Things

Are getting better, sort of. Or maybe it's just the recent raise in my meds. Either way, I'm feeling OK. And after the last couple weeks, that feels pretty damn good. When it rains it really rains, that' the way my life seems to go. Financial aid was suspended, truck was repossessed.... was in danger of having to quit school. It was fun. Got the financial aid issues taken care of, still no truck though. Oh well, I didn't really like that truck anyway.

Financial aid probation. I have to keep my grades up this term, or it's no more school. I guess when they give you all that money (hahahahahahaha) they want you to be productive with it. Not like I have to pay it back or anything. Bastards anyway. I guess it's a good motivation to do good and stay on top of things. One of the issues with depression is it occasionally causes me to not want to do a god damn thing. That sucks when you have so much homework to keep up on and things to study. I think I actually do better when I have a heavier class load. I always do better under stress. Give me to much time and I put things off till the last minute. We'll see how that works in the fall.

I need to start writing in this more. I keep forgetting I have it out there. Oh well. I will make a concerted effort to blog on a more consistent basis. Maybe

Sports??

I must not be a very manly man, because I don't get it. Let's see, a strike is a good thing is bowling, a bad thing in baseball (unless you're the pitcher, then it's a good thing). We call a game football, yet it has very little to do with a foot and ball. We call a game the rest of the world calls football, soccer, yet no Socking is involved. Baseball fans are encouraged to be loud when a player is swinging at a ball going 90 miles an hour yet golf fans must be vewy vewy quiet for some old fart in ugly pants to swing a stick at a ball that isn't moving?

I want to play professional sports, especially basketball. What other job can you perform so poorly at and still make millions? American sports are funny. Baseball, a game that allows middle aged, overweight white guys to make millions playing a silly game with a stick and a ball. Football, a cross between soccer and rugby, both much more difficult games. And they don't use pads or helmets. Yet every year we have the "SuperBowl". A mutlimillion dollar clusterfuck of advertising and beer drinking. Oh, and some gratuitous T&A. It's sad when more people watch for the advertisements than the actuall game.

Who came up with the scoring in these games anyway?? Football, two points, 3 points, extra point??? How about this, the ball goes in the hole one time, you get one point? Is this supposed to make the game more interesting? Because it really doesn't help much.

And my biggest gripe about sports. Those stupid, annoying idiotic announcers! Hey, asshole, shut up, I'm watching the game. I really don't care to hear how you would have done it. If you're opinion was so valued you would be coaching or playing instead of announcing.

It amazes me what they call a sport any more. I was just looking at the Olympics and the "sports" they have listed. Ping Pong is a sport? Curling? Golf isn't a sport, it's a game. What's next? Competitive knitting? In this age of political correctness, seems like we have to let everyone compete in everything. What happened to needing skill? Tallent? Now all you need is some good PR and the rite pair of shoes.

Commercialism

On any given Sunday. Television is a sure sign of one of the biggest problems with this country. Almost every channel has an infomercial selling useless Chinese crap. You can buy just about anything without leaving your arm chair. If the infomercials aren't enough for you, pick a shopping channel. I have basic cable and that gives me 6 to choose from. I love that I pay money to get channels trying to sell me crap I don't need or want.

Seriously though, who buys this crap? Magic creams and powders guaranteed to make you look younger and sexier, only 4 easy payment of 19.99. Well built exercise equipment that promises to take care of those love handles for you. All you have to do is use it 15 minutes a month and make 5 easy credit card payments. Want some really cheap tacky jewelery? Watch HSC, they'll sell you plenty.

Again, who buys this crap? Obviously enough people do or they wouldn't inundate the television with so many commercials. Credit card companies must love these people. The useless crap is broken and long in the nearest land fill before the last payment is even made. We're keeping millions of Chinese employed filling our dumps and closets and attics with junk. I guess that is the new American way though, stay in debt spending money you don't have and crap you don't need and probably will never use anyway. Support corporate share holders, pay taxes to support foreign wars, stay poor so you have to worry about loosing a job you hate. And stay stupid so decent jobs have to be outsourced to third world countries that support education.

I hope that eventually people in this country realize the downward direction we are heading and do something about it, but I doubt it will happen any time soon. We have become a "what about me" society with an apparent since of entitlement. Everyone wants everything but no one wants to work for it or pay for it.

