I know that a bunch of people casually glance at my blog, thought no one ever leaves any comments...grrrrr....
Well, I wanted to ask you all a favor.
I am writing a story right now, I am not going to tell you what it is about but I will tell you that in each chapter the main character learns a major life lesson... but I need your help.
I need to know the lessons life teaches. I mean big picture lessons, like love, trust, fear... things like that. These lessons will play a large part in the story, but I am having trouble coming up with more lessons. If you can think of a lesson, or even better, give me an example of a lesson life has taught you and how you came to learn it, I would be externally grateful.
Just leave it as a comment on this post.
Thanks, this will help a lot...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Edutainment
This is a story of the last 24 hours of my life beginning yesterday at 4:00pm.
Lately I have been noticing that it takes me a little longer to focus on things. When I come out of a snooze for instance... or if I have been watching something for far too long... I look away and it takes a few moments to adjust the focus on something else. Not something that anyone would take notice of, but my 15/20 vision has served me very well, and I like to have it to brag about. I was a navy sharpshooter after all.
So yesterday at four in the afternoon I realized that I had been scouring over the same job postings that I had already responded to days ago. Not much happening on the job front out here. Dejected, I turned away from the computer to face my room. I experienced that fuzzy vision thing again and got kind of pissy.
I decided that I would put my eyesight to the test right then and there. The test would be simple. I would gauge my reading speed based on my previous record "A Density of Souls" By Christoper Rice. I read that 274 page novel in about sixteen hours.
Oh, I love to read, but for the last year I have been pretty lazy about it. Picking one or two up here and there and reading for a hundred pages or so, only to be pulled away to something more pressing... and I do seem to be receiving a larger than usual number of visitors lately. Although I cant say that that is unusual at this time of year... What with Pride and the Pink Party happening on the streets beneath my window. My house becomes quite a handy social meeting place. Not that I mind... keeps me from becoming a hermit I suppose.
But I have strayed far from the story at hand.
I have several bookshelves in my house, and many of them are filled with books that I have read, books that people have given me, and books that I have been saving for a rainy day. I wanted something that would provoke thought and was non-fiction. My finger danced across the bookshelf in the sun room from interesting political titles to historically significant events in human history until I landed on the bright red binding of "Manhunt: The twelve day chase for Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson.
At 4:04 yesterday afternoon I settled into the chaise in the bay window, turned the reading lamp on and began to read. There were moments during the evening and into the wee hours of morning when I remember pulling myself from the chaise, book in hand, making my way to the bathroom without hitting anything. Why not; it made perfect sense, if I can do it in the dead of night somewhere between alert and asleep without hitting the furniture, than I should be able to do it in a lit house with my face buried in a book.
I finally went to sleep at 2:00am and it took two sleeping pills to make me put the book down at that point.
I slept.
Around nine this morning I began my morning ritual, rousing myself from bed... long enough at least to shut the alarm off two or three times. Until, peeping from beneath the covers now being covered by morning light, I saw that a sufficient amount of dawdling had been observed. I ceremoniously threw the covers back to the foot of the bed, stretched full out, arms at their apex above my head. And began to throw a little tantrum with my feet. First a light pounding back and forth, just to get the bounce of the bed and for the rest of the covers to fall away. Than a more vigorous gallop, finally bending the knees slightly to get the full effect. My back arched as my legs galloped and, as is usually the case, I somehow find myself suddenly standing by the side of the bed. Then very suddenly sitting again on the edge of it.
So I began my day leaving the house around 10:30 to grab a bagel for breakfast on the way to paint a lady friends home. Unemployment can bring the most unexpected people into your life for a brief while. I hadn't neglected to grab the book on my way out the door and, though I didn't think I could, I managed to get both my bagel from one place and my mountain dew from another with my face obscured.
The bus ride took about twenty minutes, and I got to her place just about fifteen minutes early. I found a shaded stoop and sat to read and have my morning meal. For the rest of the day I painted, save twice when I took a brief constitutional on the back porch with a smoke and the book. By four thirty this afternoon, I was walking back to the bus stop eyelashes deep, sprinting through the last breathtaking pages.
