Thought-provoking article

Here's an article by Cindy Sheehan that should be read by all Americans:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0126-24.htm

CBS News' priorities out of whack?

I'm astonished by what I saw last night... Watching the CBS Evening News, and the anchor (Bob Schieffer) was rattling off the first stories, the "headlines," - about Supreme Court nominee Alito and the news that our government had foreknowledge of the coming devastation from Katrina. After the Alito and Katrina stories, the anchor said, "We have some really big (his emphasis) news out of Hollywood today - the merger of Disney and Pixar."

This was in the "before the first break" segment. I used to work for a newspaper, and we called the part of the paper above the fold... well, "above the fold." That was the big stories, the "sexy" stories. This part of the news broadcast is the TV equivalent of "above the fold."

Below the fold, after the break, came a story about Al Qaeda, and after that a story of how four more American soldiers were killed yesterday in Iraq.

(I just went to Google to check my spelling, and started typing in "Al Qaeda", then stopped and changed my search term to "news" - never know when Google will be forced into giving up their records, and a search of that term might just put me in a 'red flag' category... gotta be careful these days!).

So, what I just learned is, Alito and government deception regarding Katrina are important, but the REALLY BIG news is the multibilliondollar merger of some Hollywood corporations. Four American soldiers killed overseas in a bogus war warrant "below the fold" coverage.

Then came some commercials about pharmaceuticals, then the news started again, and the feature story was about a guy who keeps a bunch of animals that are used in films, plays, etc. On one of the biggest news broadcasts in the world, the CBS Evening News, at least 40-50% of the air time was devoted to entertainment, and dead Americans placed 5th or 6th, after the truly important story - Mickey and Woody are now married. Long live the happy couple.

Lost in LOST

Wow... Patti and I just started watching "Lost" and, man, is it intense! I know it seems like the trendy show to be watching, but there's a reason... it's a really good show. For whatever reason, we neglected to "get into" it when it first aired. I remember being slightly interested, but it wasn't "must-see TV" at our house.

Finally, after hearing everyone say how great it is, we decided to check it out. The show's currently in the middle of season 2, so we didn't want to jump on the train while it was moving. Instead, we got the DVDs of season 1, and started from the beginning.

In the 16 years we've been together, we've been completely absorbed in two TV shows: Twin Peaks and The X-Files. Yeah, we had our Melrose period, but it was more a guilty pleasure. And now she's pretty involved in Nip/Tuck and I guess I've gotten more interested in it lately... but those two shows are the only ones we were compelled to watch... faithfully.

Then along comes Lost. "Hey, I'm looking forward to tonight." "Yeah, me too... gotta get in a couple more episodes of Lost," is pretty typical conversation around here. "Make sure the kids are in bed by 8:30, then we can start Lost about 9..." Sad, but true.

In fact, I just finished an episode, and the DVD is at the main menu, and it's got a really nice loop of birds singing and stuff... so when you're finished watching, you can mellow to some relaxing nature sounds. Nice...

Anyway, the show is so amazingly well-written, incredibly well-acted, thought-provoking, suspenseful... jeez... I sound like an addict. Well, at least a convert. I don't even know what channel it's on since we've been watching the DVDs, but I can tell you when season three starts (after we've finished the DVDs of seasons one and - hopefully - 2), we'll be right there!

Churches getting hipper?

Was this photo taken at a neighborhood church?

Well, actually, no. It was created at a fun website: www.churchsigngenerator.com. You can choose from a couple different designs, and have the results printed on a magnet, or just download the image. Fun schtuff, baby... enjoy.

Bin Laden reappears to help his buddy George

HEADLINE: Bin Laden offers U.S. Truce

Osama has apparently reared his head (in the form of a 'tape'), warning the U.S. that more attacks are imminent, unless troops are removed from Afghanistan and Iraq.

THEORY: Bin Laden helping out buddy Bush's approval rating

The Bush's and bin Laden's go way back, in business and personal dealings. This is well-known fact, not conjecture or "conspiracy." I say, Bush's approval ratings are so low, and so much attention is currently being focused on the administration's illegal activities (wiretapping, subpoenas of Google records, etc.), it's awfully convenient that bin Laden has appeared to once again draw scrutiny away from GW and the Boyz.

Of course the official word from the White House is "We don't negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business." If bin Laden, the most hated man in the world, wants us to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, then damnit - we gotta stay!