What happened?

To this country? How have things gotten to the point they are at currently? Are we experiencing another Great Depression? I know that each political party likes to blame the other, but their has to be more to it than that. We've been in a decline for a long time. Not just economically. Crime is up, homelessness is up, drug use it up. Education is no longer a priority, public safety is no longer at the top of the list. In fact, the two seem to be the first things to go when money becomes an issue.

Seems to me like we have our priorities a bit fucked up don't we? We spend more money fixing a country we destroyed than we do taking care of our own. We can ship 20,000 troops to the dessert, but couldn't seem to evacuate a city after a hurricane.

I've tried to figure out when exactly it was that things started heading south. Some people like to blame the lack of religion in schools and all that. I think it has more to do with political correctness and lack of personal responsibility. We started punishing the strong and protecting the weak and stupid. We have "no cut" sports teams. "No loser" tournaments. Some teams have the "everyone will play" rule. If you run a billion dollar corporation into the ground, don't worry, you'll still get your bonus and a nice bail out from the tax payers.

It's even worse than that is some areas. Here, criminals know that they can do pretty much what ever they want and if the police bother to investigate and they happen to get caught, they'll only spend a few hours in jail anyway. If crime has no punishment, the criminals have no deterrent yet society says we can't just shoot them. We get punished for protecting ourselves and criminals win lawsuits when they get hurt breaking into someones house. You go to jail longer for not paying taxes than you do for rape. Something seriously wrong with that.

We don't seem to care about education any more, walmart is Chinas number one importer and the largest retail chain in this country. We don't make anything in America any more. I doubt more than a quarter of population could feed, cloth and house themselves with electricity and a supermarket down the road. I have to wonder what it's going to be like in another 10 or 15 years. We seem to get fatter and dumber every year. My only hope is that I can make a difference in the lives of my children and keep them from following the same pattern. My goal is to educate them enough to be able to think for themselves and question everything.

School's out, for a week anyway

I don't know what to do with myself. It's very odd to not have homework to worry about and things to study. Of course, I am sure I could find something to study if I really wanted to. But i don't. My poor fried brain needs a rest. I'm waiting to find out if I passed my math class or not. I wish the silly asses would hurry up with that bit of information. I need to know if I can take math 111 over the summer or if I need to take math 95 again.

I really don't want to take math 95 again, that would make me a very unhappy person. But if I do, I do. I know a good portion of the class didn't do to well either, so hopefully the grading curve will be very very steep. All I need is a C. I'm not going to be picky this term, I allready know I failed one class, so I'm good with just passing. Summer term will be a fresh start. I need to stay healthy, stay focused and make sure i get to class every day. I need to keep my immune system up, lots of vitamins, keep from getting sick.

Mostly, though, I need to focus and work on my time management. I need to make sure I get all my school work done and have time to actually study.

More warning labels and stupid people

Seriously, are people truly so stupid as needing a label on a jar of peanut butter telling people that it contains peanuts?? Warning, coffee is hot? Viagra, does not protect against aids?? What the hell? Why are we so worried about protecting the stupid? Skim the gene pool, clean it out. It seems every time I turn around, it's another warning label or sign. Some of them make me laugh, most make me worried that people are so dumb.

Colors

Ok, for the very few of you that read this drivel. Do you like these colors? Are they difficult to read? Hard on the eyes? I'm experimenting and need some feedback.

Random Thoughts

If a black American moves to Africa, is he then an American African?
So many unanswerable questions floating around. We can put men in space but still wonder why we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway. Oh the odd odd things that float through my mind. Why do sports players make millions while teachers are asked to work for free? Janet Jackson shows boob and the nation has a fit. Victoria's Secret models walk around mostly naked in prime time and ratings go up? You can go to jail longer for tax fraud than you can for rape? Why are pants plural but panties singular? Which came first, the chicken or the egg (and no, it wasn't the rooster).

Speaking of eggs. So I'm making some breakfast at the butt crack of this morning and looking at the eggs in the fridge I notice they seem a bit large. So I take a better look at the package and notice that these are extra special double yoke eggs. Double yokes? Yep, all three eggs I cracked contained two yokes. What the hell are we doing to our food? I want to see these super chickens popping out such large eggs. What had to happen to create two yokes?? The things we put in our bodies.

