Failed Experiment

In a blatant attempt to attract more hits I mentioned that Trish's show had nudity in it. It did not work.

Being a wrestling fan, and knowing that one of the cutest diva's in WWE is named Trish Stratus (check out that site...cool little anime pictures of her), I would have though that little teenage boys would be hitting google trying to see what comes up when they type Trish WWE naked.

(let's see if that works...I am evil)

Say Nope to Dope

Here is this week's Dumbass:

Man severs, cooks, and eats his penis.

All Star Fever

I never thought I would say this, but you can feel something downtown today. And, no, it isn't the tourists bumping into you. There is just something about the atmosphere. Today is the All Star Game. Every other person I see down here is wearing a baseball jersey or cap...even me. I am wearing my beloved Cardinals cap today.

People are grinning and happy.

I love baseball. I don't know all the stats of who is the best in the league for this or that. What I love about baseball is one of those intangibles. Not sure what it is, but there is some thing about going to a baseball that makes it special. Sons and Dads. Daughters and Moms. Kids and Grandkids. Going to see the Springfield Cardinals play was an almost weekly occurrence. We all went. Mom, Dad, Josh, Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Paul and Aunt Marilyn (when they were in town), and I all would go. Baseball games were at time for the family to get together and just hang out. All the problems we might of had did not matter the Lanphier park. Maybe monthly we would take a trip down to St. Louis to see the Cards play. We would try to a ball game when we went of vacation. We were at the game where Joe Niekro got busted with an emory board (Twins vs. Angels)

Baseball is a family game and truly America's Pastime.

Play ball.

Once and for all!!

We will find out the correct spelling:

Theatre
vs.
Theater

Let googlefight be the Don King of this bout!!!!

And the Winner is:
THEATRE...by 100,000

Final score is

Theatre (10,500,000 results)
Theater (10,400,000 results)

Thanks Cliff.

What the Hell

Since I just saw Pirates of the Carribean (which was absolutely awesome) I figured What the Hell:

You Are Sam From "Benny & Joon." You are very talented at physical comedy. People are in awe of your abilities. However, you have many quirks which can either win people over or completely annoy them. But you're a sweetheart through and through, and it's hard not to love you.

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!

They're Back

Garbage Pail Kids are returning after a 15 year sabbatical.

Has it really been that long?

So

Tripp mentioned that Trish's new show has nudity in it. This is always an interesting subject. When we were going to do The Tooth of Crime I was running in to the same issue. Becky, one of the characters, has a scene in which she basically rapes herself. It was difficult to try to see how how to take it.

Anywho. This past weekend, Ziggy got married. Mae and I went up to Grayslake for the wedding. It was really pretty, and outdoor ceremony and reception. Lots of fun.

I guess that is all for now.

Peace
all

Here we go.

Here is the promised link to my new computer.

Also, since I had to reload the comments, because the old YACCS did not work with the new blogger, I changed the template. Tell me what you think

Peace

Bloggin from Home

I finally am boggin from home...bought myself a 'puter. I will put a lik up later...time to eat. bye

WOO HOO!!!

My counter just broke the 2,000 mark. Took long enough. How is it Tripp is in the 10,000 and we started about the same time and Cliff is at 7,000+ and he started after me. Come on folks...lets get this thing moving.

(yes I am evil and didn't link Tripp and Cliff...mwa hahahaha!!)

Friday 13th

Who says Friday the 13th is a bad luck day? Look at the good fortune of this family.

Open my eyes

I know sometimes I am a loud obnoxious fool
Somtimes I sit in the muck I have created
And expect everyone else to sit in it with me

I hurt people
I say things
I usually am too dumb to realize that I have done so

My tears are tears of self-loathing
My tears are those of an ass
My tears are meaningless

I think I care only to pass them
I see their tears only to ignore them
I want help but I can't

Make me weak
Break me down
Open my eyes
Let me hear
Tear my skin

I am a sinner and I ask for forgiveness
I am arragont and I ask for humility
I am hurtful, make me caring

Spirit fill me. Creator forgive me. Christ heal me.

------

Jane Ellen has written a wonderful sermon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Field of Dreams

Mae, her roommates (Kyle, John and Kris), and I all went to the Chicago White Sox v. Minnesota Twins game last night. We had a good time...well Kyle and I did, as the Sox beat Mae's beloved Twins (8-6). It was a really fun game. The Sox manager was ejected not 10 minutes into the first inning, and it just kept rolling from there. Ending with a Frank Thomas home at the bottom of the 12th inning. The count was 3-2 with 2 outs. Score 6-6 and THWACK...HOME RUN...SOX WIN. It was an ending to a baseball game that makes the almost 4 hours totally worth it. It was something that does not happen very often. And it is something I will remember for a long time.