That should not only help smolder the embers of the American "anti-war" movement, but also help Bushie get his ratings up and help us forget the fact that he and his cronies are chipping away at our Constitutional rights. Good thing old evil Osama is still around to help GW out of a crunch now and then!

CIA hits dinner, kills 5 children - film at 11

According to Pakistani officials, airstrikes by the CIA targeting an al Quaeda chemicals expert, 'may' have hit their intended target, but definitely killed 18 civilians, including five children and several women. More "shock and awe"! CNN News Story HERE

Meanwhile, hatred for America and Americans boils increasingly throughout the world.

But on to our top story tonight, Brad and Angelina (Brangelina) to do the baby's room in a pale, light blue. "I'd say it was more... periwinkle," quipped Angelina, before being whisked away in her Hummer limo.

After the hijacked 2004 election, some American citizens felt the need to apologize to the rest of the world. They created a website (http://www.sorryeverybody.com), and have since published a book of the photos they received. It's pretty amazing, you should check it out.

Go Blogsurfing!

Here's your assignment for today: as soon as you're finished reading this, find the "Next Blog" link in the upper right corner of this web page. Click it. If you don't like what you get, find it on that person's page, and click it until you find something that grabs you. Read a few of the bloggers' entries, and post a comment. Just tell them that you found their blog interesting. That's all... you don't have to write a novel. "Hey, just wanted you to know I read your blog and found it interesting. Keep up the good work!" Two sentences. Five seconds. Do it. Especially if the person has "0 Comments" on all or most of their posts. They'll be shocked, and you could just make somebody's day. Now.... go!

I'm OK (You're OK)

In case anyone is wondering, I'm OK. Yesterday was not the worst day of my life, in spite of what the chain letter told me. Today's not going so hot, but the chain letter didn't mention today, so I'm guessing it's just fate.

Was watching a documentary on the power of tyranny, and did some thinking about freedom...

We live in a world that David Icke describes as a "prison without walls." Giving it some consideration, I thought of the metaphor of an ant farm. On their scale, ants appear to have liberty. They can dig wherever they choose, they can interact as they desire. But their freedom only exists within the boundaries that their "keeper" has set up. Their destiny lies at his whim. If he decides to cut off the food, the ants go hungry. If he decides to shake the farm, all of their digging work is destroyed, and they must begin again.

Now, some could say that the ant farmer is God. But what if the farmer were a man, or a group of men? And "we the people" are the ants? And we are given certain liberties, and allowed a certain degree of freedom, only so that we don't care to question the greater threats to our ultimate liberty?

The same illustration applies to our relationship with God. We are given liberty and freedom of will by our Creator, but the boundaries involved are based upon love, truth, and justice. We can operate with full freedom in Christ because the true love and liberty of Christ don't allow fear into the equation.

Our "national" freedom, in the "land of liberty," is hedged by boundaries of greed, deception, and injustice. Our so-called freedom is drained of true liberty by fear - a fearful condition created for us and in us by the keepers of our global ant farm. The people with the money, the power and access to the media.

We as a nation have long been held under the oppressive thumb of fear - fear of the Nazis, Fascists and Socialists; fear of the evils of Rock & Roll; the fear of Communists both here in our country and around the world; fear of nuclear attack; fear of natural disasters; and most recently, fear of terrorists - just to name a few.

So what can we do? Ultimately, we can have little effect on the overall picture. It would take a grassroots movement of a huge number of Americans to effect any change at all. And people are just too complacent and fearful to make the effort. So we ants just go on digging, frequently looking over our collective shoulder.

We could choose to live in the freedom God has given us, in Christ. The only true freedom we can ever really experience. And in that freedom is the freedom from fear. To paraphrase (liberally) the Bible, since I'm too lazy to go look it up: "Who by worrying can add even a single hour to his life?" and also, "Don't worry about tomorrow; tomorrow has enough worries of its own."

Gore Speech

Al Gore delivered quite a speech yesterday (MLK Day), on the current administration's disregard for the Constitution and the general rule of law. Some may call him a "sore loser" and see ulterior motives in his oratory, but there's no denying the truth of his words.

Read it HERE. Then come back and post a comment.

