed to dumb down American education so people will "do as they are told" and not think about the reasonings why or come up with different solutions.

Even more outrageous, Bush said: "I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the president, and I have been affected by peoples' prayers a lot. I have found that faith is comforting, faith is strengthening, faith has been important."

Been in the Bible? He's that arrogant, that he thinks he's in the Bible?!? Okay, so he means that he reads his Bible everyday...but even I am skeptical about that.

"I would advise politicians, however, to be careful about faith in the public arena. In other words, politicians should not be judgmental people based upon their faith. They should recognize--as least I have recognized I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption, and therefore have been very careful about saying [accept] my faith or you're bad. In other words, if you don't accept what I believe, you're a bad person. And the greatness of America--it really is--is that you can worship or not worship and be equally American. And it doesn't matter how you choose to worship; you're equally American."

This from the guy who said: "you're either with us or against us." This from the most evangelical president who passed judgment on a number of people (the 150 people he executed as governor; the decision to invade Iraq; the unlawful detention of Muslims rounded up and sent to Guantanamo Bay who still haven't been charged with a crime; the numbers of people tortured in his GWOT).

All of this reflection is disgusting. It's obvious that he's very worried about his "legacy", which is a laugh. He should've worried about his legacy in the days after the 2000 election when he ran to his daddy's Court to get the Federal government to intervene in a state's right to determine their election dispute. Then after becoming president, he ignored the fact that more people voted for his opponent than him, so instead of running a goverment of national unity, he decided to run a presidency exclusively for his base of ultra-conservative supporters.

When his presidency went to shit after a perfect storm of incompetence, natural disaster, greed, and ongoing chaos in the Middle East...because he essentially spit on the faces of everyone who voted for his opponents in 2000 and 2004, his support dwindled to the most blindly loyal group of all: the people who get all their news from the Fox Propaganda Channel and its purveyors of hate: Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly, and Malkin.

They are hoping history will redeem his presidency. Even if Iraq does become a stable, functioning Democracy, I don't think it's enough to vindicate him and keep him from the bottom of the list of presidents. Presidents need to be judged by the totality of his administration, and historians simply can't ignore all the corruption, incompetence, greed, and illegal actions of his entire eight years. Plus, he came into office a fraud and that counts for something.

Supposedly, Karl Rove finally got a book deal in which he intends to name names of everyone who viewed Bush as an "illegitimate president" and refused to support him from day one. Well, Mr. Turdblossom (Bush's nickname for his blowjob boy and propaganda minister) can put my name in his book. I never accepted Bush as president. EVER. Not even on 9/11 or the months after. Bush is a FRAUD and will always be a FRAUD. He is the Worst. President. Ever. Crying about legacy won't change that fact.

In similar news...I was amused to see O.J. Simpson arguing with the judge at his sentencing last week. He was actually hysterical and in tears as he tried to explain that all he wanted to do was get his property back. It was an image of a man where justice has finally caught up to him. He has become a blubbering idiot! Yes, I agree that the sentencing of 5 to 33 years in prison was a bit harsh for an armed robbery of this nature. I have to believe that this type of punishment represents the sentencing he should've gotten in his murder trial. If he serves 33 years, he'll most likely die in prison. A part of me still thinks Fred Goldman was behind the setup to get O.J. Simpson once and for all...and it was brilliant! If there is true justice, I think O.J. Simpson should share the same cell with George W. Bush. They can both commisserate together about how they were set up for failure and it's not their fault!!! It's the damn liberal media.

I got news for you...Good Riddance to both! America is flushing both of you worthless pieces of shit down the toilet into the cess pool where you belong. The Toxic Texan and the Juice, cellmates for eternity.


Uh-oh...it's the WAAAAAH-mbulance to come haul away Crybabies Dubya and the Juice!

Music Video Monday: Eartha Kitt

In 1987, when the first A Very Special Christmas album came out featuring some of my favourite pop rock singers singing Christmas songs, I was disappointed with Madonna's selection of "Santa Baby." I had never heard that song before and I couldn't believe Madonna was channeling Betty Boop to sing such a silly song. Out of all the awesome Christmas songs out there (traditional/religious or secular), why "Santa Baby"?

Well, a few years later, I heard Eartha Kitt's version and was blown away. I learned that she was famous for this song. She sings it with her famous "sex kitten" purr and manages to be seductive all at once. Why anyone would want to record their own version of the song is beyond me. No one, and I mean NO ONE, will ever be able to sing it the way it was meant to be sung...the way Eartha Kitt can.

This video shows Eartha singing it at three different times of her life. She might age, but she still has it! Earlier this year, I was happy to finally see her on stage. She is a true legend and I can't believe she's over 80 years old and still looks and sings great. She can be my "Santa Baby" anytime!

"Milk" Does the Body Politic Good!

Thursday night, I decided to see Milk because, hey...I LOVE LOVE LOVE bio-pics! Especially political ones. I didn't know much about Harvey Milk because it was way before my era (I "came into true political awareness" in 1989) and he came across as a "niche candidate" that didn't really have any bearing on my life. Most of the little I've heard of him stems from reading for years about Oliver Stone's interest in bringing a film version of his life to the silver screen. Like his proposed Noriega film project which went nowhere and his Evita project that fell to other people. Harvey Milk was a businessman who organized the gay community of San Francisco and is credited as the person who turned the Castro District into a haven for homosexuals leaving behind small-town prejudices for a larger community of like minded/orientated individuals. It explains why he was referred to as "the Mayor of Castro Street", which was supposed to be the title of the Oliver Stone film. I thought he was a Mayor, not a City Supervisor. Shows how much I know.

I was shocked by how good the film is (though there were a few scenes I could've done without). I'm not a fan of Gus Van Sant films, though he is Portland's most famous resident. I liked Good Will Hunting, loved Finding Forrester but hated Elephant (his interpretation of the Columbine High School massacre). I haven't seen his other works because none of them sounded very interesting. So, I didn't know how I would like this one. While I generally love bio-pics, there's one in recent memory that I did not like: Pollack, about artist Jackson Pollack.

The reason Harvey Milk merits a film is because in 1978, he became the first openly gay man to win elected office in the United States. And he won after losing three previous races (two for a City Supervisor position in San Francisco, one for Assemblyman for the California legislature). Seeing that it took him four times to finally win reminds me of the recent City Council races in Portland...where Nick Fish won on his third try and Amanda Fritz on her second try (so I hope Charles will run again for the next open seat). It shows a persistence that pays off, which is inspiring in itself.