Google Search

Please do this. It is extremely funny. Thanks Google.

OK. Go to Google.com. Type Weapons of Mass Destruction into the search box. The click the I'm Feeling Lucky button. An error message will pop up. Read the message.


Naughty Bird

Go here. You need your speakers on. Very funny stuff. Tripp, you will like this stuff. Nothing like a pigeon tanting a cat.

>via the goddess<
Peace

Nifty Newness

So, blogger has a new lay out...I likes.

It has been a little while since I have written something. Not Much to say...I shall return.

Peace

Here it is!

This week's dumbass!

This woman was pulled over while breastfeeding her baby. The thing is...she was DRIVING!!

EYE HALVE A SPELLING CHEQUER!

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Sauce unknown (but courtesy of MBM & GG)

Good Bye, Mr Finch.

I just read where Gregory Peck died at the age of 87. Best know for his role as Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. For that role he was recently crowned The American Film Institute's #1 Film Hero for the last 100 years. My thought and prayers are with his family and friends. Rest In Peace.

My friend Mary became a citizen of The United States of America yesterday. She has lived here in the states for 20 some odd years, and decided to take the plunge. Also, with all the crap going on with the Sept. 11 paranoia, she was scared that she could possibly be kicked out. Eventhough she has been a business owning taxpayer for the last 20 years.

I know I have ranted about the administration many times. I did in the previous paragraph, but ,eventhough I despise this administration, I love this country. To see the joy of someone who has just gone through the citizenship process is what made me realize how much I do care about this country.

That is why I rant, and write letters to my congress people. That is why I go to the anti-war rallies. That is why i get into debates with people. This Nation was founded on those liberties, and that is what i cherish.

I don't know where I am or was going with this blog. I just felt like saying something.

Peace

Did you Know

That in Chicago these are some of the laws:

** Law forbids eating in a place that is on fire.
** It is illegal to give a dog whiskey.
** Kites may not be flown within the city limits.
** Spitting is forbidden
** In the Pullman area, it is illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while sitting on the curb.
** It is legal to protest naked in front of city hall as long as you are under seventeen years of age and have legal permits.

And My Personal Favorite
It is forbidden to fish while sitting on a giraffe's neck.

from DumbLaws.com

Peace

TORTURE

Torture!

I had a staggering urge today.
My sense of touch is like a siren.
One more day of dying, and it's...

Torture!
Not to touch her.

From toes to finger tips,
I can't survive the sight of lips.
One more day of trying!

Crested waves on summer days are crashing in her curls.
Nectar-scented laughter from a mouth that's made of pearls.
Exuberance is beauty, but sometimes beauty can kill,
Like now...

Torture!
Not to touch her.

Torture!
It hurts all over!

--oh my god

Listen to a clip of the song here!

For you know who!

A New Segment

I have decided to add a new weekly feature to my blog...

THE DUMBASS OF THE WEEK

Here is this week's.

A man running late for his plane calls in a bomb threat.

You Pencil Neck Geek

Rest in Peace, Classy Freddie Blassie. Mr. Blassie had been gravely ill for the past couple of weeks, and passed away last night. His autobiography just came out, and I intend to get it soon. A true legend. God Bless you.

I got 'em!

I got my hemp clogs. They are so nice...comfy, and 100% recycleable (sp). Since they are all stitched, no glue or rubber, and 100% hemp, I can compost them or send them to a paper factory when they are worn out. Also ... made in China ... at fair trade...how about that!

Peace

Congrats Cliff

I stole this from Cliff's Site...this is cool stuff:

This is way cool. Anna's pregnancy update sez:

Your baby's lungs and digestive tract are almost fully developed. And while your baby may soon grow more slowly in length, he will continue to put on the pounds.

This week your baby continues to open and shut his eyes. He can probably see what's going on in utero, distinguish light from dark, and even track a light source. If you shine a light on a your belly, your baby may move his head to follow the light or even reach out to touch the moving glow. Some researchers think baring your belly to light stimulates visual development. But don't expect 20/20 vision when your baby is born ó newborns can see a distance of only about 8 to 12 inches. (Children with normal vision, don't reach 20/20 vision until about age seven to nine.) And to complete the picture, new eyebrows and eyelashes now frame your little one's peepers.

A pint and a half of amniotic fluid now surrounds your baby, but that volume decreases as he gets bigger and has less room in your uterus. As you and the baby continue to grow, don't be alarmed if you feel breathless, as if you can't get enough air; it's just your uterus pressing against your diaphragm. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Usually about two to four weeks before labor (or during labor, if this is your second or third pregnancy), your baby's head will drop into your pelvis ó to get ready for delivery ó and that will make breathing and eating a lot easier.

