I know I have commented on this before but you will have to deal with my ranting again.

I wish I was at the point in my life whre I was financially stable enough (or even had close to enough money) to buy my grandparents house.  It is for sale again (for like the 3rd time since my grandparents passed) and I love everything that there is to love about that house (and that is even before you get to the history of the house)  I know the bathrooms are small but it is a wonderful home with wonderful views.  It would be the perfect place to raise my hypothetical future family.  A nice back yard for running around and get togethers.  I hate the thought of other people living in that house.  I know I have no rights to it but no one (except for various family members of mine) would treasure that house as much as me.  

Granted there is an uber expensive victorian number in mechanicansburg that I could "settle" for in the world where I have money but that house is nothing in comparison to my the home that I love.  My other grandparents farmhouse was also beautiful but it is not the same.  I suppose it is odd to be this attached to a house.  I don't think I would mind not living there if it had stayed in the family but no...strangers live there.  I want to go back to a different time.  BUT clearly that time is over.  But it makes me sad.  I informed Tim that he had to win the lottery so we could buy my house.  (so far...that hasn't worked very well for us)

Not to mention my 8 billion student loans....OH and can I thank mr. bush for raising the interest of student loan interest rates to 6.8% .  thank you for kicking college students when they are down.  WAY to keep them struggling to get out of dept for the next 20 years.  ARGH frustrates the crap out of me.  Education should be affordable.  An educated population makes for a competitive population.  Not that I think everyone should go to college.  It should be perfectly exceptable and (not looked down upon) to attend a trade school.  (I do not think that decision should be made for you by someone in a position of authority...like in some countries) but if you so choose go be a pumbler, build houses, fix tvs, fix cars, etc.  Those are respectable jobs.  BUT even practical degrees....technical school is very expensive.  It is so easy for people like my man to get stuck in the cycle that they mention in the tv commercials.  That you need more money...you need to go to school to get more money...you need more money to go back to school.  What a messed up system.  I am not going to be a *crazy* liberal and say education should be free but interest rates and other things should be LOW.  I respect the fact that I need loans to pay for school but no school should cost upwords of 40,000 to attend.  I didn't even attend those schools but due to my desire to learn...I am working on my third degree.  I know that their are people leaving their undergrad education more in debt then I am with my 3 degrees but i still have a hunk of debt over my head and it has nothing to do with a house.

Tim and I both have a couple of job applications out.  I am trying to remain positive for both of us.  I am also failing. 

So I was recently looking at a pair of thong type panties....the washing instructions were turn inside out.  

Now could someone please explain this to me....A thong has well rather minimal fabric and it more than likely not going to stay turned inside out....also turning inside doesn't really project anything because there is not enough fabric to cover anything up.

baffles me it does.

[	Tags	|	books, children, parents	]
[	Current Mood	|	cynical	]
[	Current Music	|	live - the beauty of gray	]

2007 most challenged books

So I stumbled across this list...and while not shocked by anything on the list (granted there was one or two I didn't recognize) I am frustrated by this.

Oh mark twain.  I do have an unhealthy relationship with his literature but still the adventures of huck finn in no way should it be banned.  Mark Twain all things considered was very progressive for his day when it came to things like race.  Yes there is racism in this books....guess what...racism happened(happens) lets look at it from that perspective.  

Penguins like other animals (including humans) have homosexual relationships.  moving on.

Maya Angelou - amazing writer...I know why the caged bird sings is a amazing I've read it multiple times and will probably continue to read it.  Sexually explicit.  well because it is based on her life and she was raped.  Life stories can't always exclude the nasty bits because it might offend someone.  Yet know one challenges this book because of the examples of racism present in it?  go figure.  as long as their is no rape....

wouldn't be surprised if some active parent had out the black sharpie markers when looking at these books. (oh ned flanders)

Recently we have been discussing literature and children at lunch.  

A) children aren't going to get the same message from a book that an adult does....The golden compass for instance...the majority of kids aren't going to notice the religious overtones even if you tell them that they are there.

B) kids tend to read things that involve bad things (death) because it helps explain it to them without being to real.  Unlike movies...reading about these topics allows them to imagine/picture these things for themselves in a way that they know how to deal with.

ALSO...kids of a certain age shoul dbe able to learn about SEX and learn how to protect themselves regardless of what their parents think.  Abstinence only education will never work.  Scaring kids and giving them misinformation...leads to bad decisions.  Lets be real here (speaking of course to scary fundamentalists)

Books shouldn't be banned.  Even the ones I don't agree with.  They have the right to be there the same as anything else.  Kids will read whatever the hell they want to read.  Parents need to back off sometimes.  

Okay I am going to get off my soap box now.



Cara also just realized the radio choose such a great song for this moment.  

Live - the beauty of gray

...

This is not a black and white world
To be alive
I say that the colours must swirl
And I believe
That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate

The Beauty of Grey

.....

[	Tags	|	house, life, money	]
[	Current Mood	|	cranky	]

I have a good life.  You know all of my necessities are met.  I have a roof over my head, food on the table, family friends, cloth that covers my body in an appropriate manner.  So in thinking about a lot of other people in the world I have it GREAT.