The oddest thing about seeing this film is that the San Francisco we all know (and love) has the reputation for being THE MOST LIBERAL CITY in the country. It's odd to realize that it hasn't always been this way. There are working class neighbourhoods where homophobia runs rampant and the police were often the harassers of people in the counter culture movements than protectors of the peace. So, I guess its safe to assume that Harvey Milk was instrumental in changing the nature of San Francisco to become the liberal/progressive city it is today.

Sean Penn is phenomenal in his role as Harvey Milk. I expect a second Best Actor Oscar for him next year. He simply becomes the character and it's amazing to think back on his earlier role as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High when it seemed like he might not be capable of such depth. In fact, after filming a scene where he kissed another man, Penn supposedly called his ex-wife Madonna and said something like, "I kissed another man for the first time in my life and you're the first person I thought to call." You know Madonna had to love that...she of her sexually provocative ways. Now that they are both single again, maybe they can rekindle a midlife romance (in 1991's Truth or Dare documentary, Madonna had said that Sean was the true love of her life, even though she was dating Warren Beatty at the time). I always had the impression that Sean Penn was homophobic, so it was a surprise to see him play such a character with sympathy and likeable charisma.

The most timely aspect of the movie is the odd deja vu where Harvey led the fight against Proposition 6, which sought to ban homosexuals from teaching in schools and to end job and housing protection for homosexuals. In the most recent election, California found itself with another divisive Proposition (#8), which sought to ban gay marriages. The results show that many Obama voters also voted for the Proposition, so it's not just a conservative thing. People still have issues. It's amazing to reflect on how little things have changed in 30 years, even though America is far more tolerant now.

As I left the theater, I reflected on my own coming to terms with homophobia. It all boils down to ignorance...a lot of it having to do with not knowing any gay people and of hearing the people you go to church with speak out against it.

In my senior year in high school, my government teacher Tom Malone often engaged the class in controversial topics. He didn't shy away from discussing gays in the military or the practice of outing people. Some students speculated on his sexual orientation, even though he was married with children. But, he showed that being tolerant of homosexuals doesn't mean you're homosexual. In one class discussion I remember well, he took a poll of the class on if we would vote for a black president, a woman president, and a gay president. The class was evenly mixed for a black or woman president, but unanimously opposed to a gay president. That caused a lot of joking among classmates about what a gay president would mean. We simply couldn't see that possibility EVER, even though Malone insisted that we probably already had a gay president: James Buchanan...the only bachelor to hold the office (meaning he never married at all).

At that time, I was against gays serving in the military, marrying, adopting children, holding public office and even teaching in school. My view started to change in 1992 when I was on liberty in Naples, Italy. I had sat behind two guys on the bus that was taking sailors from the pier to the Naval base. I overheard them discussing the warning we were issued regarding the "women streetwalkers." One of them said that some of the women were transvestites, and the other guy suggested that they actually go out looking for them to beat them up. I was shocked. In my homophobic mind, I would run away from those types of people, not seek them out to beat them up! I didn't understand that psychology at all. Here we were in Naples, with so many things to see and do, places to go...and these sailors wanted to waste time looking for men in drag to beat up? It didn't make sense to me at all.

The other event in 1992 was that a gay sailor was found beaten to death in a public restroom in Sasebo, Japan. In my "A" School class, I came close to picking Sasebo, Japan for a duty station (I chose La Maddalena, Sardinia instead). It made me think that I might've known this guy had I been stationed there. Again, it shocked me that someone hated gay people that much to actually kill them. I didn't understand that mindset. If I don't like a person, I don't have any involvement with them at all.

As I learned about the nature of homophobia, I also found it amusing going to movies with other guys while I was in the Navy. Whenever we sat in seats, if the other guy left an empty seat between us, I got the impression that he was homophobic in the sense of not wanting others to think he was gay. Those who were secure in their heterosexual identity did not leave a vacant seat between them and another guy. It was an interesting observation. It proved embarrassing if the other guy sat down first and I sat in the seat next to him and he then moved to have an open seat between us. Weird. I never understood why some guys are afraid to sit next to another guy in a theater...yet go to any movie theater near a military base and you will often find that to be the case. My friends and I always had a laugh about it.

In 1996 or 1997, I was still a little bit homophobic, however. I remember going to a booksigning by former President Jimmy Carter for his Living Faith book. The signing was at a bookstore in Ansley Mall in Midtown, which is a predominantly gay neighbourhood in Atlanta. I was driving into the parking lot when two men walked hand in hand in front of my car and stopped to kiss each other on the lips. I was so mad that my hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. I almost wanted to floor it and run them over, but I didn't. I let them continue walking out of my way before proceeding towards the bookstore part of the parking lot.

At college in Utah, I had a roommate who was disfellowshipped from the LDS Church for "same sex attraction." He claimed that he was "over it" and completely straight, yet he made odd statements/noises regarding women that made me doubt that claim. It's hard to explain, other than that it was like he was overemphasizing the fact that he was attracted to women. For example, if a pretty woman was shown on screen during a music video or commercial, he would make an "mmmmmmm" sound like he was food tasting his own cooking! It was weird. And when another roommate came home from work, he would sit on the couch and say, "I had a bad day until you came home." It was kind of obvious that he was attracted to that roommate. Still, despite his struggle to be straight, I wasn't very nice about it (because he was often abusive towards me for not converting to the LDS Church. His demand was: "convert or leave BYU!"). When he claimed to have a Russian lady wanting to marry him, he asked if that would convince me he was heterosexual. My response was brutal. I told him: "even if you became a polygamist and had seven wives, I would still think you're gay!" He was hurt by that statement. Honestly, who am I to say what he might choose to be? I simply saw a conflict between his natural inclination and his fanatical devotion to Mormon doctrine (he had said that he wanted to be a god of his own world someday so he could "make people practice polygamy or kill them"!).

At BYU, I rolled my eyes when I heard one girl's theory of homosexuality as "a challenge, because some guys attract women so easily that they get bored and want to try the challenge of attracting men." She was naive about a lot of things, but that truly took the cake.

When I was in D.C., I remember seeing two guys kissing on the Metro and I didn't freak out this time. The thought that came to my mind was, "at least they found someone!" Me, I still struggled trying to find a lady without obstacles between us to overcome (such as religion), where mutual attraction actually exists. Who was I to deny anyone the right to love?

