The American Dream

I am part of the so-called Generation X. I have no idea what it means, and have doubts if anyone else does either. Luckily, it seems to be a label that has died out a bit. Unfortunately, some of the ideas which were typical of the Generation X are taking a bit longer to die off.

One of the worse things our generation does is how some of us seem to twist the concept of "The American Dream." For some damn reason we have turned it to mean a sense of entitlement. A guarantee of end result. Maybe it was because the Babyboomers where too busy "keeping up with the Jones'" and deciding which car was to be the new yuppy icon rather than teaching us what the American Dream was really all about.

It was never about the result, it is about the pursuit. Rather than have a rigidly stratified society, our is more fluid. You can be born with nothing, and achieve greatness. You can go the other way, too. But the end result isn't guaranteed. It is the right of pursuing your interest, of determining your own destiny within the culture, that is the foundation of the American Dream.

The American Dream has never been about entitlements, or handouts. The American Dream simply means you have the right to work your ass off, achieve anything you are capable of, and NO ONE has the right to say you don't deserve the rewards because of where you came from and which family you were born to.

So, dream your dreams, as big as you wish, and know that the American Dream is still there alive and well to make sure you can still pursue them.

The Hallowed Institute of Marriage

I have to laugh when I think of how some people, who are otherwise perfectly rational individuals, when the topic of marriage comes up. There are so many different views to the subject, and so many bodies and institutions that want everyone to be married that it is hard to believe that the institution of marriage really means much anymore.

I am not married and have no plans to ever get married. I am just as committed to my girlfriend, and she to I, as if we were married. We just do not have the piece of paper. And that is really what "marriage" comes down to anymore, a piece of paper. Sure, that one little piece of paper has a lot of advantages. You get lower tax rates for a married couple than two non-married individuals. Insurance companies insure wives/husbands and families but not boyfriends and girlfriends.

But I just get stuck at the point that you have to pay for a license, pay for the ceremony, and should it not work out, I'm gonna pay to get out of it. So let me get this straight: I am going to pay some disinterested third party for the right to spend the rest of my life with someone? Are they going to live with her when she is on the war path? Are they going to step in when she "has a headache"? I don't think so. The latter would more than likely end with me paying the same disinterested third party to get me away from my wife before one of us is dead! So what exactly is the advantages of being married?

And then, to top it all off, we have gay marriages. I'm all for it, since it really is a decision between two individuals. But the very same disinterested party that is going to get more money out of the deal are strikingly against it. Now they want to protect the hallowed institution by keeping it limited only to mixed-sex marriages. Gotta protect the family! Excuse me, but homosexuals are perfectly able to adopt, or find other means to have a family. How is excluding them from being able to marry protecting family? And worse than that, why is our government protecting a largely religious structure when we are supposed to have separation between Church and State?

Cave Dwelling

I get teased by my family about wanting to live in a cave. I don't like light, and I have never understood why, not that it matters a whole lot. But just to give an example, right now at three in the morning I am sitting in my family room with a TV on behind me, and the only other light in the room is the glow of four computer screens. There are lights in the room, I just choose not to turn them on most of the time.

It may have something to do with my depression. A dark room mimics how I feel inside most of the time, I think. And, I have to admit that right now I am pretty well depressed. But oh well, that's what therapy is for, right?

They Are NOT Peacekeepers!

Republican here, and I must say I did not want to see Bush Jr. become President the first time he won in 2000. I was sitting in my little apartment watching the election returns with a buddy of mine and I told him that night that we were heading back to Iraq. Now, I didn't predict 9-11, but I knew Bush Jr. would use any and all pretense to get us back into Iraq to take out Saddam. Not saying that Saddam didn't need to go. All things considered he probably did.

My trouble started when the actual "war" in Iraq (you know, the actual military action) was over. We eliminated Saddam's army, his Red Guard, even had his butt once we found the whole he crawled into. Everything was going good, then they turned what we are trying to do over there into a "peace keeping" mission rather than a military mission.