At 4:50 this afternoon riding the bus down Cortland Avenue, I closed the back cover, and looked up. A mere twenty four hours and fourty five minutes, had passed since I pulled the tome from the shelf. Thirteen hours spent sleeping and laboring. In the remaining eleven hours I read, from cover to brilliant cover, this 475 page book.
The Conclusion to my test is this. Speed is irrelevant. Reading improves your vocabulary. And that makes you talk and soon enough, start thinking smarter... um... more intelligently. And with that, I leave you to best my record!
Ps. I did cheat just a tiny bit... Of those 475 pages, 52 were bibliography, notes and index, and while I did read a bit of the notes, I skimmed only the titles of the bibliography, and altogether bypassed the index. Making the total number of pages thoroughly read 423, not 475. What is left to say? The great story had ended, I had no need of the rest of that scholarly flim-flamary.
Lately I have been noticing that it takes me a little longer to focus on things. When I come out of a snooze for instance... or if I have been watching something for far too long... I look away and it takes a few moments to adjust the focus on something else. Not something that anyone would take notice of, but my 15/20 vision has served me very well, and I like to have it to brag about. I was a navy sharpshooter after all.
So yesterday at four in the afternoon I realized that I had been scouring over the same job postings that I had already responded to days ago. Not much happening on the job front out here. Dejected, I turned away from the computer to face my room. I experienced that fuzzy vision thing again and got kind of pissy.
I decided that I would put my eyesight to the test right then and there. The test would be simple. I would gauge my reading speed based on my previous record "A Density of Souls" By Christoper Rice. I read that 274 page novel in about sixteen hours.
Oh, I love to read, but for the last year I have been pretty lazy about it. Picking one or two up here and there and reading for a hundred pages or so, only to be pulled away to something more pressing... and I do seem to be receiving a larger than usual number of visitors lately. Although I cant say that that is unusual at this time of year... What with Pride and the Pink Party happening on the streets beneath my window. My house becomes quite a handy social meeting place. Not that I mind... keeps me from becoming a hermit I suppose.
But I have strayed far from the story at hand.
I have several bookshelves in my house, and many of them are filled with books that I have read, books that people have given me, and books that I have been saving for a rainy day. I wanted something that would provoke thought and was non-fiction. My finger danced across the bookshelf in the sun room from interesting political titles to historically significant events in human history until I landed on the bright red binding of "Manhunt: The twelve day chase for Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson.
At 4:04 yesterday afternoon I settled into the chaise in the bay window, turned the reading lamp on and began to read. There were moments during the evening and into the wee hours of morning when I remember pulling myself from the chaise, book in hand, making my way to the bathroom without hitting anything. Why not; it made perfect sense, if I can do it in the dead of night somewhere between alert and asleep without hitting the furniture, than I should be able to do it in a lit house with my face buried in a book.
I finally went to sleep at 2:00am and it took two sleeping pills to make me put the book down at that point.
"The sun broke free from the horizon and flooded Garrett's farm with light, which shone on Booth's face... No, do not hide him from the light, Booth might have said, if he could still speak. When he was a boy, his bedroom at Bel Air faced east and he told his dearest sister, Asia: "No setting sun view for me, it is too melancholy for me; Let me see him rise.
The stage grew dark. His body shuddered. Then, no more. John Wilkes Booth was dead. The twelve-day chase for Abraham Lincoln's assassin was over."
I slept.
Around nine this morning I began my morning ritual, rousing myself from bed... long enough at least to shut the alarm off two or three times. Until, peeping from beneath the covers now being covered by morning light, I saw that a sufficient amount of dawdling had been observed. I ceremoniously threw the covers back to the foot of the bed, stretched full out, arms at their apex above my head. And began to throw a little tantrum with my feet. First a light pounding back and forth, just to get the bounce of the bed and for the rest of the covers to fall away. Than a more vigorous gallop, finally bending the knees slightly to get the full effect. My back arched as my legs galloped and, as is usually the case, I somehow find myself suddenly standing by the side of the bed. Then very suddenly sitting again on the edge of it.