The test of homophobia wasn't passed until recently, however. Earlier this year, the Sam Adams campaign contacted me to volunteer on their campaign. From all that I read about Commissioner Adams, I felt that he was the best man to be the next mayor of Portland. He's smart, very wonky, funny, and well connected. Oh, and yes...he is openly gay. For me, it wasn't even an issue...and it didn't even come up during the Mayor's race. It's the way it should be. The voters decided based on what he brings to the office, the right mix of experiences, knowledge, personality and connections. From my senior year proclamation in government class that I'd never vote for a gay politician, to actively volunteering to elect one for Mayor 18 years later represents to me an evolution in personal understanding and tolerance. In fact, so beyond homophobia am I that when I phonebanked for Adams back in March and May, I was shocked when the person I talked to would say, "I would never vote for a faggot" or "I don't support the homosexual agenda" or "I object to his lifestyle on moral grounds" or "I don't think City Hall should have orgies." One of the worst comments of all was: "I'll vote for the Chinaman before I'd ever vote for the fag" (Adams' opponent was a Japanese-American businessman. Shows how ig'nant a bigot truly is!). Come on, people!!! It's the 21st century now. Leave bigotry and homophobia in the past century.

So, this film truly is an important one for a much marginalized group of people. When are we going to stop demonizing them and blaming them for the breakup of marriages? Gay marriages are inevitable. History always marches towards progress. We might have moments of regressive reactionaries (such as the past eight years), but history continues its march towards greater inclusion. Why be on the wrong side of history? What's wrong with letting people love the people they want to be with?

I expect Milk to be among the Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Screenplay nominees come Oscar time. Sean Penn deserves his second Oscar for this role. Anyone who believes in human rights and admires individuals who make a difference in our world to become a more inclusive and tolerant place, this film is worth watching...even if a few scenes are bit uncomfortable to watch. The point is to see "the other" as fully human. Different, perhaps, from the majority, but still worthy of the equal rights we all enjoy. Milk. It does the body politic some good!

The 2008 Nonconformist of the Year Goes To...

B A R A C K
O B A M A

No contest! Unlike last year, where I had several options, this year was a given from the moment Obama won Iowa, then the Democratic nomination, then the presidency. He ran by a new playbook, raised an unprecendented $700 million, and always kept his cool even in the face of some of the nastiest, racist attacks ever waged against a politician. His victory was celebrated around the world. He'll come into office with probably the largest crowd assembled for a Presidential inauguration. I wouldn't be surprised if his inauguration resembled Mandela's in 1994 (with dignitaries from around the world) than any American affair we're used to seeing. He also has the highest expectations from the people, with his liberal supporters worried that he'll not be progressive enough and conservative opponents who expect his inexperience to lead to some damaging blunders that will hurt his chances for reelection in 2012.

On my sidebar to the right, you can see my previous selections (since 1992) for the title of Nonconformist of the Year. From all my arguments with fellow sailors who considered themselves nonconformists (when they were actually stereotypes of sailors), I learned that its a word everyone wants to claim for themselves, but few actually know what it entails. My criteria is someone who embodies the quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.: "the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands during times of comfort and convenience, but during moments of challenge and controversy." People tend to follow basic patterns of behaviour. The ones we remember the most often do the unexpected thing. No other person this year embodied that sense of courage under fire, of playing by his rules in a way not seen in a long time, than Barack Obama.

Interesting enough, John McCain was my choice of Nonconformist of the Year for 2000. Eight years later, he betrayed his true nature as a Maverick truth teller by playing by the rules of his party: character assassinate the Democratic opponent with lies, innuendo, and vicious whispers. It didn't work (thank God!) this time. Too many Americans were suffering from the mismanagement of our entire country by the current Republican president, and Obama kept the focus on the issues.

This moment is his. Over the next four years, we can expect to be disappointed in some decisions, but hopefully in the long term, he has the vision to change this country around. We basically wasted a decade on bad government. It is my hope that Obama will remain "drama-free" as he has all year and keep on making the bold decisions that great presidents are known for. Right now, the unanswered question is will he be like Lincoln / FDR or will he be like JFK / Carter? I hope his aim is high...to not just be the first African American president in our history, but to be on the top five list of Great Presidents (I'm thinking that the highest his presidency could rank would be #3--behind Lincoln and FDR). It will be an interesting four to eight years.


The photo above is one of my favourites of Obama. It conveys a sense of his not letting anything touch him. He just brushes it off with a cool we only see in movies. And make no mistake, with President Barack Obama, we truly have the coolest president since Kennedy (sorry Clinton, but you were just too bubba to be truly cool). Camelot is BACK!

Flashback Friday: The Preacher's Wife

I kind of reviewed this movie last year, on a list of my five favourite holiday films. But this year, I'm giving it the full Flashback Friday treatment, because it deserves such an honour. This is truly the only holiday film I love watching many times between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last year, I watched it five times in that period between my two favourite holidays. Every year, a new holiday film or two are released in theaters...yet they all sound pretty lame (this year it's Four Christmases, last year Fred Claus...I'm thinking Vince Vaughn is stuck in a rut). Last year's holiday movie that I didn't want to see arrives on DVD for this season, but I always go with my favourite standby, The Preacher's Wife.

Why, you might be asking? Why not? Have you seen it? If not, you should! It was released in 1996 and represents the last hurrah of Whitney Houston before her marriage to bad boy Bobby Brown ruined her career and health. I think he was jealous of her success. Hell...who wouldn't be? Even Madonna was supposedly jealous, when she made fun of Whitney Houston. There's good reason...Madonna can't act, while Whitney is actually quite good. Her first role was the 1992 mega-International hit, The Bodyguard, in which she played a popular singer named Rachel Marron (not much of a stretch, but it worked). Three years later came Waiting to Exhale as part of an ensemble with great African-American actresses Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon, and Loretta Devine. The following year was Penny Marshall's update of The Bishop's Wife. Loretta Devine also appears in a scene-stealing role as the pastor's often flustered secretary ("Oh my Lord, am I gettin' fired?").

I was a HUGE Whitney Houston fan between 1986 and 1988, when her debut album just blew me away and continued with her even better follow-up album, Whitney. It was rumoured back in the late 1980s that she was set to star in the film version of Dreamgirls. Of course, Hollywood took forever to make that film and the role went to Beyonce. Kevin Coster found a project that had been gathering dust on a studio's development shelf, and thought it was perfect for Whitney's debut starring role. The film was originally written with Diana Ross in mind (you can see how dated that was). It's remarkable to reflect that when this film came out in 1992, the producers/studio worried that audiences wouldn't accept the interracial romance that developed between Kevin Costner's and Whitney Houston's characters. Even the official movie poster attracted controversy for it's "attempt" to hide Whitney's race, as though people seeing this film would be too dumb not to figure it out before they saw the film.