I am truly thankful for all that I have yet am I being ubergreedy by wanting more?  And I am not talking overly about material things.  I mean I would like a few more work type outfits but eh.  I really want a place of my own.  WHICH i suppose is very materialistic but I don't need it to be a fancy house but you know one that I know is mine.  A place that I can start to really feel like an adult.  Yet I need to get a permanent job.  Yet with the economic situation, not having finished my degree, and being all argh makes that more than difficult.  I am getting overly grumpy about this much to the frustration of tim.  Between him and my mom - everything will come in due time - I know this but dammit I am tired of waiting.  No one else seems to understand how much I want this.  How much I am ready to be independent again.  

my frustration with life continues AND I don't know what to do about it.

[	Tags	|	crime, hollywood, money	]
[	Current Mood	|	frustrated	]

So action star Wesley Snipes was sentenced to 36 months (max term) in prison.  (although as we have seen he probably won't end up serving all of that)  BUT that is not the point of this rant.  The prosecution wanted to make an example for all of the would be tax-protestors out there that sorry man - you got to file/pay your taxes.  As all things government run on tax money okay....I have no problem with him being found guilty. 

What I have a problem is...they want to take a stand on this....while they apparently are not so concerned about drunk driving.  Granted it was a different jurisdiction but still.  Lindsay Lohan's whatever 2 hours in jail.  Lets be serious....DUI=felony....Snipe's tax crimes=Misdeamoner.  While he should be punished....his crimes did not endanger the lives of those around him.  Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Then again....it is once again painfully clear that money rules the world....and apparently the justice system.

sigh.

[	Tags	|	barack obama, conservatives, economy, race relations, slavery	]
[	Current Mood	|	aggravated	]
[	Current Music	|	the sound of my brain dying and pouring out my ears.	]

A Brief for Whitey
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted: 03/21/2008

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright's statements were "controversial," and "divisive," and "racially charged," reflecting a "distorted view of America."

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds ... ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must in vest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack's and the Rev. Wright's generations.

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America nee ds to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimin ation against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has re ached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago. 

Okay now I shall have a rant.  ARE YOU SERIOUS?  The point that particularly stuck out to me was....

"First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American. "

I don't know a whole lot about Rev. Wright but I do know that those statements were taken out of context....it is soo easy to make things inflamitory when you only hear 2 sentences of a much longer speech/sermon.

ALSO,

I am glad that our "American" Forefathers had the foresight in being extremely racist and allowing the system of slavery that forcibly took people from their homes and culture....forces them to work beat/kill/rape/sell their children/remove them from their families again and again.  

Yes they should thank their lucky stars. 

Obviously this author would fit right in in yesteryear as he still has a complete ethnocentrist view of the world.  BUT NOW THEY ARE CHRISTIANS!  While perhaps their was nothing wrong with the way they were doing things.  Lets get over ourselves for just a minute. 

Perhaps their are more black people in jail because they are targeted by cops or given harsher sentences.  I mean I don't know all the facts and numbers but the fact that people can read this and follow it hook line and sinker in 2008 makes me want to throw up in my mouth just a little bit.  YAY for slavery.  YAY for colonization.  Look at what all we have given them! Aren't we great people.  Lets pat ourselves on the back and sleep well tonight.

Let us not forget that plenty of tax dollars are also going to the poor of other communites (of which their are plenty of whites) to help schooling, food stamps etc.  Currently in Ohio 1 in like 8 or 10 (I can't remember the exact figure) is getting food aid due to the economic "resession"...are we allowed to call it that yet?

[

Current Mood

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geeky

]

I am tired.  It is thursday and I have one hour and twenty minutes left of work for today. and also, it is snowing!

I would much rather be sitting in front of a fire with a cup of hot cocoa right now. mmmm cocoa.

I have decided there is a specific circle of HELL for people that right in library books...especially if those books are in the archives.  I am sure Dante just forgot to include that when he was writing.  I know there is some sort of special punishment these peopel should be subjected to!   

I just finished a book for work and it is a good read.  It was a slave narrative that I had not read before.  I am now OCR editing a pamphlet published in 1795.  (it was a good year...yeah I got nothing) BUT published by a man who family collection of papers I arranged two summers ago.  OH it is a small world. 

My classes have started in full swing and I am already behind.  (go figure)  My computer just got back to me after being broken for the second time in like a month.  I can now see things on the screen (novel concept)  My old slightly less computer was allowing me to do some work but it woudldn't let me watch my class videos so I have like 4 hours of stuff to watch (yippee) to get caught up.  Plus try to figure out what I need to do for "assignment 1"  I think it is going to be a rather long weekend.  

hummm maybe I will go out to dinner tonight but BUT what do I want to eat?  I dont' know.  I have been a bad friend and horribly anti-social for I don't know the last 2 years.  Boo to me.    On a completely different note I am glad that Law and Order finally returned to the airwaves with new episodes (and on wednesday night)  friday night just isn't a good tv night for me.  The season so far as been good not on par with older law and order (it is very hard to replace jerry orbach...oooh jerry I miss you) but the best it has been in several seasons.  I am not sure about the new ADA and I don't know why the Connie couldn't have gotten that job I think it would be nice to see a woman in that position.  I also miss Jack McCoy being on screen more but hopefully that will work itself out as the season progresses.

Speaking of L&O but moving over to SVU there has been a surprising lack of camera time for Munch and Ice T.  Kind of makes me sad. :o(  

Wells, I should get back to1795.