Good News!!

My friend Mary, the owner of Pat Harran's Pub, will be taking her oath of citizenship on June 10, 2003. Even if you do not know her, feel free to join the celebration later that afternoon at Pat Harran's on the corner of State and Illinois...the one with the green awning. Just south of Snickers.

Slainte...or should I say Cheers, Mary.

Why Can't I Buy A Canadian?

I just received this email. I think it is very appropiate to the whole conversation going on between Cliff and Tripp...let me know what you think.

I found the web version...here. The verses mentioned are on that site too.

For those of you that are not following the recent controversy that has to do with Laura Schlessinger: she is a radio personality who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show. Paramount Television Group is currently producing a "Dr. Laura" television show. Recently she has become a convert to Judaism, and now she is Ba'al T'shuvah. Recently, she has made some statements about homosexuals that has caused the Canadian anti-hate laws to censure her... The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura which was posted on the internet...

An Open Letter to Dr. Laura
J. Kent Ashcraft
May 2000

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

The Economy, Stupid

What does it say about President Bush's Tax Plan when one of the nation's wealthiest people says it is bunk?

Basically, Warren Buffett says that the dividend tax cut is nothing more than "Enron Style Accounting." The article at money.cnn.com states the following:

Buffett posed a hypothetical situation in which Berkshire Hathaway, which does not currently pay a dividend, paid $1 billion in dividends next year.

Through his 31 percent ownership of the company, Buffett said he would receive an additional $310 million in income that would reduce his tax rate from about 30 percent to 3 percent, while his office secretary would still have a tax rate of about 30 percent.

"The 3 percent overall federal tax rate I would pay -- if a Berkshire dividend were to be tax free -- seems a bit light," Buffett wrote.

...He closed the piece by saying that the "government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party."

Makes you wonder who our fearless leaders are really thinking about.

Peace

Let's Go

Tripp...this should be your first pastorate.

So, Mr. Thomas. That was his name. Eugene Thomas. Age 67. Recently retired. Postman. Widowed. Neighbor, father, almost Grandfather. Soon to be. Of African and Asian descent. A child of the boom. A survivor and a soldier. 6 feet 2 inches. Hair: short and beginning to grey. Temples and sideburns. Renting the top floor of his house to a vagrant rehabbing junkieÖdrunk. Me.

April 2002.
Things are not all that right here and now. I have a vice grip around my neck. Icepicks in my eyes. And that bug I was talking aboutÖwell it caused me to have this broken nose. Every time I swallow the salty sting of blood trickles down my throat. My throat is raw. Ill. I need some food, but if I do I will just loose it and destroy my throat evenmoreÖso screw it.

My day consisted of walking through the streets of this fair city. Depending on the kindness of strangers. Do you know what that is like? I donít think so. Vincent hasnít eaten in 3 days. And this is not his fault. He came back from a war ñ what 11 years ago. He just ainít been right since then. Half of his foot is gone and he sees things that donít no-one else see. (OK I seen some of the stuff, but I think that was the smack). He had a wife but she left. Donít know if heís got kids or not. Donít care. I got enough to worry about. Vincent sits on the corner of Washington and Dearborn. Till the cops make him move then he goes over to State and Jackson. Well because he donít have sense enough to ask for help. He just sits there. He donít get much help from anyone. Just stares and walk arounds. The princesses on their cell phones hoping into the cabs. Their cares are for the next dollar they are going to spendÖwell when you donít got a buckÖ

Me? Shit. I get by. Not as poorly as Vincent. I work those same areas. Just a little different. You see, I can get 15 maybe 20 bucks for one of those cell phones. 50 or so for a nice leather bag. Now though I just been to sick to go out. Been shaking a lot. I quit the shit a month ago and this is almost as bad as that.

Piss off.

uh. uh. uh.

s-hisssss.

eerrraahh.

fffffff.

Feel it coming on. The darkness is engulfing my throbbing head. The crystal of my veins is raking through my gut. My bowels jump with ever breath. I feel my spine falling, slinking. Breath. Breath. Never/Always. The eternal continuum of need. Desire. Necessity. Breath. Breath. Never/Always. Continue.

A week ago Thursday I saw a man die. Nothing too traumatic. Simple. 1 bullet thought the upper left quadrant of his chest. Very little blood. Until they opened him up. Everything that you would expect to be coming out of a man with a gunshot wound was there inside him. Apparently his heart exploded. What is that like? To know that the breath I am taking is my last. What does a person on the table of legalized murder think know that this is her last breath?

Pain and sufferingÖthat is life.

Crying/Laughing. One in the same.

Can you feel the person next to you? Can you breath their breath? Does your blood flow through the same veins? Is your sister there? Brother? Comrade? Amigo? Freund?