Watching tv tonight I had to laugh at some of the drug advertisements. "In some rare cases death has occurred"??? They aren't saying that it COULD happen, or may happen. It actually happened. Some poor shmuck bought this wunderpill to do some new wonderful thing (get instantly skinny, cure allergies, make eyelashes grow, make other things grow) and they DIED. And people still buy this crap? The side effects of this crap seem worse than than the reason people take them. I don't get it!! It's like eating puffer fish. I've been told it really isn't all that good. Plenty of other fish in the sea. So why would you eat a fish that may well kill you if it wasn't prepared properly? Why not just play Russian roulet with a semi-auto? Go bungie jumping with the cord around your kneck instead of your anckles. Silly.

Hopefully sleep will not elude me again tonight. As tired as I am, I don't think it will be an issue. The weather has cooled. I may have to go dog hunting, but other than that, I am hopefull I will get a full nights sleep. I need it. Very badly. Of course, if not, I can always find some magic pill to help right? Warning this sleeping pill may cause drowsiness, do not operate machinery. Don't take preperation H orally. Do not place hand under running lawnmower. I'm going to put my car on cruise control and take a knap so I can sue ford when I crash. Or perhaps cruise by Starbucks for some HOT coffee and spill it in my lap. Why work for my money. Who wants to sue Marlboro because I didn't know that sucking carcinogins into my body on a regular basis was bad for me?? I'm going to sue McDonalds because I'm fat. Oh, and Comcast too, if it weren't for them I wouldn't be sitting here in front of my computer.

Live long, laugh often and love like you can't be hurt.

Sleep eludes me yet again

So I'm laying in bed with a sleepless mind full of brilliant thoughts. I decide fuck it, I'll get up and write some of them down (after I track down the yapping dog that has kept me awake for the last hour). I get out of bed, go outside only to have the dog finally stop yapping. I'm awake now, though, so I may as well do something productive. After all, I was laying in bed with a mind full of brilliance wasn't I?

The problem is, as I wake up, I find that all those brilliant thoughts are slowly trickling away, like piss down the shower drain. The longer I'm awake, the faster the flow becomes. Until I find my self, at 4 in the morning, sitting in front of a computer, such a wonderful portal to the world and a wealth of information, playing solitaire. So apparently I have a several hundred dollar deck of cards? Hmm, it plays music and cheesy little card games. I could have gone to the dollar store and saved lots and lots of money.

Ahh, money, the main cause of my stress and therefor lack of sleep (other than that damn yapping dog). Or perhaps, more accurately, lack of money. I suppose it all boils down to two things, time and money, I don't have enough of either. I struggle and work and struggle some more and yet i seem to make no progress. I'm 35 years old and back in school again. I'm broke again, only this time I have a family to worry about. I'm in the worst physical shape of my life. I have to take drugs to keep my anxiety low so I don't flip out again. Every morning I take my pills, my vitamins, I feel like a 90 year old man with all the crap I take to stay "healthy". And I think, again, if only I had more time and more money. If only I could have those brilliant thoughts while awake and able to do something with them.

Instead, here I sit, stressed out with all my brilliance floating away rapidly, swirling down the drain to be processed in some shit plant with all the other bodily fluids and fecal matter. Maybe it's just delusions caused by sleep deprivation, like beer goggles, she really wasn't that pretty and the thoughts, perhaps (ok, probably) weren't that brilliant. But they sure seemed so, untill that god damn yapping dog woke me from my almost sleep.

Why is it that when i lay down, my mind decides to turn on? The harder I try to find sleep, the faster my mind seems to race. It's like a broken down rusty jallopy in the waking hours and like a race ready Ferrari when my head hits the pillow. I lay in bed and watch the ceiling. With thoughts of my past, my present and most importantly, my future, running through my head. I think of what it would be like to have money, financial stability, and the time to enjoy it. I think of what it would be like to not have to worry about how the bills are getting paid and how we are going to put food on the table. All these thoughts and so many more.

Oh sweet sweet sleep, where for art thou? Please return to me my sweet love. I miss you. I miss the sweet black abiss of nothing that you are. I miss the few stress free hours you provide me. Come back to me.