America and race. What a topic. It seems so antiquated now in the about-to-be-ushered in Obama Era. But that was the case back in the early 1990s. In fact, there were few films that portrayed African Americans as normal people who live middle class lives and care about family and community. So many films were about the gang culture, prison, drugs that often plague inner city neighbourhoods. Thus, it was refreshing when a film like The Preacher's Wife came out in the mid-1990s. The only white person you see in the film is a panic-stricken lady who freaks out when a girl leaves the pulpit during the church's Christmas Sunday pageant play, and freaks again when the pastor doesn't follow the teleprompter and "goes off script." Damn, she must be a Republican, too!

When this film played in theaters, I was working at a temp agency called Dynamic People, in which I learned at the annual Christmas party that most of the employees were African American. I was probably one of the few non-black employees. Anyhow, the lady who worked for the agency and called temps for assignments, was a cute African American lady in her 20s. She was quite religious too. I enthusiastically recommended this movie to her, thinking she would find much to like about it. Later, I learned that she was even more religiously "strict" than I thought. She had a problem with the film's plot point where the pastor's wife flirts with the Angel Dudley (Denzel Washington), who was sent on a mission to help out a pastor who feels useless and uninspired. Dang! The film had no profanity, nudity or sex; it has a true family values message with a lot of great gospel music, and this young, religious lady had a problem with the idea of two adults flirting with each other? That's pretty severe. I can't imagine the film operating with any other kind of plot, for it's the right kind of tension to serve the drama, and does so extremely well. The preacher's wife doesn't cheat on her husband. As she tells her nosy mother, it's okay to look in the window, even if she doesn't buy. Her awesomely funny mother (played by Jenifer Lewis) retorts, "you just better not go window shopping with money in your pocket. And you better not put anything on layaway, either!"

Ever since Whitney came on the music scene, it had been a known desire of hers to release a gospel album. She never did, and the soundtrack to The Preacher's Wife is as close as she has come to that. In The Bodyguard Soundtrack, her version of "Jesus Loves Me" is the best I've ever heard (I've always hated that song since elementary school). On The Preacher's Wife Soundtrack, I really love "I Love the Lord" and once had a cool experience on a flight home during Christmas break from college in 1998. I was listening to that soundtrack on my discman while reading Anita Hill's memoir. When I got to the part in her book where she talks about her favourite song being "I Love the Lord", that song started playing. Talk about perfect serendipity. The soundtrack isn't all gospel, though. My favourite song is "My Heart is Calling", which is played during the ice skating scene. I'm still baffled why it was never released as a single, as it's one of my favourite Whitney Houston songs. She doesn't get any better than that. Her biggest hit remains, of course, "I Will Always Love You", which held the #1 spot on the Billboard singles chart for a record 14 weeks or so. On The Preacher's Wife, I think they were trying to replicate that success with another power ballad, "I Believe in You and Me", but lightning doesn't often strike twice. They would've done much better with "My Heart is Calling."

This is a holiday film that I never get tired of watching. Like I said...I can watch it five times in one month and not get bored. I'll put it away after the holidays and sometimes have gotten the urge to watch it in June, but I always resist. This is my holiday movie of choice. There are no sappy sentimentalism that a lot of them suffer from. This has a true heart, great music, and a powerful display of a regular American family going through the stress and distance of the holiday season. This year, I relate a lot to Courtney B. Vance's preacher character. I'm suffering from a broken faith in God. I doubt I'll get an angel to appear in my life, but it would be a nice gift from the universe. Faith is not easy, but nothing good and worthwhile is ever easy. It takes a film like this to keep my spirits up, even in the difficult times of being in a career-killing job I despise and a lack of other employment prospects in a worsening economy. Faith is the only preserver left to sustain me, and if anything, this film is all about regaining a faith in the glory of God.

Class Reunion Via Facebook

I have to say how amazed I am...not only with the timing, but as an example of how my thoughts manifest themselves in reality. Okay, so I had a bad day at work on Tuesday. Wednesday was a lot more calm. Friday is the staff Christmas luncheon, so we'll have food and merriment and possible good will. In the meantime, I was just struck by my old friend's sense of timing. Tuesday was a really bad day at work, but at the end of the day, I had no less than five requests from old classmates on Facebook requesting me to log on, set up a page, and add them as friends. FIVE in one day! Five people I hadn't thought a whole lot of since I left Fulda, West Germany in 1988. Well, at least not those who didn't keep in touch.

In case you're wondering, the map of unified Germany above has a red dot where the town of Fulda is located. When I lived there from 1985-1988, it was just 12 miles from the East German border. The location was central to NATO's mission. The Fulda Gap is famous for being the most likely point of a Soviet invasion of Europe. My dad was an Air Force meteorologist assigned at the Army base to brief helicopter pilots. He got to play soldier in field exercises. Because of the experience of living among the Army, I have personal experience in all the military branches (Air Force dependent who lived on AF bases in the U.S.; lived on an army base in Germany; served in the Navy; and had friends in the Marines). The Army isn't my favourite of the branches. Yeah, it was cool to see tanks leave for the field and return, but they are loud and leave a lot of damage in their wake, thus why Germans weren't too thrilled with us there tearing up their pretty countryside.

Fulda is a beautiful town of about 40,000 when we lived there. It's not a tourist destination for most people, and Europeans generally know it best as the place where Fulda tires come from (think Michelin or Goodyear). In 1993, when I walked around Prague, I was impressed that some parts reminded me of Fulda. In fact, of all the places I've lived, Fulda slightly edges out La Maddalena, Sardinia. Mostly because it's so clean, I have great memories of being a teenager there, and I truly fell in love with the half-timbered look on buildings. There were so many cool sidestreets, alleys, and places to go. Even now, it's sometimes a blur when I think about what all I saw and where I saw it.

Like every major town in Europe, Fulda has it's own crest symbol, which you see above.

Not to be outdone, but the military has it's own symbol. Downs Barracks in Fulda was home of the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment, otherwise known as the Black Horse Regiment. I loved that symbol. Each time you drove on the base, the guard would salute my dad's car (he was an officer, after all) and say, "Black horse, sir!"