Can the man who died be of any use to me? Maybe. The bullet was intended for my head. You see I have this problemÖthis thing that grows inside of me. Possibly a bug. Who know? It makes me say thingsÖthings that people donít want to hear. Thing that could get Ö have gotten me arrested. Things that piss people off. That is what happened. The boy. I told him what I thought and he popped a capÖhis aim sucked. Instead of my head he hit the old man on the porch. The man whose life was in the twilight. The saviour. Savory saviour. Tasty.

So yeah, I went with him to the hospital. The morgue. The funeral parlor. The grave. This man. This saviour. This man who took my bullet.

feel it

uh uh uh

please don't call a shrink. this is a work of fiction.

New Blogs!!!

Meggo Mae has just joined is in the blog-o-veres.

And so has Leo the Lion.

Very Important

Here are 2 very important blogs:

Mr. President

Mr. Vice President

Another One Gone

Not to long ago I wrote of the death of "Mr. Prefect" Kurt Henning. Well, professionaly wrestling is full of tragedies. Any male who grew up during the 1980's more than likely know of the lovely Miss Elizabeth. She was one of my first crushes growing up...and the same to many boys of the 1980's. But women looked to her as well. Miss Elizabeth brought a touch of class to the chaotic world of the ring. Her honor was at stake. The Guinevere for the fueding Arthur and Lancelot. As of right now the details of her passing are unknown. She was only 42. God bless her family and friends. You will be missed, First Lady of the Ring. Godspeed.

Hey Bubba

Josh just forwarded this to me.

A man boarded an airplane and took his seat. As he settled in, he glanced up and saw an unusually beautiful woman boarding the plane. He soon realized she was heading straight toward his seat. Lo and behold, she took the seat right beside his. Eager to strike up a conversation, he blurted out, "Business trip or vacation?"

She turned, smiled, and said, "Business. The annual Sexual Education Convention in Chicago."

He swallowed hard. Here was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen sitting next to him, and she was going to a meeting for sex education! Struggling to maintain his composure, he calmly asked, "What's your business role at this convention?"

"Lecturer," she responded. "I use my experience to debunk some of the popular myths about sexuality."

"Really," he said. "What myths are those?"

"Well," she explained. "One popular myth is that African American men are the most well endowed, when in fact, it's the Native American Indian who is most likely to possess that trait."

"Another popular myth is that French men are the best lovers, when actually it is the men of Jewish descent. We have, however, found that the best potential lover in all categories is the Southern Redneck."

Suddenly, the woman became a little uncomfortable and blushed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't really be discussing this with you. I don't even know your name."

"Tonto," the man said. " Tonto Steinburg. But my friends call me Bubba."

So

Mel Gibson is working on a new movie called The Passion. What drew my attention is the fact that the entire movie will be in Aramaric and Latin. No Subtitles. I found this article. It turns out that this is going to be a very realistic portrayal of Jesus's last 12 hours and the resseruction...I can't wait to see it.

Worth a listen

I heard this over the weekend The Viaduct. Rob and Whit and David and I (and Lisa, sorry) were sitting around playin pool and drinkin beer. Pretty funny. Emenim goes Ragtime.

Job 12

Then Job answered: "No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these? I am a laughingstock to my friends; I, who called upon God and he answered me, a just and blameless man, I am a laughingstock. Those at ease have contempt for misfortune, but it is ready for those whose feet are unstable.

The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hands. "But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes food?

Is wisdom with the aged, and understanding in length of days? "With God are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding. If he tears down, no one can rebuild; if he shuts someone in, no one can open up. If he withholds the waters, they dry up; if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land. With him are strength and wisdom; the deceived and the deceiver are his. He leads counselors away stripped, and makes fools of judges. He looses the sash of kings, and binds a waistcloth on their loins. He leads priests away stripped, and overthrows the mighty. He deprives of speech those who are trusted, and takes away the discernment of the elders. He pours contempt on princes, and looses the belt of the strong. He uncovers the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light. He makes nations great, then destroys them; he enlarges nations, then leads them away. He strips understanding from the leaders of the earth, and makes them wander in a pathless waste. They grope in the dark without light; he makes them stagger like a drunkard.

Sacred/Profane...Profane/Sacred

This started as a comment on Cliff's blog, but it got to be too long.

I know the journey I am on, and through that have come to the conclusions I have come to. The journey I am taking is a search for, I guess, pureness. Pureness, not in the clean, white as snow, pureness, but pureness as true, raw, and honesty is what I mean. This journey has led me to my belief that one should "live the faith", but how that is done is totally different. I believe in action and have a fascination with the sacred and profane...rather the sacred in the profane. That is why you can find me in a bar at 11:30 on a weeknight. Does the make me unfaithful?