So I began my day leaving the house around 10:30 to grab a bagel for breakfast on the way to paint a lady friends home. Unemployment can bring the most unexpected people into your life for a brief while. I hadn't neglected to grab the book on my way out the door and, though I didn't think I could, I managed to get both my bagel from one place and my mountain dew from another with my face obscured.
The bus ride took about twenty minutes, and I got to her place just about fifteen minutes early. I found a shaded stoop and sat to read and have my morning meal. For the rest of the day I painted, save twice when I took a brief constitutional on the back porch with a smoke and the book. By four thirty this afternoon, I was walking back to the bus stop eyelashes deep, sprinting through the last breathtaking pages.
At 4:50 this afternoon riding the bus down Cortland Avenue, I closed the back cover, and looked up. A mere twenty four hours and fourty five minutes, had passed since I pulled the tome from the shelf. Thirteen hours spent sleeping and laboring. In the remaining eleven hours I read, from cover to brilliant cover, this 475 page book.
The Conclusion to my test is this. Speed is irrelevant. Reading improves your vocabulary. And that makes you talk and soon enough, start thinking smarter... um... more intelligently. And with that, I leave you to best my record!
Ps. I did cheat just a tiny bit... Of those 475 pages, 52 were bibliography, notes and index, and while I did read a bit of the notes, I skimmed only the titles of the bibliography, and altogether bypassed the index. Making the total number of pages thoroughly read 423, not 475. What is left to say? The great story had ended, I had no need of the rest of that scholarly flim-flamary.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Industrial Penitentiary Complex is Broken
I had this thought the other day... bear with me...
I don't know how one would go about suggesting or recommending something like this, and I know that with our current system of government nothing this good for people would ever become law. But I had this idea...
The American prison system is broken. This is not something to dispute, this is not something to discuss, this is a fact. You can check on Wikipedia, with your local library, or just walk into any prison in the nation and see that this is fact. When you have people sleeping on the floors of their overcrowded cells, revolving door prisons, no discernible rehabilitation system and mandatory life sentences for minor charges, there is clearly something amiss.
I am not offering any kind of immediate solution. I am not an expert on the Industrial Penitentiary Complex, although at this point I would say the people who are experts on that subject are more concerned with the politics of running a profitable business than running a prison. All I am is a guy with an idea. And the idea is this: Educate the prisoners.
Before you go off in your head with all the reasons this wont work, let me finish explaining. The first thing you would need to do is get more teachers. I know, yeah right. Imagine what it would look like if the government ran the prisons and the schools the same way it ran the military. People join the military because it will pay for them to go to school and get an education. What if we took that same principle and applied it across the board in America. Almost like creating another branch of the military except this one will be the Teachers branch.
Say the Government offered to pay for anyone's schooling with one caveat: To earn your bachelors degree you must agree to teach in a prison for a specified length of time after you graduate, say three years. If you wanted to go further with your schooling, Masters or Doctorate, you would need to put in another three years, this time in a public school.
In this new system, when a prisoner gets to prison, one of the first questions they are asked is "what was the last grade completed?" From there they are required to go to class, finish their education, and possibly learn a new trade. Currently the system is set up to fail. You get hundreds and hundreds of men, lock them up together and... and... nothing. They have no dicipline, no organization, no structure, no forward momentum, no alternatives. So naturally, when they are released they are in the exact same situation and their options to avoid getting re-arrested are exactly the same as when they went to prison.
If you educate them, or teach them a trade, when released they have new options available to them. This way "rehabilitation" is not just a word for politicians. It can be something that works. The only prisoner that I have ever known to rehabilitate himself was Stanley "Tookie" Williams. He spent twenty years of his prison sentence writing childrens books on how to stay out of gangs and avoid the mistakes he himself made. And though these books were nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature four times, the state of California executed Mr Williams in 2006.