This is an overview shot I found on Google of Sickles Army Airfield (in the foreground). Downs Barracks, where I lived is in the middle part of the photo. In the background, with the high rises is a residential area of Fulda that I thought was downtown (it's not) when we first moved there. Fulda has a traditional downtown, and the "skyscrapers" are apartment buildings, not office space.

No matter where you lived in Fulda, it was just a short walk to countryside. That's why I love small towns in Germany. You can be out in the country in no time and have a great view of the town in the distance.

We moved to Germany in August 1985 and returned to the U.S. in 1988. I attended Fulda American High School from eighth grade through tenth grade. It was a hard adjustment and I truly didn't find my stride until the third and final year, when I had a great group of friends and as is often the case, once I find my stride and a great group of friends, it's time to move again.

In the tenth grade, Mark Diggs was my best friend. I remember thinking it was quite rude when people often asked him "WHAT are you?" No one knew his ethnicity. His father is African American and his mother is Korean. So, he's similar to Tiger Woods that way. Yet, he could pass for Polynesian or even hispanic. We bonded over music. In fact, we often would try to predict which song would hit #1 next. We both liked Debbie Gibson over Tiffany and hated the fact that Tiffany had two number one songs before Debbie Gibson did.

In the Facebook reunion, I was shocked to read that he's conservative and looks like he supported John McCain for president. I thought for sure he would be an Obama supporter! Truly. Shows what I know. Its funny to reconnect with old classmates, because back in the 10th grade, I wasn't really into politics so the subject never came up in conversation. Now, because the bond we share of being American military "brats" overseas, the political differences aren't really an issue. Weird, though, to see how truly different you are from your friends from the high school days. No wonder why most of my friends currently are from my college days and from church.

What has truly amazed me about this whole recent development is that I've had a strong nostalgic impulse for 1988 all year and don't know why. And here it is, culminating in a surprising wave of reconnection with friends I haven't seen since that year. The timing is too convenient to be dismissed as a "mere coincidence." Maybe I should test it further by focusing all my energy and goals on finding a literary agent. If I think about a literary agent every day, maybe I will attract one to my still unpublished novel and won't have to go to Afghanistan or Iraq next year. However, with work draining my energy each day, it is a tough battle to fight. It's easy to reminisce about 1988 when I play music from that year as I work. It's tougher to keep my mind focused on a literary agent while I'm at work. But I will most certainly try.

Nevertheless, the Facebook reunion is a blessing. Truly a wonderful gift from the spirit world to remind me of that great year that was 1988 (it ranks among one of the best years of my life). It's nice to catch up on old friends and see what they are doing with their lives now.

This is the main cathedral in the town of Fulda. Simply called "the Dom." Its the main feature on postcards of the town.

The Meaning of Being Loyal

When I got to work yesterday, a coworker told me that Amanda Fritz is hiring three staff members and that I should send in my resume. My response was, "Why would I want to work for Fritz? I'm loyal to Charles Lewis!" She got pissed off and didn't want to speak to me for the rest of the day.

Okay.

Gosh...doesn't she get it? We had a discussion before. Apparently, she knows some politically connected people and told them about me recently. But, since she has shown that she doesn't know me all that well, when she recounted what she had talked about to her politically connected friends, she told me that they thought I was conservative because I supported Charles Lewis over Amanda Fritz for City Council!

I was shocked. Charles is a liberal. Why would my support of him over Fritz be considered "conservative"?!? From what she said, it sounded like if I don't automatically support female, minority, or homosexual candidates instead of a married white guy, then I'm a "conservative"! That's not how I base my support. I go by a "gut instinct", a personal connection and likeability factor. A sense of honesty and decency matters too. Not that Fritz isn't worthy of support. I simply thought (and still believe) that Charles is the better candidate for City Council. Though he received 27% of the vote to Fritz's 72%, it was also her second or third time running. She got all the major endorsements and had the backing of the establishment. None of that matters to me more than the fact that Charles had the right mix of experience, personality, accomplishments, dedication, ambition, creativity and intelligence to earn my support...and LOYALTY.

That's right. I'm loyal. To a fault. One of my best friends, Nathan, once said to me: "you have the kind of loyalty I can't even find in a dog!" Not sure if that's a backhanded compliment, but I'll take it. Yeah, I'm loyal. It's in my genetic code. If I feel bonded to someone, there is an uncomfortable internal feeling that lets me know if my thought or action would violate my loyalty code. I am loyal, but not blindly so. Loyalty to conscience is the first level.

Because I feel loyal to Charles, I wouldn't even consider working for Amanda Fritz. Not that there's anything wrong with Fritz...just that working for her would make me feel uncomfortable because in my heart, I would feel like it was an act of betrayal, even if Charles himself didn't have a problem with me working for her (which he probably wouldn't). It's the internal feeling that I want to avoid, so I guess that's what it is...which some people don't understand because it's not part of their genetic makeup.

Here's how loyal I am...

The person who had the biggest impact on my life in terms of making it acceptable for me to question God, religion, my parents, etc. was my senior year government teacher, Thomas Malone. Before I discovered he was an atheist, I had my own doubts about religion and what I was taught...yet I also felt that questioning my beliefs would actually invite lightning strikes. Blasphemy was a serious "crime", I thought at the time. When I learned more about Malone's beliefs and realized that God never sent lightning bolts his way for questioning God, religion, and altogether rejecting it, I realized that there was nothing to fear. It was kind of empowering, to not be afraid of God anymore.

Anyhow, Malone and I kept in touch over the years until we had a falling out in 2001. Though a part of me is grateful for being his student, I realize that people do change and move on. He's a much different person now and we probably don't have much in common to keep in touch...but I'll always be loyal to him in a way that's hard to explain. He was the right teacher to appear at a time when I needed that push to become my own person and examine my spiritual beliefs on my terms without fear from parental approval or God's. So, for that, I''ll always be grateful...even if I never meet up with Malone again in life.

Another example is that in 1996, I volunteered on a Congressional campaign in Georgia. When he lost in the primary to a better known opponent, who ran a very ugly race (accusing him of being a "racist holdover of the Old South"), I couldn't stomach voting for her (it was Cynthia McKinney, who is pretty famous--hated by conservatives, loved by enough liberals to win the nomination to be the Green Party's nominee for president this year). Because of her, I voted for a Republican candidate for my Congressional district. She won, of course, and represented my district for a few years until she was voted out (2002), then voted back in (2004), then voted back out again (2006). Though she shares some of my views, I always voted for her opponent in the Democratic primary, and then for the Republican opponent in the Fall if she was still on the ballot. Each time I voted for her opponent, I always whispered to myself: "this is for Comer Yates!" Yes, I couldn't let it go...even when I saw her in the basement hallways of the U.S. Capitol building on the last day of my internship in 2000. She had smiled at me, and I smiled back, thinking, "I wonder what she would think if she knew I was a supporter of her opponent in 1996?" To me, that's what loyalty means. It's just a part of me I can't switch off. I support who I support and even if the opponent wins, I just don't feel a need to switch sides.

