Just Like Kidz

Ahhh Christmas at my house. My two dogs first fought over their identical squeaky stuffed toy high heal shoes (too gay?), then - within minutes - had the stuffing pulled out of one of them and shortly thereafter abandoned them both.

But those few moments of joy are priceless.

Sieze the Opportunity

Parents are freaked out about Jamie Spears getting pregnant at 16. What should they do? Should Jamie stay on the show? Will their children find out?

Listen folks, this is the PERFECT time to talk to your kids - I would say 10 and up - about sex, pregnancy, safe sex, and contraception. You know your kids so talk to them in a way they will understand. Don't scare them or shield them - just the facts and answer any questions.

Remember - to talk to your kids about sex, safe sex and contraception is not encouraging them to go out and do it. They will eventually do it anyway. Arming them with common sense could save a life or stop a kid from having a kid.

More Character - Less Politics

I'm hearing a lot that Democrats need to start acting more like Republicans because the Democrats look like wimps. I disagree.

No doubt about it, Republicans are much better at politics. But politics boils down to manipulation, deception, bullying, and twisting of facts. I expect more from the Democratic party. True, it's harder to win elections based on good character but Dems don't need to change to get our vote. We need to change the way we listen to the candidates. We should not be fooled by the dirty campaigns and name calling . And we should definitely not join them.

Note: Not all Republican candidates are manipulative - and not all Democrats are of great character. Listen carefully.

Show Some Respect

I do NOT need to hear frantic 911 calls on the evening news. It is nothing less than tabloid journalism and it is disrespectful to the victims or heros involved.

Jill Jackson Said it Best

Let there be Peace on Earth - and let it begin with me.


Everybody now!

Own Your War

President Bush is accusing the leaders of Iran of trying to start World War III. Doesn't he realize that HE is the one who has already possibly set that war in motion?

The Middle Man - er - Person

Welcome to election year – things are sure to be interesting this time around. I think most Americans are tired of having extremists in the White House and would prefer leaders with more “middle of the road” ideas that appeal to both Democrats and Republicans alike. Electing someone like that is really the only way we can accomplish big things – otherwise we end up with both sides bickering and causing road blocks that hinder their productivity.

I have not made a firm decision on who I would most like to see win this race yet but I see at least one person who would fit the above profile and that is Ron Paul. I have listened to him speak on several occasions and he has a good head on his shoulders. But he is not a front-runner because Republicans – at least those that are taking polls - still want to keep their ultra-conservative policies in place. It’s a shame.

On the Democratic side I think we have a lot of great choices. I wouldn’t consider most of the candidates as hard-lefters although I’m sure most Republicans would disagree. I think Hillary Clinton is a good choice as a middle of the road type candidate and I’m glad she is doing well in the polls. She also comes with prior experience in the White House which none of the other candidates can claim. I’ve been very impressed with the way she has been handling attacks from other candidates, but it will be interesting to see how she can handle attacks from Republican candidates. I honestly believe she can do the job and do it well. And I think the time has come where someone other than a white male sits in the Oval Office.

Whoever gets the job, I just pray they can be more “middle” than the Bush administration - but that should be too difficult.

"Normal" is in the mind of the beholder

24 Hour Madness

The Earth runs in cycles, Day and Night, and all life has adapted to live by those cycles. Well almost all life. Humans, in our genius, have created light bulbs and suddenly the night is light. We now live in a 24 hour society. Last week I read an article that says that people that work “graveyard shifts” could be prone to cancer. It doesn’t surprise me.

The lights are always on, machines never stop and the people that run them must work at what I would call “unnatural hours”. We have been doing this for some time now but I would say only in the last 40 years or so has it become so common that it is no longer considered odd. It’s also in those 40 years or so that crime has gotten out of control, more people seem “crazy” and a myriad of new illnesses you never heard of before – like ADD and SAD have surfaced. I think all these things are related to people living outside the natural cycles of the Earth.

The human body needs sleep, lots of it, in order to function properly. We were not designed to sleep during the daylight hours and therefore don’t sleep soundly when we are forced to do so. This creates all sorts of health and mental stability issues. Another factor to consider is that parents are no longer at home to put their kids to bed, or wake them up in the mornings. They are not there to keep their kids from loitering in gangs and provide proper meals. The 24 hour lifestyle is not healthy for society.