Talking to Del Toro who went to Woodstock in ë68 over a couple of beers, M-1 telling me about his latest female conquest, Bar Tender D telling me he wants a nose job, Hobos and Hookers across the street, used condoms and broken paraphernalia in the alley, Rachel who wants to be Cinderella in Into The Woods, Fish, up on Broadway, who has my back because I gave him a dime once 2 years ago, the gang-bangers who made sure I was safe leaving their hood after closing a store that helped out the hood, and their babies. These are the people I love. [Note: it is 4 hours since I started this, and well, as I tend to do, I have completely shifted focusÖoh well.] How can they not be loved? They may scare you, make you cry, break your heart, but they are the most pure people I can think of. Nothing is in the way. They donít look down on people. They donít look up to people. They just look to people. They are scraping to get by. So am I. So do my friends. But I know my ego gets in the way.

This quest for pureness is the closest I think one can get to God on this earth. Let the old blue-hair teach you how to make the sign of the cross. Enjoy the immediacy and intimacy of that moment. Look to the woman with the eyes of a child. Look to the hooker through the eyes of a child and see what she sees. It is painful. Really. ìCome back here, you mother fucking PuntoÖ.Iíll smash your God-damned window in.î As tears come down her cheeks and a bruised is developing under her eye. Pure. What can I do? I pray. Does that work? I donít know. It is what I have. I share her tears.

Purity. Wholeness. Dirt. Blood. Tears. Sweat. Grief. Pain. Redemption.

Like the junkie on the corner, blistered and bleeding. Needing the sweet nectar that is holding him hostage. Seeing the world through the haze of an altered state. Feeling the heat of disease entering the vein. Loosing the last vestiages of whatever the last meal he ate. The pain. He is doing what he must to survive the moment. He is living in the now. It is us who must help him. Take him and clean him. It is us who must move to his now, see what he sees and show him the love.

If this is throwing the pearls to the swine (I know you were not saying that, Cliff, but to use a common metaphor) then I want nothing to do with it. I really believe that to bring the Kingdom to earth we must find the pureness of the downtrodden, accept that they are wise, and then share our love with them.

Grace and Peace

Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?


What Monty Python Character are you?
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2 Cents

Lately Tripp and Cliff have seemed to be having some issues with their faith. Let us keep them in mind during our daily thoughts.

I have notice something these two have in common, though one is more a student of Eastern Orthodox, and the other is a Baptist seminarian in an Episcopolian school. The commonalty is that both of these friends are very intellecutal about things. Analytical. I understand that is the personalities we are dealing with here, and it has its place. But I think this, and I have said this before, intellictualism and over analysis can do more harm than good, as the analysis becomes what they are searching for...instead of letting the result arrive. I understand thier issues, they are what I have dealt with in theatre.

The state (Amenrican) theatre now has a lot to do with the overanalysis and intellectual mumbo-jumbo propogated duing the 1930's and the birth of the Strasberg method. (My ideas on his stuff is an entirely differnt post...) What has happened with so many American actors is that, a great number, have become so analytical that it has become an extremely self-concious effort. As an audience I don't want to watch a character think I want to see them do...that is besides the point...not what I am talking about. Anywho, from my own experience in acting, I know that my over analysis and over intellectualizing has caused my connection to the role to become flawed. I get so focused on the whys and hows and what ifs, that I loose the what. Does that make sense? The most pure moments I have had onstage have been those ... few ... times that every thing but the what has dissappeared.

I think by stopping...even for a moment...thinking about everything else, and just letting the what happen...Tripp and Cliff may have something. The analysis and all that other stuff is good...I am glad I know about Grotowski, Genet, et al, but they are not important in the what of now. There is a fear of veneurability that must be overcome. Believe me. The more open to letting the what happen, the more things seem to make sense. In fact by letting the what happen, all of the other things come together.

I hope my 2 cents help.

Peace

Dreams

My aunt-in-law (is that a real thing?) just had an amazing past few days. She made her Metropolitan Opera DebutÖin a leading role. Christine Brewer is her name, and let me tell yaÖthe girl can wail!!!!

She sang at Josh and Sarahís weddingÖand was out of this world.

What makes her such a unique person is how she went about forming her carrer. Every opera singer dreams of performing at the Met. Well, Chris, started humbly in the chorus of the St. Louis OperaÖand it grew from there. She has never lost the small town girl in her. In fact she still lives in Lebanon, ILÖ(exactly, I have no clue where it isÖdown by St. Louis I am told).

The neatest part about the debut is that the received a standing ovation after her first aria (a very rare thing).

Congrats Chris.