Of the 304,549,175 people living in this country, 2,299,116 are in prison. Sorry... that was the beginning of 2007, I'm sure we have breached the 3 million mark by now. Here is the point of what I am saying: Something needs to be done. Are we so complacent and otherwise occupied in this country that we cant be bothered to care about these things? Are we really the type of people who say as long as they are locked up I don't care what happens to them.
If you know something is broken, and failing the rest of society, exactly how long do we wait to fix it? Has it gotten to a point that it is unfixable and we are just crossing our fingers and praying that nobody notices? America, WAKE UP.
We have been so distracted for the last thirty years by things and new and improved things, that we have given up our ability to govern ourselves, or evolve and change. Schools and Prisons are both socialist systems like the post office, the fire department and the police. They require attention, from you, from every American.
If we could educate prisoners, inner-city and poor income families will be able to send every child to college for free. Those kids will have jobs when they graduate from college. Jobs that will always be in demand. (I cant ever see us exporting our public schools and prisons to India). Unemployment and drug use would drop among lower income families. Leading to fewer prisoners in the long term.
Like I said... I'm just a guy with an idea... I'm not an expert, but I'm not blind either.
I don't know how one would go about suggesting or recommending something like this, and I know that with our current system of government nothing this good for people would ever become law. But I had this idea...
The American prison system is broken. This is not something to dispute, this is not something to discuss, this is a fact. You can check on Wikipedia, with your local library, or just walk into any prison in the nation and see that this is fact. When you have people sleeping on the floors of their overcrowded cells, revolving door prisons, no discernible rehabilitation system and mandatory life sentences for minor charges, there is clearly something amiss.
I am not offering any kind of immediate solution. I am not an expert on the Industrial Penitentiary Complex, although at this point I would say the people who are experts on that subject are more concerned with the politics of running a profitable business than running a prison. All I am is a guy with an idea. And the idea is this: Educate the prisoners.
Before you go off in your head with all the reasons this wont work, let me finish explaining. The first thing you would need to do is get more teachers. I know, yeah right. Imagine what it would look like if the government ran the prisons and the schools the same way it ran the military. People join the military because it will pay for them to go to school and get an education. What if we took that same principle and applied it across the board in America. Almost like creating another branch of the military except this one will be the Teachers branch.
Say the Government offered to pay for anyone's schooling with one caveat: To earn your bachelors degree you must agree to teach in a prison for a specified length of time after you graduate, say three years. If you wanted to go further with your schooling, Masters or Doctorate, you would need to put in another three years, this time in a public school.
In this new system, when a prisoner gets to prison, one of the first questions they are asked is "what was the last grade completed?" From there they are required to go to class, finish their education, and possibly learn a new trade. Currently the system is set up to fail. You get hundreds and hundreds of men, lock them up together and... and... nothing. They have no dicipline, no organization, no structure, no forward momentum, no alternatives. So naturally, when they are released they are in the exact same situation and their options to avoid getting re-arrested are exactly the same as when they went to prison.
If you educate them, or teach them a trade, when released they have new options available to them. This way "rehabilitation" is not just a word for politicians. It can be something that works. The only prisoner that I have ever known to rehabilitate himself was Stanley "Tookie" Williams. He spent twenty years of his prison sentence writing childrens books on how to stay out of gangs and avoid the mistakes he himself made. And though these books were nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature four times, the state of California executed Mr Williams in 2006.
Of the 304,549,175 people living in this country, 2,299,116 are in prison. Sorry... that was the beginning of 2007, I'm sure we have breached the 3 million mark by now. Here is the point of what I am saying: Something needs to be done. Are we so complacent and otherwise occupied in this country that we cant be bothered to care about these things? Are we really the type of people who say as long as they are locked up I don't care what happens to them.
