Easter

What if you were a witness?

What if you were there, to see it all?

What if a heavily-armed, well-trained solider grabbed you, a peasant, a nobody, by the arm. Asked... demanded: DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN!????

What if the answer was yes, but giving that answer meant your life would take an immediate downward spiral. What if saying "Yes, I know him. In fact, he's my friend," meant that you'd never see your children, wife, or family ever again and a death by torture would soon come.

What would you do?

We know what Peter did, but he lived.

The Soloist

I can't speak for you, but I know I've seen a great movie when on the way home I can't get it out of my head. Any of many emotions is right there on the surface.

I wake up the next morning thinking about it. Scenes from what I've seen and heard haunt me for many days after the event. Intellectually, mentally, emotionally.

It never fails. At work, either or I or somebody else catches me wagging my head... me lost in thought. They ask: "Is everything OOOOkay? Are you alright?" Me trying to figure out a dadgum movie I just saw. I usually end up laughing at what the scene must look like.

A Beautiful Mind did that. Dark Knight did that. The Truman Show did that. Seven Pounds absolutely did that like few movies ever have.

The Soloist didn't do that. Looking back on it...

I think the movie makers were a bit unfocused as to what kind of movie they were hoping to make. Jamie's and Robert Downey's performances were excellent for sure--you sensed a human in genuine turmoil and a good soul tryna do the right thing--but what was the movie about, really?

The homeless? The mentally ill? And the problems mental illness creates for the ill, their families, or society at large? The dark side of Los Angeles? The good journalism can do? How to kill raccoons tearing up your yard?

There were a lot of parts here that didn't come together for me, and I woke up this morning with no ghosts from this movie. What's happening here is simply a literary exercise.

I don't know, but I have this nagging feeling that I saw a movie that coulda been great but fell way short.

My recommendation?

See Seven Pounds.

i love me some foo Dick cheeny

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

not a big Beyonce fan, but...

... at about the foh-twenny mark, young lady lets out a laugh that I found to be quite exquisite.



Oh yeah. I'd let her buy me lunch.

spheres

Twenty years ago I had a cleaning business.

It was rare, but sometimes you got to "know" the people who tended to work late in the buildings you cleaned. it was rare but generally impossible to ever become friends w/ office workers. The economic divide was too great--I made more money than them--but they wore suits and pretty dresses to work while I came in wearing jeans and tennis shoes and wiped dirty ashtrays for a living, a demarcation that can never be breached.

But sometimes you'd strike up a conversation w/ someone... a night owl... and after talking to them everyday for a while, you knew some things about them. They became more than a body sitting there. They became, not just a human being, but something approaching friendship, despite the made-up chasm separating you. Two human beings.

There was this guy named Jonathan. He worked at Penn Square after the FDIC took it over in 1983. He worked at least until 7, sometimes later, almost everyday. Even on Fridays. He either loved his work, wanted to avoid his personal life as long as possible, or constantly remained in his immediate superior's doghouse. He was there longer than I was.

One night it became immediately clear that he was in a funk. I asked him why.

"Because my supervisor goes thru people's mail. Even mail marked 'PERSONAL'. By the time it gets to you, the envelope's been opened. So you know. Somebody's read it. it pisses me off. Can't he see PERSONAL written on the envelope?"

"Why don't you talk to him about it? Tell him how you feel."

Jonathan paused, thinking about the question. "Because it might help him," he finally said.

I was stunned. Horrified. I was so terribly young. I had no clue of what he meant.

Since then I've come to find: There are people in your life, hopefully on the barest of its periphery, who you come in contact with but really don't want/need/choose to know. People of whom it can positively be said it would be best never entered your life in any way, shape or form.

Not every person has friend potential. I wish that weren't true, but it is. It doesn't mean they are "bad" and you are "good" (or vice versa) but that is the way it is.

Bottom line: you're better off if your sphere of influence never intersects with theirs.

That's all I'm saying.

Socialism - what it is

There is some confusion about the meaning of "Socialism":

1: economic and political theory advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property

b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Of course, a "socialIST" supports the aforesaid. Well, what does THAT mean?

Unfortunately, some words have nuance... different shades of meaning, and like few nuanced words, socialism is a club that some are wanting to misuse to make a particular political point.... idiotic, stupid, and anti-American as they may be. And most people don't like to read, don't know how to look up words in a dictionary--probably couldn't FIND one of those if they had to--and prefer to have "smart" people tell them how to think. And what to think.

Let me give you my take on what the word means: when a collective--a group of people (a community or city or national government, let's say)--either produce a product or service; or administer that product or service.

That was hard but there ya go. Let me give you a few examples of what I think socialism is....