MySpace (a break from politics for those of you getting bored with that topic)

I have a sort of embarassing confession: I'm on MySpace. Not only am I on it, I frequent it and somewhat actively participate. But it gets worse... I have multiple MySpace accounts. I told you it was embarassing.

I have a MySpace account for myself, I made one for my business, one for my DidjeriDude "identity", one for the rock band I'm in, one for the world/new age recording project I'm involved in, one for my father-in-law, and I convinced Patti she needs one too. A couple of them I did just to "reserve" the name, before someone else took it and you start having to buy them off people, like domain names.

It's just really pretty cool. Friggin' genius. Another "man, if only I'd thought of that..." like eBay, Google, etc. And it's becoming just as ubiquitous as those other entities. EVERYONE is on MySpace. If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist. Well, it's beginning to seem like that, anyway.

Of course, it has its inherent problems. Like everything else on the 'Net, it's becoming increasingly infested with "undesirable" elements, like porn and marketing scams. They have "trains" where you apparently (I haven't really researched it to be honest) sign on to just receive a huge number of "friends" (contacts), for no reason other than to increase your friend count.

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the fun of things like this was to see how many of your "actual" friends you could hook up with and "collect." Where's the fun in having 10,000 friends thrown at you all at once? Now that I think of it, that's really a metaphor for life, isn't it? We all want things more for the sake of having them and showing others that we have them, than for the enjoyment of the things. Or at least we feel like having lots and lots of things will add somehow to the quality of our lives. But then, I have just over 20 friends, and almost half of those are ones I created myself! Oh, the irony.

Yesterday, one of my "friends" sent me a chain letter. This wasn't my "main" account (the 'friend' pool of which I've chosen to keep 'pure'), but one of my other, supplemental accounts. Needless to say, I dropped that friend like a hot Idaho spud, but the chain letter has continued to nag at me today.

There's not much in the world as big of a downer as a chain letter. You're just living your life and bam, someone cold cocks you with a chore that if you choose not to undertake, you risk some kind of harm to you or yours. Does that suck, or what?

My "friend's" chain letter told me that if I don't duplicate and send it on to 10 of my friends, tomorrow would be the worst day of my life. Nice. Thanks, "friend." I'm not a very superstitious person. I've been known to defiantly walk under ladders or cross the path of dreaded black kitties. I didn't put much stock in the "curse" that pop star Seal put on me a few years back. But something just nags at you, like... "what if?" I mean, someone just told me that today was going to be the worst day of my life!

I'm not superstitious, but I am looking forward to midnight. Maybe MySpace was a bad idea.

We the Sheeple...

I just learned something about sheep. Honestly, after 38 years, I just learned something that, I guess, should have been obvious. Sheep have a strong instinct to follow a leader. If one sheep moves, the rest of the flock are likely to follow, even at their own peril, to the point that they've been known to follow, one after another, as a leader has fallen from a cliff.

Did you know that about sheep? I guess I didn't. I figured they called followers "sheep" because sheep tend to stay together, and don't have much of a brain. But I didn't know that it's really because they will exhibit a "hive" mentality, because one of them is moving, the rest better do the same. There's no room for individuality in a flock of sheep.

"Don't be the nail that sticks out farther than the rest... that's the one that will get hit first."
- Japanese saying

Individuality is ridiculed, and we are convinced that we need to "go with the flow" and maintain the "staus quo." God help me to encourage my children to be true to themselves, true to who God made them to be, and to always ask "why?"

Photoblog #3

Bloody Headlines

Today's Review-Journal headline reads: IRAQ BOMBINGS KILL 130 - FOURTH DEADLIEST DAY SINCE SADDAM'S FALL. Remember when Bush told us that the "war is over"? Remember when VP Cheney told us that the insurgency was in its "last throes"?

I was watching the news the other day, and they did one of their moving "fallen heroes" blurbs, which are becoming ever more frequent. This was a kid (I unfortunately can't recall his name) who was just married, had dreams of becoming a cop, but when 9/11 hit, he felt he had to do something, so he joined the Army.

So, like so many other sons and daughters, he enlisted, went through training, then got shipped off to fight in a bogus war, where he ultimately gave his life. Yes, he's a hero. But did he die for a noble cause? Was he defending America, fighting for freedom, or was he a pawn in a game he wasn't even aware of? His innocent blood is on the hands of every greedy, deceitful politician and corporate warmonger who is responsible for this travesty. What a shame.