Amanda won't lack for quality applicants. She can have them. I know me...and I know that I could not be the best employee for her, if I qualified for the positions she's offering. My loyalty is with her opponent Charles. I hope he runs again. And of course, wins. It'll be interesting to see how Fritz does on City Council. I expect her to bog things down with her obsession with minutiae. That might not be a bad thing...but it might not be a good thing in this economy either.

In other news, work was HELL today. Things were bad enough that I went in to talk to the Office Manager. Complain was more like it. But she told me a few things that let me in on certain background info of things going down and it was just as I feared...and worse. Apparently, management is not happy. They didn't get the numbers they were promising their higher ups and looking for scapegoats. I've complained for months about our paperwork flow process (highly dysfunctional) and a few important documents were missing that people are pointing fingers at me for being the one responsible, which is a farce. The whole thing feels like a set up for a fall guy, which I won't tolerate. If they plan to take that path, I'll be in the offices of the ACLU so fast they won't know what hit 'em. I know too much about how the sham operation works and I'm not afraid to talk to the right people. We can get a scandal brewing fast, if that's what they want.

But that's not what I want. What I want is what I've asked God for every morning when I wake up for the past two years: "I want a job offer by the end of the week, God!" And I mean it! I was so angry today that I was ready to head over to an Air Force recruiter to see if I might qualify to become an Officer. Why the Air Force, you ask? Well, my dad was Air Force. I joined the Navy because I wanted to be on an aircraft carrier, but I never planned to make it a career. If I wanted a military career, I would've gone the Air Force route.

One thing I've been thinking lately is that even as bad as the Navy might get...what I miss about it is that assignments are generally three years. That means the first year, you're new in a place so you learn your job, your way around, you meet new people. The last year, you're looking at new duty station assignments and getting excited, planning your move, enjoying as much as you can your job and co-workers. It's the middle year that sucks...especially if you're in a terrible job. But the good news is, every day, you are one day closer to your transfer.

Not so, with my current job. I'm looking at the rest of my life and it's not a picture I can life with. If my misery goes on much longer, I'm liable to go hunting with Dick Cheney! Or run off to Mumbai to hang out in the lobby of an extravagent tourist hotel. Or walk around downtown Johannesburg with money hanging out of my pockets. Or swimming with sharks. Or jumping in a fish tank full of piranhas! Anything to end my misery. Just get me the hell out of here! NOW!!! This job continues to get worse and worse and worse and I don't understand why God has ignored my requests for so long. Usually, I've had answers, guidance, and a serendipitous moment that gets me out of terrible situations. My life is truly on the line here. I'm miserable like I've never been before. I HATE THIS JOB MORE THAN ANYTHING I'VE EVER HATED IN MY LIFE!!!

On a positive note, Mark Diggs (above. Yes, that's me to his left) really made my day! He was my best friend in the 10th grade when we attended Fulda American High School in Fulda, West Germany. A few months ago, he contacted me through the Classmates website and gave me his email. Though he hasn't said much in an email, he kept pestering me to join Facebook. Then I was hit with about five requests from mutual Fulda classmates I hadn't thought about in years! Wow...what's the urgency, I thought? So, officially, yesterday, I joined Facebook. Thanks to Mark. Caught up on some old friends. It was a much needed break from all the work related bullshit.

Once again, it proves to me the idea "your focus determines your reality." For some strange reason this year, I have been on a serious nostalgia kick about 1988 and I don't know why. I've been listening to a lot of the music from that year and thinking about it, and to hear from my best friend from that year...it's amazing, really. Yet, I feel like Luke Skywalker. I'm able to use the force to stack rocks and lift R2-D2 off the ground...but I can't move the X-Wing out of the bog. Why? Why can I manifest the little things, but not the thing I most desperately want? A new job, damnit! A new job. That is what I want most. I don't care about dating, marriage and children right now. All I want is a new job in a career that I would thrive in, that shares my values of quality over quantity, and has a spiritual focus that betters the world we live in. That's all I want for Christmas and my birthday this year. I just want out of my torment and into a new life.

The above photos were taken from Mark's Facebook. The one above is my 10th grade English teacher, Ms. Laakman. I'm the dude staring at her with what looks to be "evil eye"...probably because she gave me a grade I didn't like or something. In retrospect, I'd rather be a high school student again than deal with my current job nightmare. I know I should be grateful to have a job in this economy...but to be honest, I'd rather risk my life in Iraq or Afghanistan than do what I have to do every day. My work is pointless in the grand scheme of life...but the managers don't realize it. They are obsessed with meeting projections and padding numbers so they can get higher payraises and promotions...even though basic science is...you can't have unlimited growth forever. It's completely unsustainable. I just don't play their game because I see with a spiritual mind. Someday when they face God, they will be the ones in shame, not me. I know it's bullshit, but they don't. I want a job where I actually improve the world and I don't care if it costs me my life anymore. Better an adventurous job with risk than a boring job that's safe.

So if God is reading my blog...then manifest my request of the past two years already! What are you waiting for? I have been in purgatory long enough. I am ready to have the career I studied hard for in college. It involves international politics. That's where my passion remains. I couldn't care less about some manager making their numbers projections. We've seen where that obsession ends: Enron, Global Crossing, Bear Stearns, AIG, the Big Three Automakers, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, etc. Count me out. Count me way the fuck out!

Wrapping Up the Holiday

I found the above photo in a Google image search for "black Friday", that notorious American capitalistic "tradition" where people turn into insane, raving lunatics all in a quest to find a good bargain that was worth waking up for at 3 a.m.

On Wednesday, I was aghast hearing the two ladies I work with excited about the early Friday morning sales. For them, it's tradition, to which I responded, "Uh, which stores did the pilgrims shop at again, because the history book I learned from neglected to mention it?" How did we get from a great tradition about true gratitude and good will, sharing with family, friends and neighbors to becoming materialistic, greedy, and selfish monsters?