Amen Brother

As a proud person of Irish ancestory all I can say is amen to what Colin Farrell said on msnbc.com:

I get in trouble now and then, and they tell me itís a bad thing, but we Irish boys like to go out and have a good [fuck], you know. And it can be during the week sometimes, and we still do the work, one hundred percent, to the best of our abilities, and our abilities are not diminished by the night before. Itís something thatís inbred, itís part of the [fucking] genes. So that cliche about the Irish is quite true.

Not that weíre a bunch of people that sit in a bar and talk to each other like a bunch of [fucking] morons ó itís not that. We are people who like to have a good time. We like to tell stories, and we like to talk to people. We are quite lyrical and emotional ó another cliche, I suppose. Weíve very proud. As a country and as a people, we want to be great. We donít necessarily need or have to be greater than anyone else. We donít even really concern ourselves with those silly competitions. We just want to be great ourselves.

I donít know what it is. But Iím very grateful I was born where I was born. Our literature, our music. Itís a small land, but itís a land thatís full of passion and full of storytelling and full of music and full of song and full of laughter. Iím so proud of being Irish. No man is an island unto himself, but Ireland is an island unlike any other, a great one to hail from.

The Joy of a Child

Kind of. Last night I went to WWE Smackdown tapings. Most of you know I am a mark for pro-wrestling. Anyway it was the first time since I was in jr. high that I have been to live matches. I totally forgot how much fun it was. It is like going to an old fashioned melodrama with an updated twist. You cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys. I have to say that these guys and gals are some of the most dedicated performers I know of. Not only do they beat the living hell out of their bodies (wrestling fake -- scripted, yes -fake! You take just 1 back bump on ply wood with carpet padding on it, and tell me how fake it is), but they go 100% the entire time they are out there.

Any way to the point. Memories flooded back while I was there. My dad would take my bro and I to the matched whenever the old WWF would come to town. It was a great bonding time. Three guys going nuts over Hulk Hogan, Rick Rude, Jake the Snake, Junk Yard Dog, That is what we did. Loose ourselves in the moment. That is what I love about last night. Dads with their kids, Moms, Grandpa and Grandma. Just having fun. I watched the matches like I did when I was a kidÖwith an ear to ear grin. Thanks Guys and Gals for a great night.

Segue

Last nightís show did something else to me. Like I said Dad took Josh and I to the matches. For those of you who donít know, my dad died about 4 Ω years ago from complications with diabetes. So when the memories flooded backÖI got a little teary. Dad was one of those people who, no matter what, could be counted on. For a double peg leg finger missin son of a gun, the guy could go. His determination and joy for life have made me who I am. Before he died he had been ill for the 5 or so years previousÖit got worse maybe 2 year before. But even through the tough times, Dad lived for today, and never bitched or moaned about his setbackÖ

He is the one who gave me my name. He used to be stationed in Key West, Fl while he was in the Navy. Well, in Key Largo there is a church he would go by called St. Justin, Martyr Catholic Church. He liked the name and so it was given. Ha.

For Dad -- love you and miss you, and say thank you. Oh yeah -- ìWatcha gonna do, [Daddy], when Hulkamaina runs wild on you?!î

Hotel Size Soap Box

Ok. I know I haven't blogged in a while, and you are sick of my rants. BUT, I saw this this morning...and now I share.

So, I was walking up Ontario after getting my morning sausage and egg and diet A&W, and lo and behold the little lady that is supposed to be up on Michigan Ave directing traffic pops up and starts writing a ticket to a car that is getting bags thrown in the trunk in front the Best Western. (wow! beautiful Steinbeckian run on!) Anywho, there is no standing on this section of Ontario in the morning, but I saw the car come around the corner...the wife of the driver was on the side walk with the bags...he stops and pops the trunk. 15 seconds later they are in the car while the little lady is writing a ticket...freakin absurd. Now, what promted me to write this morning is the fact that the little lady should be at Michigan Ave directing traffic. You see, while she was writing the ticket I look up the block and see cabs flying around corners about clipping several pedestrains. Ummmm....a car in the wrong place when there is no traffic on the street or cabs clipping pedestrains and cutting off cars? It irks me a little.

And don't get me started on cabs.

Peace

An Apology
From blogcritics.org . I believe this to be a parody, but I agree 100%.

Apology from Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks

As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I now realize that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.

I hope everyone understands, Iím just a young girl who grew up in Texas. As far back as I can remember, I heard people say they were ashamed of President Clinton. I saw bumper stickers calling him everything from a pothead to a murderer. I heard people on the radio and TV like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott bad mouthing the President and ridiculing his wife and daughter at every opportunity.

I heard LOTS of people disrespecting the President. So I guess I just assumed it was acceptable behavior.