I'm sorry, but our military are not peacekeepers! We developed the most advanced military in the world for two reasons, and two reasons only: To kick people's asses and to use the threat of power. It's their job, and they are the best in the world at it. The trouble starts when we start trying to harness that power into a little box called "peacekeeping" or "advisor." We train our soldiers to shoot, to kill, to completely dominate their enemy. And believe me, they are quite good at what we trained them to do. But we never trained them to take fire WITHOUT returning it because suddenly they aren't soldiers but Peacekeepers because some idgit in Washington decided that a name change would be a good idea.

Bush Jr. isn't the only President to not understand what the military is good for. Clinton didn't get it either (think Mogadishu). Kennedy sure as hell didn't get it when we went into Vietnam as "advisors." Bush Sr. did get it. He used the military to kick Saddam's sorry ass out of Kuwait, then brought them home.

I know the world needs "peacekeepers," but if the US is going to supply them we need to develop a "peacekeeping force" that is separate from our military. Until we are willing to cough up the tax dollars to do so, please, let our young men and women in the military do what they do best and come back home. If that means that Iraq ends up under US Martial Law (like Japan at the end of WWII) to keep our military safe, so be it. But trying to man road blocks between the Shiites and Sunnis (who have hated, and been killing, each other for a thousand years) is NOT doing us or them any good.

I don't want to see any more people die in Iraq, us or them. But, if I have to choose, let it be them.

Insomnia is a Bitch!

I hate this shit! Worst part of it is that I don't even know if I actually have insomnia or not. But this is a typical night for me.

I went to bed at 11pm, woke back up at 1:30am, tossed for about 45 minutes before getting up so my girlfriend can still sleep. Now, it's quarter 'til four and I'm still up. But the screwy thing to me is that when I finally do go back upstairs in probably another hour or so, I will fall asleep and stay that way for a normal 8 hours or so. If I had stayed up past 11 and gone to bed at say 3:30 I would have slept.

Needless to say, I'm not a "morning person."

One God

Here's something to chew on, and I'm sure to come back to it again and again over time...

I have done a considerable amount of study in my own search for a religion that would fit with my brain. Not that I'm a theology study by any means, but in general, I know quite a bit about various religions. All this searching has led me to one strange understanding:

There is only ONE God (or set of Gods, at any rate)

Different religions use different names for this higher being, have differing means of worshipping it. But all in all, every human is praying to the same one (or set). All through human history, or at least recorded history, the one theme that has always remained constant is that there is a higher power, sometimes more than one.

Monotheism vs Polytheism

It would seem on the surface that these two concepts break apart the argument I just laid out above. But consider this, the Catholic religion states that you pray only to God, but just in case you need some extra help with something specific, feel free to plead with one of hundreds of saints to come to the rescue. Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like a system of Chief God (Zeus) and lesser gods and goddesses (Aphrodite, Ares, etc.), only with different names and titles. Am I to seriously contemplate the idea that by changing "pray" to "plead" and "God" to "saint" that I am in essence doing a damn thing differently?

So, why bring this up now? With the apparent troubles between largely Christian America and largely Islamic Middle East, I have one point to remind everyone of: We follow different prophets (Christianity follows Jesus, Islam follows Muhammad) but WE PRAY TO THE SAME GOD! Just something to chew on when you think there is nothing in common between us.

Alright, I'm hooked

I am by no means a techno-phobe. I have been online since 1996 and even still have and use my original Hotmail email account from that time. But you know, when "blogs" came about, I just wasn't into the concept.

I was more a "website" type of person. Nothing worthwhile ever comes about without tons of work right? May have to rethink that one...

Then, I got into running a small internet based business for myself, and I kept hearing about how I needed to get a blog up. The thing was, I was absolutely no good writing about a business. I'm not that much of a salesman, and once I had dealt with the business for eight to ten hours, I sure as hell didn't have anything left to say about it for the day. I would start blogs, end blogs, never visit them, never update them. It was a mess.

But, then I started watching my girlfriend who has her own blog, that is not business related. I started noticing how she would sit down and write a little if she felt like it, or maybe not. But she was writing about something that she liked, so it worked. Now, I have the 93 Prophet, and while it may not become socially ground breaking, it is about stuff that I find interesting. I have to admit, that it has pretty much taken over my brain. I sit through dinner wondering about what I am going to post about next. Makes it much more interesting to eat at least.