Need examples? One Wal-Mart employee whose job it was to open the doors for the hoards at 4 a.m. was trampled to death!!! A stampede of Wal-Mart shoppers were so desirous of getting to the bargains first that anyone in the way was worth less than the material item. I hope they find the culprit and charge the person with manslaughter. I have little sympathy. As one Wal-Mart manager of another store was quoted as saying, "nothing in our store is worth the safety and lives of people." Damn straight! America's crap emporium has nada worth buying. Unfortunately, I'm unable to convince my own parents and fellow church members at home not to shop there. It's hard to argue with cheap...and in these uncertain economic times where many companies are filing for bankruptcy, the news reported that Wal-Mart has actually seen an increase in sales.

In college, I wrote a poem entitled "Wal-Mart", which was about an old lady who left behind a lot of plastic junk for her descendants to sort through after her funeral. In my creative writing class, one girl said, "I don't get it. Why is it titled 'Wal-Mart'?" Gotta love the subtlety that went over her poor little head.

My disenchantment with Wal-Mart occurred in 1996 when I walked in and saw "Buy American" signs hanging from the ceiling all over the store. Everything I had planned to buy, I checked the label and saw "Made in China." It made me mad how they would tell customers to buy American yet not offer anything made in America. It told me how disconnected the managers of the store were to not realize this.

The second thing that bothered me was seeing bins in the middle of the floor filled with videos of movies I had never even heard of before. And I'm a movie buff. Who bought that shit? I'm talking crappy looking movies, yet they had gobs and gobs of videos. It told me that they'll sell anything at all. There was no standard on quality. The final thing that bothered me were the people who shopped there. Most of the people looked like they lived in a trailer park. They were low class people. I quickly switched to Target, which offers a more pleasant shopping experience. I do notice things like other shoppers when I'm out and about...and yeah, call me a snob if you want, but I won't set foot in Wal-Mart at all. The trampling to death of a Wal-Mart employee is only a reminder how low class the people who shop there are. Life means less than the crap sold there. Shameless. And we wonder why "they hate us" in the Middle East!

On the local news, they interviewed a lady who was camped out at one store on Thursday! While her family was enjoying a cozy home with food and fellowship, she was waiting to be first in the store for Friday's sale day. What's wrong with that picture?!? She'd rather camp in the damp cold outside a store than spend time with family? Again, what message does it send? Materialism is worth more than human fellowship. Warped.

Okay...so I might not be so pure...as I made the choice to spend Thanksgiving alone than with my brother. But I needed to. It was just God and me. I needed to find the peace that has evaded me so long this year. The frustration of a nearly two year long job search, with the culmination of being informed of a church position I qualified for only to be denied for whatever reason. Yeah, I'm still not over it, I suppose. It's because I want to work in an organization that shares my values, where quality is viewed as more important than quantity. The longer I work where I work, the more jaded I become. I couldn't care less about the numbers. They don't pay enough for me to care. The numbers might effect someone else's pay and promotion, but until it affects mine, I don't play their games. Because in the grand scheme of things, these numbers don't matter. It's all a capitalist construct that is fraudulent and dishonest to the core. But, hey, that's their salvation in jeopardy, not mine.

My brother didn't spend it with his evangelical church group like I thought he would. He spent it with some friends of family/church friends from back east. They aren't my friends, though. The few times I been with them, I didn't feel a connection. I got the impression that they are too materialistic. Um, a nice mansion in suburbia, a Lexus SUV, and a businessman with a gorgeous wife and teenage daughters who speak Valley Girl-ese. Yeah...that's exactly how I want to spend my Thanksgiving. It's a bit too plastic for me. I'm sure they are fine people, because our mutual friends in common are great people who befriend everyone. I'm just uncomfortable around materialistic people...especially those who are very showy about their success. I want to be around people who are real, who can have an honest conversation about world events. The times I spent with these people, I got the impression that they knew a lot about where to shop for the best bargains, but not a whole lot about what's going on in the world.

Which is just as well...for I was preoccupied with the terrorist attack in Mumbai to be good company with anyone. Is there a place for me in the international realm? It's where I belong, where I feel most comfortable. In my apartment complex is a great immigrant family from Ethiopia. I always enjoy talking with them. Their four year old son is the biggest Obama supporter, too! It was awesome to hear him tell people why Obama should be president. Anyhow, that's who I prefer to spend my time with...people who've been out in the world, not people who focus their attention on the finer things in life while lacking awareness about the greater world outside our American consumption based lifestyle.


On Saturday afternoon, my apartment complex had a "Civil War" viewing party with Pizza and soda. I'm not a big sports fan...much less a football fan...but when they're offering free pizza and soda, hey, what can I say? I can be bought quite cheaply! I was only planning to stay through half time, but I was surprised how good the game turned out to be. For those that don't know...like nearly all states, Oregon has it's main rivalry between two competing colleges: the University of Oregon (Ducks) and Oregon State University (Beavers). If the Beavers won, they'd go to the Rose Bowl. One lady asked who I was rooting for and I honestly told her that I didn't take sides, but if I had to choose, it was probably Oregon because that's where I'd go to school (over OSU), though I like the Beavers mascot much better. Yet, Oregon has my high school colours (green and gold).

The 20 or so people watching in the lobby area of the apartment (with big screen TV) were all rooting for Oregon, which did well. The Ducks kept a 20 point margin through most of the game. One of the teammates (I believe his name was Johnson) kept making long runs down the field like Forrest Gump, even getting a few touchdowns that way. It made for an exciting game watching him run the field without being tackled, though once he had three guys trying to bring him down. This was all before half-time, so I knew I was staying for the second half. How could I not? I didn't have anything else going on and it's rare that I watch a football game (I generally am satisfied watching only the Superbowl each year--so single ladies out there looking for a hubby who won't make you a sports season widow, email me!).

OSU students looked more and more despondent as the game wore on. Their hopes of a Rose Bowl were dashed and even the Duck mascot rubbed it in by tossing a rose into its beak. The final score was 65 to 38.

Saturday night, I watched Oliver Stone's Wall Street, which I had never seen before. The recent mess on Wall Street made me want to see this film, so Netflix sent it to me last week and I watched it with complete amazement how relevant this 21 year old film is to current events. Particularly the scene in which Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas, seen above) tells the stockholders of some paper company that the executive board with its over abundance of Vice Presidents with their salaries and perks but mysterious job description are hurting the company. He talks about "Greed is good!" for companies and for our country. He is like a character straight out of an Ayn Rand novel. No morals at all. It's all about wealth accumulation and increasing one's power, no matter who gets hurt.