But now, thanks to the thousands of angry people who want radio stations to boycott our music because criticizing the President is unpatriotic, I realize itís wrong to have a liberal opinion if youíre a country music artist. I guess I should have thought about that before deciding to play music that attracts hypocritical red necks.

I also realize now that Iím supposed to just sing and look cute so our fans wonít have anything to upset them while theyíre cheating on their wives or getting in drunken bar fights or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting highway signs and small animals.

And most important of all, I realize that itís wrong for a celebrity to voice a political opinion, unless theyíre Charlie Daniels, Clint Black, Merle Haggard, Barbara Mandrell, Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr, Amy Grant, Larry Gatlin, Crystal Gayle, Reba McEntire, Lee Greenwood, Lorrie Morgan, Anita Bryant, Mike Oldfield, Ted Nugent, Wayne Newton, Dick Clark, Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Dixie Carter, Victoria Jackson, Charleton Heston, Fred Thompson, Ben Stein, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bo Derek, Rick Schroeder, George Will, Pat Buchanan, Bill OíReilly, Joe Rogan, Delta Burke, Robert Conrad or Jesse Ventura.

God Bless America,
Natalie"

Just have to

Just have to post this...funny...and true. Thanks Zander.

When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," statement but followed it up with several remarks to the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark, "Good luck Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA thought it was a remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut.

However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years, many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.

On July 5, 1995 in Tampa, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

Armstrong explained, "When I was a kid, I was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. My friend hit a fly ball that landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. My neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky. As I leaned down to pick up the ball, I heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon."

Michael Moore

Here is what Michael Moore said after he left the Stage.

We Want Spring! We Want Spring!

Last night was a good night:

9:30 = hungry, Ziggy and Jim head to Jewel
10:30 = they return.
10:45 = cooking of dinner commences.
3 courses as follows:
Appetizer -- Pork Chops
Main Course -- Lamb Chops
Dessert -- Steak

Yes we want spring...grilling at midnight...desperate?

Peace

Something to Think About

Meditation on the Divine Will
Washington, D.C.
September, 1862

This fragment was found and preserved by John Hay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, who said it was "not written to be seen of men." Some of the thoughts expressed here, written after discouraging days of personal sorrow and military defeats, also appear in Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address of 1865.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
--Abraham Lincoln

Something about Wednesday

12/21/1988 -- Pan Am 103 Bombed over Scotland
12/20/1989 -- United States Invades Panama
1/16/1991 -- United States and Allies Invade Iraq
3/19/2003 -- United States Invades Iraq

Why is it that all these happen on Wednesday? I remember all of these events happening. All but the actions of yesterday happened around the time my family was leaving >Family Night at my home Church.

Soon

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:


End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

You Fear Babel Fish

Go to the bottom of the page. I have added a babel fish...yippee!

Calm

Now that I have calmed down a bit, let me say (note: this is in response to Cliff's comment on yesterday's blog...I was responding in the comments, but it got too long) I, too, am perplexed by the Bush hating. I stated in an earlier blog that I have utmost respect for the president and most importatly the presidency. I don't agree with him, but he has an unenviable job that deserves my respect. Being one of the peace activists I do not think the anti-Bush stuff works. I understand it, but it is not the way to get people attention for the exact reason you mention.

My issues yesterday arose out of fustration of the society of fear his administration has caused. Him constantly saying you are either with us or against us has started to work. The propaganda machine is turning us on each other. These are trying times, and instead of trying to split the nation he should be working to try to mend it. There are issuse here that are being pushed down the slide and not getting the attention they need.

Yesterday was a rant, but today I am much more calm.

I, too, pray for our soldiers. I love and respect them. They are part of the reason I protest this or any war. We do not need any more parentless children, widowed spouses, grandparents out living thier children. They are a major reason I fight for peace.

Peace and Love

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not. A gentleman was arrested for wearing a peace t-shirt in the mall. It just so happens that he bought the shirt in the same mall. He got arrested after a mall employee was offended and called security. Security asked him to remove it, and he said no. He was the arrested.

So, let me get this straight, if someone does something that offends me I can have them arrested.

How can I say how much this pisses me off? Let's see. We all have the right to free expression. I know, some of you are saying I am only saying this because he was wearing a shirt I agree with...well, Bite Me! I would say it if he were wearing a shirt with a pentagram and a bleeding goat on it. I certainly would not agree with it, and it may offend me. BUT, he has that right. I know I have worn, said, written things that some might find offensive. To them I say, call the security guard and arrest me...piss off. If someone is so ... so in their own world that they can not simply turn their head and ignore it for the 30 seconds it takes for the gentleman to pass by.