So, thanks go to my girlfriend (or the hate mail if you don't like the blog), and we continue our journey. Oh, and our businesses, they are doing just fine. You can see for yourself at http://nexusexchange.com and http://cachearticles.com

Religion In Politics

I live in a country where Church and State are supposedly separated, but are they really? Our laws, customs, social norms, just about everything in our society is based on a religious idea. We are uptight about sex, why? Because our country was largely founded by Protestants and Puritans escaping persecution in Europe and they were uptight about it. All of our Presidents have been Christians... All but one have been Protestant. Coincidence?

I am not saying that we therefore live in a "religious state" the likes of Iran where a cleric rules the country. But, our laws are reflect a decidely Christian moral standard. Is this a bad thing? In the big picture, no. The majority of our country is Christian, and the fact that we do not enforce sectarian differences helps. It is definitely more livable than the days when you could be burned, hung, stoned and ostracized by simply thinking maybe Luther was more right than the Pope. All the same, we live by a Christian moral code whether we be Christians or not, and it is this moral code upon which our laws are derived.

So what happens to the minority of non-Christians? Mostly we are quiet on the topic of religion in general. Not because our views cannot be supported, but because over the years we have become tired of having to explain our beliefs to the incredulous majority. Luckily, most religions have very similar moral codes so we go along our daily lives without much trouble.

True, there are the "extremists" who want to twist and turn ancient words and misinterpretations to validation for their personal vendettas, but Christianity has had, and still has, their own fair share of those idiots. The only difference is instead of hiding them in a cave, we put them in the glass house of the Whitehouse for all to see.

Here's to the first Pagan President, and a Maypole on the West Lawn!

Yet Another Va. Tech Chime In

There are many different views, and a lot of speculation going on about the "reason" behind the Va. Tech shootings that claimed the lives of 32 people this week. You know, the "reason" was that the kid was fucked up, short, sweet and to the point.

I'm not a member of the NRA, but I do agree that guns DO NOT kill people. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE! It's not the presence of the guns that caused this tragedy, it was the work of a fucked up person. It can be argued that if the guy hadn't had access to the guns he maybe wouldn't have killed anyone, or at least not as many. But then again, Jack the Ripper didn't have a gun and it didn't seem to bother him that much. And for all those who are trying to come up with their therories about "why": What does it matter? We can't change it, we can't fix the kid that did this. We might be able to learn the signs, but then to do anything about it takes a change in our social culture. There is an old saying about it taking a village to raise a child. I think it still does, only the village doesn't much seem to care until a Columbine or Va. Tech happens. Maybe we need to look at how to fix our village first, and get it back to raising kids. Perhaps then the kids might learn different ways of fixing problems than with a gun.

For all the parents, friends, and families, I am terribly sorry. No one deserves to be touched by violence the way you have. For the rest of us, rather than trying to rationalize the why, and before we center all the blame on the shooter's parents, let's look at ourselves. We are the village that should have raised that boy.

Sex, Sex, and More Fetishes!

It's amazing, the human race has managed to be on this planet for millions of years, and whether you believe in Creation or Evolution, one thing is clear: There's been a hell of a lot of fuckin going on! We managed to populate the entire planet, and we're still at it.

But why is it that with the creation of the internet everything suddenly became a damn fetish? I am pretty sure that somewhere in the history of man there is a painting on some cave wall extolling the virtues of some woman's foot. But now... instead of it being just another part of our varied sexuality, it's a fetish with it's own subculture.

Just once, I would like to enjoy what I enjoy, with my partner, in the privacy of my own house and room, WITHOUT the feeling that I need to go find some fetish support group because my parents don't understand me, or society doesn't approve. Why can't it just be as simple as I like my latex toys and nipple chains? It's what turns me on so I can do my part on helping with the continuing population of the planet!

What's next? The fetish of Viagra and ED?

Systemic Overhaul!