There are a few people who actually work better on 3rd shift hours – but I think they are a small minority. I myself work 2nd shift – 4pm to midnight – and that works very will with my life. But I don’t have kids. And 2nd shift is still within a “normal” day. I’m usually in bed by 1:30am and up by 9:30am. But I do have to wear a sleep mask when it gets light in the morning.

I don’t think we need to run 24 hours a day. Sure profits are huge, but it creates more social and health problems than it’s worth. Notice that most CEO’s of these 24 hour businesses do not work 2nd or 3rd shift. If they did they would know the toll it takes on the body’s natural rhythms.

As with most money driven issues, this one will likely not change - but it should. We need to go back to a society where everyone sleeps at night. It would be great if we could just shut off all the lights after midnight. Imagine the environmental impact of that! Plus, it would solve the terrible problem of light pollution – a near future blog topic.

Well, at least the store brand plastic wrap doesn't stick to itself either.

Corporations Should "Give Back" Too

President Bush, all caught up in the Thanksgiving spirit, urged Americans to "give back" to their communities as a sign of thanks.

Mr. President, those of us who live paycheck to paycheck would be very thankful if we could get back some of that gas money you stole from us this year. Imagine if Exxon or Mobile gave back 5% of their enormous profits to the communities they took it from. That would be incredible.

State and Church

I have two points to make on the separation of Church and State - both of which occured this week:

1. When Churches preach that you are sinning if you vote for a candidate they don’t like (as the Catholic Bishops are once again urging) they should immediately be considered a Corporation, and be taxed accordingly.

2. I think it is perfectly OK for a Governor, acting outside his official office and off Government grounds to urge people to pray for rain. I believe in the power of prayer. However, every effort should be made to include all faiths to pray in the manor of their teaching. Rain is headed for Georgia – coincidence?

In The Line of Duty

Sadly in South Florida, we have had 3 high profile Police officers killed in the line of duty in the last several months. The outpouring of support for the families, friends, and co-workers has been huge – as it should be. Today while at the gym, I noticed that one of our local TV stations had pre-empted their regular programming to bring live coverage of the latest funeral. I watched for a while as people gave speeches behind the flag draped coffin and I couldn’t help but wonder why this is so different than the troops that are also killed in the line of duty.

Please understand, I mean no disrespect for ANY of these fallen heroes and I support them all. But why would the media focus so much time and energy on one fallen police officer and hardly even mention the soldier that just came back to S. Florida in a coffin? We don’t even see that soldier’s coffin – none of them (nearly 4,000).

Police officers and military personnel are very similar if you think about it. Both paid by taxpayer money to protect our rights and freedoms. Both of them put their lives in danger every day to protect and serve. All of them parents, bothers or sisters, and members of the communities they serve. Why should one get so much attention and the other barley mentioned?

It’s the same reason why celebrity tabloid news is so important today while the war isn’t mentioned at all. The media, which is controlled by a certain few, wants us to focus on our own community so we forget that there is a terrible war going on. And the reasons for that have already been mentioned in previous posts like this one.

At this time I want to say Thank You to both the Police and the Troops who risk their lives every day. My condolenses to the families of those fallen heros and may God bless those that have been seriously injured in the line of duty.

Live and Learn - Never Stop

I learned recently that if you put your clothes in the dryer in a jumbled mess, they will likely come out in a jumbled mess. But if you take just a couple of seconds to unravel them and lay them nicely in the dryer - they come out looking fresh and nearly wrinkle free. Joy!

Throw Away Society

That title above is not a request – but a description. It seems we don’t “fix” anything anymore. If something breaks we just throw it out and buy a new one. Meanwhile, our landfills are heaping with this junk, our resources are being depleted, our water poisoned with old batteries and poisonous parts, and more energy is needless used to re-create what we already have.

I think the problem isn’t just with consumers – in fact I think a lot of the blame rests on those that manufacture these electronics. They are not built to be fixed in the first place. In the name of getting it on the market fast and cheap they integrate all the parts into one unit that can’t really be modified, upgraded, or repaired. It is way more expensive to fix something like that than just to buy a new one. I think “fast and cheap” is a terrible way to run a society. I wonder if we will ever get past this. Once again, it comes down to money – so it will not likely change.