This bullshit is being perpetuiated by the administration. They are hell bent on making us afraid. Afraid of weapons of mass destrucion, germs, EACH OTHER. FUCK YOU!!! I refuse to stand idly by while my rights are being pissed on. I refuse to let a government make me afraid. I refuse. You know what...read the last sentence of the...here I'll brign it here... and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Well that is what i am doing Shrub. KISS MY ASS!!!

God, I am pissed off.

Peace

Forgot

When adding links, I forgot about Zannah the Robot Girl.

More Place to Wander

Just added a few new links. These are some more of the blogs I check daily.


The first one is Inside Gretchen's Head. Fun randomness.


The second is Mouse's Prayers. Mouse seems a realy cool girl.

The third is Zander. I mentioned him earlier. A special Kid.

Peace

One More

I didn't realize how much I admired Mr. Rogers. Here is an amazing story. Thanks Gretchen for the link.

Peace

Things to Come

From MSNBC.com I found this.

In Memory

Still thinking about how much I enjoyed Mr. Rogers. It is times like these that make me grateful. Mr. Rogers taught me how to enjoy the small things and not fear the unknown, but to go ahead and take the step to the next place. There are people who love you and care for you.

Here is a link to the 2002 Commencement speech that Mr. Rogers gave at Dartmouth. It is truly beautiful.

Thanks for being my neighbor.

I am 73% Evil Genius

Evil courses through my blood. Lies and deceit motivate my evil deeds. Crushing the weaklings and idiots that do nothing but interfere in my doings.

Take the Evil Genius Test at fuali.com

It's a beautifulday in Heaven

God Bless you Mr. Rogers. Thanks You.

A Culture

"War is the best thing for the economy." That is a quote I remember my dad saying back in 1991 when the economy was in the crapper the last time. Unfortunately then, it did not work. I believe that the current administration is hoping the quote is true this time around. I don't think so.

The last time the economy got a wartime boost was World War 2 (possibly Korea). So, what is the difference between then and now, and why won't war help the economy? I believe the answer is in two very important reasons. The first reason is a difference in the public sentiment. The second is a direct spin-off of the first; a difference in the cultures.

The public sentiment during World War 2 was totally different from what we now have. There seemed to be [from stories heard from Grandparents] an air of community. The public was inspired to work to help our society. We were coming out of the Great Depression and people felt a call to help their fellow man. Unfortunately, war was the kick in the pants they needed. Had there not been a war, I think things still would have changed for the better (who knowsÖthing could have gotten tremendous). What really happened during World War 2 was a realization that there was a necessity as a society to help each other out, and that was the way out of the depression.

So, what is different between now and then? Our culture is not one that sees the need to help each other out. For as long as I can remember, we have been a ìme society.î The one with the most toys wins has been the motto for as long as I can remember. But that is not the biggest reason that war will not help our economy. Unlike World War 2, there is not the optimism that we will be better off when it is done. In fact, most people I talk to see no plus to an upcoming war. Add to that the culture of fear now breeding; people see only what they need. Fear and selfishness are the two major obstacles to getting our country out of the economic crapper. War will not help this, changing our way of thinking will.

We need to start going back to a grass roots economy, and stop relying on what the giant corporations tell us. Yes, there is a place for the big chain store (i.e. they usually have meds that the corner store does not). But (and this is personal experience here) one can usually find everything they need at the neighborhood corner store and most of the time at a cheaper price. Not only are you putting money back into your own community you are able to keep a little more for yourself. Tax breaks and relief only help if you have money. Meaning, those with low/mid range incomes usually get back a portion of what they have put in and in the mean time have to struggle to make ends meet. Those with the money also put in, but since they have the cushion the effects are lessened. So, cutting their corporate dividend taxes does what for the single mother struggling to raise 2 kids. Do I have a pat solution right now? No, but I am working on it.

What is the point? The point is we need to get over our blindness and fear and take a good look at what needs to be done here in The United States. War with an already impoverished country will not help us: it will only help to infect the wounds we already have. By taking the time to look at our own reflection will we be able to help not only ourselves, but realize how we can help others.

Freakin, Frick a Frack

So, this weekend I saw Punsupaya play at The Metro. It was a great show. But I was kind of disturbed; you see, I had to get the tickets through Ticketmaster. I bet you can guess where this is going. The show itself cost $8 a ticket x 2 = $16 (great for a night out...3 bands and all). Service charge $3.50 per ticket x 2 = $7 (88% the cost of a 3rd ticket). So, the way it is is there is a freakin 43% service fee for the tickets. I can almost bet the service fee to The Rolling Stones is not that much. I don't get how the fee is determined.

Ticketmaster Sucks!!
Peace

New Link

I the places of interest I just added Christian Punks United