By registration, I'm Republican. By thought, I'm usually nowhere near Republican, or the Democrats for that matter. I am usually to be found right smack dab in the middle somewhere in LaLa Land.

This country has basically three political parties: Republicans are the conservative tight asses who seem to believe the government was just fine in 1905, Democrats are the liberal suck asses that figure we can all either be in government or at least get a check from it, and the third affiliation I call the "Green Piecers", not just because they are the environmental fundamentalists out huggin trees but they seem to piece together platforms on what is the most current social outrage.

I am firmly convince that like me, most Americans are somewhere in the middle of this quagmire. Sorta like walking right down the double yellow line hoping like hell you don't get sideswiped by some redneck's mirror on the old Ford or get the hood ornament of a yuppy's new Mercedes shoved up our own tailpipes. On some issues, I am conservative, on others, I'm down right liberal, then on others, I just don't give a shit!

Now, when our system is working like it is supposed to, the running of the country ends up being somewhere in the middle between liberal and conservative because our system is designed around the concept of compromise between the two. Great, that puts most things right in line with me walking the double yellow. But every once in awhile, we get one group or the other that refuses to compromise and gains the power so that for a time it doesn't need to. By the end of Bush Jr.'s tour, we will have basically spent 16 years in this situation!

I say we force the politicians to once again realize they have to compromise with each other. How? Simple. We hold general elections, and the candidate with the most votes becomes President, and runner-up is the VP. Yeah, I know, we would end up with a Republican President and Democrat VP (or vice versa), but you know, they would have to compromise and so would Congress! This shit of us leaving our country up to "the lesser of two evils" and getting an entire branch of our government that is NEVER elected save for one has got to stop!

The State of Equality

You know, this is something that I have had difficulty with most of my adult life. Equal is equal. It's not some political, or even social, split test with different variables and rules that just happens to return the equal results.

In the 70's it was the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) which did not result in equality for women in the workforce but rather a dual set of tests designed to bring more women into occupations they were not qualified or physically able to do. Should women make the exact same money as men for doing the same job: ABSOLUTELY! Should women be artificially inserted into male dominated fields (such as police, fire, oil rigs, mining and manual labor) just to fulfill some political quota: ABSOLUTELY NOT! I have no trouble accepting a woman in any of these positions as long as they are willing to perform the work AND are capable of doing so physically. Male or female, I'm not going to be real happy if they are in a fire suit and can't carry my 160 pound ass to the curb before the roof of my house falls on my head.

Race is another place where I run into difficulty. I am American, I only want to be American. I don't want to be African-American, Latino-American, Greek-American, Asian-American or French-American. Fuck, I was born in San Jose, California! If that don't make me a damn American, without the need of a hyphen, we really are screwed! I want to be treated as an equal, and more importantly, I want to treat EVERYONE as an equal. I don't want, or need, to know your fucking geneaology in order to know you and I are both equal in this state we call humanity. For all those who want or like the hyphen, I have a suggestion: Live a year in both places (I don't care which two they are), pick the one you like the best, move permanently, and lose the fucking hyphen so you can be ALL of one thing or another!

The point is this: Mabye, just maybe, once we can start addressing everyone as an equal we can start TREATING everyone as an equal. I do not foresee the human race becoming blind so we cannot see a nice ass or a cute face or someone's skin color so the question of equality is going to be with us for quite a while. But damn, do we HAVE to point out our differences all the time?

The Dreaded First Post!

Yep, everyone hates them, and I am no different. You want to know why you should come back, and I want to know what will make you come back and we both lose in the end. Oh well, guess it is time to set the tone for this thing the right way and we go from there.

I am American, and damn proud to be so. But... That being said, America does have some very fucked up things going on at any given time in history. No, I'm not talking about the shooting at Va. Tech, or even 9-11 and another war that we don't seem to want to win. Those aren't history to me, they are life. But this isn't to say that there are not just as many great things going on at the same time. You see, I live, we all live, in a country and world that is a study in contradiction. Come to think of it, it's not all that different from our own lives is it? So let's start exploring it and see where we end up!