wow

sometimes a girl does something that drives you absolutely crazy in the best way. things that stick with you for days. so smitten it's ridiculous.

Politics and Taxes

I think what pisses me off the most about the right-wingers is their insistence that rich people should not have to pay higher taxes because they "worked hard for their money and they deserve to keep it."

BULLSHIT!

They did not work hard for their money. Sure, maybe a few rich people actually became wealthy completely on their own. But the vast majority of wealthy people made their money off of....you guessed it...YOU! The bosses don't do shit, and they get paid the most. When I worked at the SPCA, the CEO got $125,000 a year for throwing parties and showing up at events....while I got paid $12,000 (!!!) a year to clean up shit and piss and blood and work my ass off.

The working people provide all the labor, they produce all the goods and services, they make all the wealth for their companies and bosses....and then the bosses get the money. Tax the fuck out of those bastards, I don't care. If they want to live the easy life off of other people's work, then they can pay back a higher percentage in fucking taxes.

Don't fucking give me a system like capitalism where I work for the boss's benefit, then tell me the boss doesn't owe me anything. The bosses owe us everything, we earned it, we made it, its ours.

Lesson Learned

It seems like whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, something pops into my life to show me how lucky I am, and that I should just stop whining already.

25 coal miners dead in West Virginia was the first thing I saw this morning. Then I opened up my book to read for class today, and it's about a preacher who moved from England to South Carolina to make a home for his family and find a place for his son before they came over. But instead, his wife decided to stay in England for good, and keep the son, leaving him alone in a new country with the obvious conclusion that his family didn't really care about him.

I didn't feel so bad for myself after reading that. The world is full of pain. Humans are built for it. We dwell on our personal agonies as if no one else has ever felt that pain. Yet some of us are extremely fortunate to be surrounded by friends and family that will do anything to protect you, no matter what happens. When I feel like this, it helps to remember how much worse I have felt before. How devastated my life has seemed, by things that not seem trivial and meaningless. I think we mourn for our memories, not our true history.

I hate this

So, Laura and I broke up. I think she handled it better than I did, she's just one of my best friends in the world and I hate to think of her in any sort of pain so I was pretty upset. Breaking up sucks, even when it's the right thing to do.

Mustaches

I was looking through family photos the other day and I realized something....all of the men in my family had mustaches when their first child was born. I will have to follow in this tradition eventually, because I look pretty fucking awesome with a mustache.

Fathers

I was listening to the song "Mother" by John Lennon yesterday. That song always makes me think of my dad. I first heard it around the time my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and I remember I always turned it off when my dad would come around because I didn't want to upset him. Just like for years after my grandfather's death I wouldn't speak of death or sickness or anything bad around my dad. I didn't want to make him upset. I'm sure he was never even paying attention to what I was listening to, but the lyrics of that song are like straight out of my dad's life, so since yesterday I've just been thinking about this stuff.

In the song, when John Lennon sings "Mama don't go, daddy come home" it makes me think of how much he struggled with my grandfather's death, and how he felt when my grandmother's life was slipping away in front of him. My grandfather, except for a few moments, seemed like a cold and detached man. Supposedly he loved me to death, and loved to play around with me. But somehow that makes me feel guilty, because I think of how much that must have crushed my dad to see. I know that sounds weird, but all his life my dad just wanted recognition and love and acceptance from his father. So to see my grandfather give so much love to us grandkids, while he basically neglected his own kids for years....I don't know, it must make them wonder why he didn't act the same way with them. Some men grow up in that situation and they repeat it on their own children. But my dad's a very sensitive guy with the biggest heart in the world. I bet when my brother was born, he promised himself he would be there for every little thing. And he has been. He would leave work early and then work at home all weekend just so he could come watch our football practices and be there for every game. When I was really little he would take my stuffed animals and do the "Bobby and Panda Show", and the "backstage" was behind his big belly. Those are some of my favorite memories. He would read "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" until we both had the book memorized. He would take every opportunity to tell my brother and I that he was proud of us and that he loved us. And really, what can a father do better than that? There has never been a point in my life where I felt totally isolated, because I knew he would do anything. And this is not the ignore the HUGE importance of my mom in my life, but she didn't grow up with the same problems. She's always had the support that my father craved. All he ever wanted from my grandfather was for him to say how proud he was of his son. And it really makes me hate my grandfather sometimes to know how much he hurt my dad by acting like fatherhood is nothing special.

I'm more proud of my dad than I am of anything in the world. I have a few friends whose fathers, for some reason or another, were not involved when they were growing up. And I've seen how my dad has tried to be like a second father for them, even telling them how proud he is of their accomplishments. He's the reason I've never doubted that I want kids, and I am unbelievably grateful for every single thing he's given me the past 24 years.

That's all. I just felt like I should get these thoughts written down before I forget about them.

Boooooo!

When you google image search Obi-Wan Kenobi....almost all the results are from the new Star Wars. Instead of the real Obi-Wan Kenobi, we get the impostor. I saaaaay BULLSHIT.

Here's to the real Obi-Wan.

Thoughts on the growth of life while watching a music video.

I was watching a video of plants growing in fast-motion. You can see the little sprout pop up from the dirt, and then it turns toward the sun and starts to rise out of the ground. It's so amazing. It's something I bet most of us never really stop to think about. How out of a seed, giant things can grow. Out of one little thing, you get the leaves and the stalk and everything else. That's incredible, how nutrients and water and sunlight all combine to make something grow.

It's like if you really think about how you were born. You did not exist until a microscopic event occurred. You started as this amazingly tiny being that over time grows larger and more complex because your cells multiply and multiply and multiply until there's you, a real human. I'm 6 ft. tall and 210 pounds, yet I used to be microscopic. That blows my mind. And you would not exist without the insanely long chain of people that you descended from. If one tiny thing had happened differently hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years ago, you would not exist. You are the culmination of a hereditary line that stretches back to before human beings even existed. None of us are random, isolated beings. We were all meant to be.

But really none of us are new. We're all made out of the same matter that has existed since the beginning of time. The same stuff that was present in the Big Bang has made every single thing out there that exists today. Everything. Once again life coming out of something so unimaginably small. It's so beautiful.