The film is absolutely relevant to today's mess. In fact, things are far worse today than they were during the Reagan years. Executive pay and bonuses have only increased while average workers salaries have remained stagnant, and some might say, have fallen behind from where we were in the 1980s if you adjust for inflation. Honestly, after watching this film and reading about the mess on Wall Street with all these corporate types crying to Congress about bailouts, I think that capitalism isn't working properly. Or maybe it is and thus why we need a fairer system. All the corporate execs who ruined their companies deserve no less than jail time. They worked for their own wealth accumulation, not for the betterment of their companies. This will continue if there is no severe punishment for greed. I would even go so far as to say that these corporate CEOs of bankrupting companies are guilty of treason. They have betrayed the American workers. They, like Gordon Gekko, have fallen for the faustian bargain but don't want to pay the price. Sorry, but the devil always gets his due. That's what happens when you make a deal with Satan.

In the documentary about the film, Martin Sheen said that the more honest you are, the more expensive life becomes for you. Somehow, that phrase struck a chord with me because in several jobs I've had where the company line is honesty, I've seen dishonest people get ahead while honest people get punished. What does that tell you? For me, it says that the corporate model is dishonest. I think we're seeing the disintegration of corporations as a workable model. Maybe it's time to return to the small business model. That's one thing I love about Portland...it's easy to support local businesses.

I watched the Moses Code last week. Rather than a whole post on it, I decided to write about it here. Basically, it's one of those new agey documentaries in the same vein as The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? This one is about the phrase in the Bible, where the burning bush that is God speaks to Moses, who asked for the name to call God. "I am that I am" was the response. It reminds me of a bad joke my brother loves to tell people:

"How do we know that God is white and not black?"

"Because He said: 'I am what I am', not 'I is what I is'."

Yes, bad joke, like I said. A racist friend of his told him that joke. I shouldn't repeat it here, but I did want to bring it up because I thought the expression was always odd. What the heck does that mean, anyway?

Well, this DVD says that an important symbol was deliberately left out, which is supposedly "the secret of the universe." The symbol will give you power...or, at least the kind of power new agey folks like to talk about: the power of manifesting your desires like God.

So, what is this symbol, you ask? Quite simply, it's the comma. That's right: a ,

If you're like me, you probably laughed. Hokey new age claims, right?

Consider this: "I am that I am" becomes "I am that, I am." It completely changes the meaning. So what God was supposedly telling Moses was "I am that" (and He meant all of that), with the repetition of "I am" at the end. So, our task is to identify all that is, all that we see, all that we come across as being a part of us and we're a part of it. So, whenever we see a tree, a rock, a mountain, a homeless person, water, money, whatever you come across...we are to say, "I am that," on the breath out and "I am" on the breath in.

Interesting interpretation. Kind of makes sense. When I listened to this theory the DVD is promoting, an image came to mind. When I was studying my Biology two years ago, the part I hated to learn about were the cells. That, to me, is the hardest part of biology. Anyhow, I came across an interesting statement in the textbook that said something like the microscopic cells in your body are about as far away from each other as two people across a continent, when you think about it. When you begin to ponder the world of microscopic cells within our bodies, and then begin to imagine how large our universe is...here's the thought that came to mind:

What if each universe/galaxy was a cell inside the body of God? What if each planet was a cell? If we are microscopic cells in the body of God, what the hell are we fighting about? We are all meant to be working together for the glory of God, right?

Anyhow, that's the thoughts I had while watching this DVD.

Also this weekend, I was pleased to have found a good as new paperback copy of Carl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge for $5. I have been wanting to buy that book and read it for a year now. It's supposedly the best biography on Hillary Clinton. Granted...now that she's not going to be president, why bother reading it? Well, she is a compelling figure and looks like she'll be the next Secretary of State.

I read an article on the Huffington Post that she has become disenchanted with the Senate because of her junior Senator status and her not being assigned to lead any committees and others don't want her major involvement on health care (understandably)...but she should know better. Congress is all about seniority. That's why they don't have term limits (and never will). When I read the article, it confirmed what I suspected of her in 2000. She didn't really want to be Senator of New York. To her, it was nothing more than a springboard to the presidency (following the RFK path). With that option denied to her, Secretary of State is her consolation prize. No longer does she have to pretend to love doing constituent services for "the little people" of upstate New York, as she often claimed during her 2006 reelection campaign.

Is Obama pure in his motives for selecting her? Well...there's that phrase, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Not that he views her as an enemy, but so long as she's a Senator with a constituency and her 18 million primary voter supporters, she could force him into a primary fight in 2012 if his popularity polls are not very good. If she's in his cabinet and works "at the pleasure of the president", he could fire her at will, though it would be very difficult for him to do so because of the power she leverages within the Democratic Party. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I can't wait to read that book...though it probably won't be until January, after I finish reading a couple books right now.

Anyhow, that's a recap of my holiday weekend. It was relaxing, but way too short. I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to do...but I definitely needed the time away from work to reflect, relax, and focus on what I want for the coming year.

Music Video Monday: The Rebel Jesus

For the next four Music Video Mondays, I will feature a Christmas-themed song. I wanted to kick off this Christmas Edition with NSYNC's very peppy "Merry Christmas" (or is it "Happy Holidays"?), but their music video to this song are all blocked on YouTube for transporting elsewhere. So, I had to choose another song to get this series started, and what better song than Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus." Someone made their own video and I have always loved this song (particularly the version on The Chieftains The Bells of Dublin album). Especially the profound lyrics. It truly hits upon the truth about Jesus versus his believers. Its a pretty strong indictment against current Christianity (as opposed to authentic Christianity).

When I was in the Navy, I first discovered the Chieftains in 1992 when the ship's store sold their cassette tape of The Bells of Dublin. I would listen to it in my office and one shipmate, who was always funny, heard "The Rebel Jesus" and was shocked. He called the song "blasphemous!" To him (and I don't know if he was kidding because he never struck me as the religious type to begin with), it was the word "rebel" that made it blasphemous. When I tried to explain what the song was about, he wouldn't hear of it and went away. Wow, I remember thinking. Some people take their Jesus seriously. Honestly, I think Jesus would totally prefer this song than all the ones that praise him constantly. For this one gets to the heart of the truth of what he's all about.

Enjoy!

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
They'll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by the Prince of Peace
And they call him by the Savior
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robbers den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.