Back in the late 50s / early 60s, the U.S. government decided to build an interstate highway system to replace the railways that, at the time, delivered most of the goods Americans wore, ate and used everyday. The government didn't hire out all those thousands of highway jobs to scores or hundreds or thousands of individual, independent, construction contractors. No. The U.S. government did the job itself. With government employees.

That's Socialism, friends, and ain't it funny? I've never heard anyone complain about the U.S Government's decision to build an interstate hwy system. Ever drive non-stop to Cali on I-40 from back east? Any problems?

Another example: the military. The U.S. government said: we're going to hire, pay, then train to the teeth a bunch of (mostly) bad-ass men who will protect the Nation in the air, on land, and at sea. Then we're going to have a really bad group of monsters. We'll call them Marines. Give all of 'em rules of engagement w/ the enemy; permission to torture (for the last 8 years, anyway) and permission to kill.

Socialism. Any complaints?

Education. The Gubment said we--that is, the gubment--will take it upon us to educate our young people who can't afford private schools. We will not ask permission to do it. We will simply do it.

I live in Oklahoma. There is an Oklahoma STATE University. There is an Arkansas STATE university. A STATE University in Kansas. Ohio STATE. Michigan STATE. Florida STATE. It goes on and on. That's.....

Socialism, people.

How about the police? Are they independent contractors or are they hired by and have their salaries paid by a collective? You. The taxpayer.

Socialism.

Get yourself educated. Stop letting yourself being bamboozled, led astray, shoved under a rock, duped by people who don't care nothing about YOU.

Find a dictionary. Learn how to read. And if you have trouble from then on, ask somebody.

Inhofe is... uh... an interesting guy. He flew half a world away on the Nation's dime only to claim President Obama is gutting the military and increasing welfare (buzz word). Oh, I know what he's trying to do... talking to his largely uneducated and uniformed constituency. Nice move.

Do you think that Inhofe doesn't know that, by a large margin, the majority of welfare recipients in OK are white? Or does he know but have a greater interest in corralling the sheep who voted for him against their own interests?

Dude's got me shaking my head. He prolly calls himself a god-fearin' Christian.

Okie's are largely uneducated, non-thinking, sheep-like "tell me what to think" type people--this I know firsthand--but this guy has to be either one of America's most-uninformed senators or, most likely, one who knows the facts but prefers to lie. On youtube, no less. lol

*shrug*

irony

During the campaign last Fall, (now) President Obama explained his difficulty in winning over working-class voters in Pennsylvania. Remember that. Pennsylvania.

He said:

"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The President was vilified. Even by highly placed members of his own party. Hillary put out an ad she called "Pennsylvania" in which a middle-aged white woman said: "It just shows how out of touch Barrack Obama is. I was very insulted by Barrack Obama.''

The focus seemed to be on the guns.

McCain and Palin said repeatedly during the election of (now) President Obama that, if elected, he would come for your guns!! He's coming for your guns!!

They lied a lot.

One of the biggest voting McCain supporter blocks were policemen who fell for the McCain/Palin spiel. Don't take my guns. My guns. My guns. Gotta have my guns! It's my right!!

Cut to yesterday. A fight breaks out between a PENNSYLVANIA woman and her gun-laden 23-yr old son who'd been stockpiling weapons. His dog was pissing all over her house and his mother, for some reason, seemed not to like it. She was crazy, but she wanted BOTH of them OUT. And called those who say they protect and serve.

The police, hoping they'd do something she couldn't bring herself to do: kick her own 23-yr-old, do-nothing son that she'd help mis-raise, out of her house.

Responding to her call, two social workers with the authority to use guns with impunity... aka police officers... arrive--both, likely McCain/Palin voters--and the do-nothing 23yr old thinks the police are coming for his stupid guns.

McCain/Palin said the Obama supporters would. Come for his guns. Here they are!

Except, the two coming thru the door are McCain/Palin supporters. The ones who said you should have your guns. Have the right to shoot police in the face.

So, the two invading police get shot in the face on the spot by what Police feel the 23-yr old has a right to have -- guns the police have no intention of retrieving. They are there because a dog is pissing all over a woman's house.

Irony all around.

And bush, McCain, palin, limbow, beck all have blood on their hands. The republicans told a simple lie repeatedly, and four now-dead, gun-totin' humans are dead.

at some point...

They got took.

They didn't come right out and say it, but that's what happened. They put themselves out there and came upon somebody all too willing to take advantage. Later, they knew it. Reality came on.

Afterwards in the light of day, they said: what do you think about this....

There are so many gamers out here, why don't I become one? Meet somebody, keep up a good front? Then when I learn they can be trusted I can drop the front and be myself.

I said I didn't think it was a good idea.