Sunday, February 20, 2005

Blessed again!!!

Well, our lives are turned upside down once again. But in the very best way. Parker William arrived at 19:39 on Thursday at 8 lbs. and 21 in.

Everyone is doing well and Parker's "big" brothers couldn't be more excited!

It's easy to get caught up in the hassles of our everyday lives and to forget about the things that make everything right.

Children are the great equalizer for me.

They need, but you don't mind giving. They give without realizing they're doing it. They love you like nobody else can and it's all completely natural to them. They don't know any other way! And, you find yourself giving everything you have and then digging even deeper to find that little bit of extra strength to keep walking the floor at 3:00 a.m. because one of them has gas and can't help but cry, or to get up over and over because one of them has a running nose and keeps waking himself up. You find yourself repeatedly doing these things without thought of benefit or reward and you have a chance to reconnect with that person that your parents always saw in you. The one that they placed all their hopes on, spent their sleepless nights worrying over and beamed proudly over when they saw all their dreams for you coming true.

That's all I have time for now. My family needs me.

Be nice.

Peace

Monday, February 14, 2005

Awake for 40 hours...

Disclaimer: profanity below:

Not that I planned to be awake for 40 hours straight, but that's what happens when some miscontent with too much ability and not enough motivation creates a variant of a computer virus and lets it lose on the internet. When you look at the lost hours associated with this kind of crap, you have to think that the resources to catch these idiots need to be enhanced and the penalties made so severe as to actually discourage anyone from even thinking about doing it for more than 10 seconds!

I'm not talking about loss of productivity, although that is important to our economy. No, I'm talking about the time my colleagues and I lost with our families because we had to be in work all frigging weekend to fix the damage caused by this latest virus.

Kids grow up so quickly, spouses hardly have any time together as it is, and then some asshole comes along and because he's pissed at the world, or his mother didn't hug him enough or some other bullshit "I'm a victim, the world owes me something" craptastic excuse he spends his time fucking things up for the rest of us who don't owe him shit! I've had it with this crap. All this low self esteem bs has finally pushed me to the edge. You know what, people? It's time to get the fuck over it! grow up, take responsibility for your own life and stop blaming everyone else for every bad thing that happens to you or anytime something doesn't go your way. We all have our issues and we've all had things to get through in our lives. The rest of us are out here living our lives and enjoying things as best we can. It's high time you joined the party or quit the whole fucking scene. If you're that miserable, buy a one-way ticket to Amsterdam, sit around eating hash brownies all day and live on the streets. At least you'll be leaving the rest of us in peace.

I know this was a bit stronger than some of my usual posts, but I'm not about to apologize for it. Grow up, get with the program and stop screwing things up for everyone else.

Be nice

Peace

Thursday, February 10, 2005

I hate mimes.

I generally don't hate much, but for some reason mimes just piss me off. Although the use of Marcel Marceau speaking the word no in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie was mildly entertaining, I still hate mimes.

That's all for now.

Be nice

Peace

Wednesday, February 09, 2005


Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

A new Republican Revolution is coming...

Never did I think the day would come that I'd be missing Newt Gingrich. But that day has indeed come. Back in the days of the "Contract with America", I may have scoffed at the idealism and pandering nature of its content, but at least the underlying ideas were sound.

Here's what Republicans in the 90's were about.

Reducing the size and scope of Federal Government.
Eliminating unfunded mandates.
Eliminating the budget deficit.
Returning rights to the States.
A policy that moved us away from overt nation building.

How in the heck did we get to where we are today???

2.3 trillion dollar budget presented to Congress compared to 1.8 trillion in the final full year of the Clinton administration.
412 billion dollar deficit compared to 86 billion dollar surplus in the final full year of the Clinton administration.
Enormous budget deficits.
BIGGER Federal Government.

And these numbers don't even include the cost of the wars we are involved in. They are off budget items that don't get included in the proposed figures and new spending for war efforts will come along as supplemental spending bills that will further balloon the deficit.

Huge cuts are being proposed in many domestic programs to allow President Bush to make good on a promise he should never have made to reduce the deficit by half by 2009. These cuts will likely be rebuked by members of Congress to protect their constituents' local interests, thereby keeping the budget huge and the deficit reductions unrealized.


Here's the good news. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) is leading the charge to restore the party to its vision and goals of restoring the balances of federalism with the states, limiting the scope and influence of the Federal government and bringing spending back under control. A recent meeting in Baltimore of 50 influential Republicans discussed these and other key issues to restore our country to a fiscally sane path.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm still fairly liberal on social issues, but have always been in favor of fiscal conservatism. You don't spend what you don't have and if you need more money you find ways to make us more productive and increase revenues by means other than raising taxes.

It's not necessarily a bad thing to need more money than you have. In fact, its this very predicament that drives many people to come up with new and innovative methods of increasing productivity, enhanacing cash flow and increasing overall revenues.

I still strongly feel that George Bush is one of the worst Presidents we've seen in the last 25 years, but I also believe that we can work to effect change in spite of him through our representatives in Washington. Many of us may never have thought we'd be seeking help from the right-wing side of the aisle, but the time has come to align our priorities with many on the right who share our fiscally conservative values and believe that the Federal government should have less influence in our lives, not more!

This great country is far to diverse too allow Washington to force the wishes and beliefs of a true minority of close minded individuals on the whole of the nation. STAND UP PEOPLE. Stand up and be heard. Dont let groups like the Parents Television Council dictate the policy that comes out of Washington to affect all of us! http://www.parentstv.org/

This is one scary group. A recent Freedom of Information Act request revealed that 99.8% of all complaints received by the FCC come from this lone group! Complaints are up from 14,000 in 2002, to nearly 240,000 in 2003. There were only 350 complaints during 2000 and 2001. So, one group of very vocal people are influencing national policy in a very frightening way.

What is wrong with these people that they are so terrified by the sight of a breast or Mickey Rooney's butt! Other civilized nations, many of whom are our allies, don't freak out like this over nudity. They also don't have near the content of violent programming on television and movies that we have. You want to talk about inappropriate content, how about some of the movie promos shown during the Super Bowl. I was diving for the remote to stave off potential nightmares for my 5 year old. There is a ridiculous double standard in this country and it's being supported by this administration and its appointees to "protect" our children from nudity, but that allows incredibly violent programming with nary a peep of objection.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather my children see a naked body in relevant programming or even humorous commercials than the absurd levels of violent content in today's programs and advertisements.

Nudity is OK people. Our children won't go blind, start having sex too soon or become deviant because they see images of naked people.

They WILL rebel against the type of repressive censorship that is being forced upon them and when they hit teen years... well, you'd better look out because all that repressive BS you've been crushing them with is gonna blow up in your face!

Now I'll take a deeeeep breath and try to wrap this up. I know this has been a long one and may seem to be a senseless rant. If so, I'd kindly ask you to read it through once more and think a bit about some of the points I've tried to raise.

Get Active. Contact your politicians and even those you didn't think you agreed with.

Relax. Spend a little more time with those you love, be that family friends or complete strangers you enjoy meeting on a park bench while feeding pigeons!

And never take a vacation you can afford. This may seem to deviate from the fiscal sanity portion of this blog, but its important to remember that life does indeed move pretty fast and as Ferris Bueller told us, if you don't dtop and look around once in a while, you could miss it! Truer words were never spoken.

Be nice.

Peace