OutSourced In

I try not to write articles about my workplace because even in the land of free speech, you can be fired rather quickly for something you write in your personal Blog that your bosses don’t like. But there is one issue I’d like to vent about that hopefully won’t get me into too much trouble. I’ll try to be vague.

I’ve worked at the same job for 11 years now – we will call them Company A. Recently we “merged” with another company about the same size as ours – we will call them Company S. Merged is in quotes there because it felt more like a hostel takeover to me. I’ve had a few issues with this merger but I’ve kept mostly quiet about them until now (see above). Let me try to explain my frustration.

Our e-mail addresses at Company A are composed of a combination of 6 letters from our first and last names and sometimes they form nice little words (often even funny). Since several people in my office had my same first name when I started, and my combination of letters formed a nice little nickname – I became known throughout the company as denbec. It’s been that way for all 11 years. Now we merge with Company S and it was decided that the IT department where I work (and only the IT department) will work directly for Corporate, and as such we will assume their e-mail address standard. We were told we were no longer to use the old address and we even needed to change our signature files, business cards etc. Suddenly denbec is dead. Now even people inside our original Company A get messages from me with Company S’s address. It feels like a shotgun marriage where I was forced to take a new name and the old one is gone forever. I wonder how many of my messages are being deleted because people don’t know it was from me.

While I am still mourning the death of denbec, I have another issue with this change. The building I walk into each day says Company A, the security badge I wear says Company A, and most of the people I support work for Company A – yet it appears to all concerned that I work for Company S. It’s like I have been outsourced to my own job while I sit at the same desk. When new employees call do they realize I really work directly with them and not at the new corporate office? Does it matter? Well I think it really does. For example, since the merger we also take support calls for Company S after hours and when they call and realize they are talking to someone who is mostly unfamiliar with their business it can be unsettling. But that’s one of those topics I decided not to comment on before so we will leave it at that.

Since this merger, Company S has “merged” with several other companies and I’ve been assured that eventually we will all assume the new email standard. I would have been happy to wait and make the change with everyone else.

The good news is that denbec is not totally dead. In the years I have worked this job that nickname has become such a part of my life that I use it on my personal accounts as well. You might even notice it happily residing in the URL of this blog. Maybe Company S won’t be able to recognize denbec and I won’t get fired after all.

Ro and Me

I've enjoyed Rosie for many years now so I went to her book signing to check if perhaps I was "star struck" or maybe she wans't really "all that". While my visit with her was necessarily short, I was able to watch her interact with the other people as I waited in line. Let me just say that Rosie is the real deal. My admiration for her only grew deeper watching the warmth, the "yellow" she shares with everyone as though we were all her personal friends. And I honestly believe we are - even the "stranger friends" that haven't actually met her in person but share her very personal life on her Blog. We all love you Rosie!

We Are Everywhere!

On my recent road trip, I ended up in some much smaller communities that surprisingly had a gay populations, but not as visible as the larger cities. In these smaller towns people live quieter lives and go mostly unnoticed in their day to day lives. Those that oppose us - let's call them Haters - like to believe that we are a tiny, insignificant but undesirable part of their perfect world. This trip made me realize that there are far more homosexual people in this world than they would imagine. Actually, I think there far more than even I imagined. This is proof positive, if you ask me, that we are born and not learned. I think once conservative America is finally forced to understand that FACT, then the issue of rights etc. should be a moot point. Once we understand the FACT that God created us the way we are, then to question that creation is to question God's design. That can't be good for one's salvation.

My Hero - Google Maps

I just returned from a wonderful little road trip to the Deep South which oddly, I drove quite a bit North to get to. Anyway, I took this trip alone and visited several cities I had never been to before. I'm usually not the type to get lost easily but none of these places had nice grid type streets and I actually did lose my way several times. Thank goodness for Google Maps on my Treo phone! It's not like other map sites on the Internet - it's a separate little program that zooms, slides, guides, and points exactly to that place you want to go - with some handy other suggestions in true Google style. And it even shows it in Satellite view if you want which can be very helpful in unfamiliar surroundings. Neat!

I'm not one to give product endorsements but Google Maps on my PDA is the schizzle!

Why do they call them appetizers when clearly they make you less hungry?