If you know something is broken, and failing the rest of society, exactly how long do we wait to fix it? Has it gotten to a point that it is unfixable and we are just crossing our fingers and praying that nobody notices? America, WAKE UP.
We have been so distracted for the last thirty years by things and new and improved things, that we have given up our ability to govern ourselves, or evolve and change. Schools and Prisons are both socialist systems like the post office, the fire department and the police. They require attention, from you, from every American.
If we could educate prisoners, inner-city and poor income families will be able to send every child to college for free. Those kids will have jobs when they graduate from college. Jobs that will always be in demand. (I cant ever see us exporting our public schools and prisons to India). Unemployment and drug use would drop among lower income families. Leading to fewer prisoners in the long term.
Like I said... I'm just a guy with an idea... I'm not an expert, but I'm not blind either.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Shot of the week
This may be the most disgusting thing ever... and... it's not what you think.
Go ahead, try to guess what this is...
Serendipity
I’ve been having some weird experiences lately that I would describe as serendipity. It started when I was looking through my phone book deleting people I didn’t remember from nights that I also don’t remember. I came across one of my dear pretty boys’ numbers… ahhhh SnugFitBottom (Daigle, in case you never got to read his blog of that name), how I miss you.
He is in the Coast Guard and living in Hawaii now, but I thought he had kept his number the same, so I sent him a text message asking how he was doing and telling him that I was thinking of him. Now we are still friends, but we don’t talk that often because he has his life going on down there and I have my life going on up here.
Later that night, I was working the door at one of my chorus events, and my phone starts ringing. I look at the caller id and don’t recognize the number. My phone does this kinda cool thing that none of my previous phones did. If someone calls you and it is a strange number, my phone will identify the state from which the call is being made. So here I am standing in the lobby of the theater looking at my ringing phone. I look up at the other volunteers and say “Who the hell is calling me from Alaska???”
So I answer. Daigle.
I ask him what he is doing in Alaska and if he is calling because he got my text. He said he was in Alaska on tour with his boat and that he called me because he got off work and was feeling a bit homesick for SF. Then he asked me what text. I said I had just sent him a text earlier that day because I was thinking about him. He asked what phone number I had for him and I railed off the local number. It hadn’t been functional for months and months.
So out of nowhere I missed Daigle and sent him a message that he never got. That same day he missed me and called me… ooooooooooh… Mystical!!!!
The other weird timing thing that happened was with Danny…
We were at home watching parts of a home video we had just made and we were talking about the horrible lighting… shutup… yes, yes, that kind of video… jeeze pervs, back to the story… so we were talking about the lighting in the video and I said:
“If I wasn’t wearing the black tank top, you would barely be able to see me I’m so white”
Danny looked at me with his big brown bambi eyes, his eyebrows went up, I could see the witty response building in his eyes… his lips parted…
“I know, Riiiiwiiight!”
A look of sheer utter confusion came over both of our faces… we both turned out heads back to the computer… in the video that we had momentarily forgotten… I had just spoken those eloquent words. We looked back at each other… opened our mouths to say something…
Then both Danny and I lost it. We laughed so hard we made those “oh… God… sooooo… hahahahaha… Stop… Hahahhaa… no… oh god…… cant breath… hahahaha… wait wait… Hahaha…” sounds. Tears were streaming down both our faces, and we were holding our bellies from laughing too much.
It figures, leave it to me to be so uber witty and fantastically gay that I have the ability to supply my own sassy retort via previously recorded video… wait… that didn’t come out right did it… I mean via previously recorded and as of yet unviewed video. Didn’t quite have the same punch did it… oh well, you know what I meant.
He is in the Coast Guard and living in Hawaii now, but I thought he had kept his number the same, so I sent him a text message asking how he was doing and telling him that I was thinking of him. Now we are still friends, but we don’t talk that often because he has his life going on down there and I have my life going on up here.
Later that night, I was working the door at one of my chorus events, and my phone starts ringing. I look at the caller id and don’t recognize the number. My phone does this kinda cool thing that none of my previous phones did. If someone calls you and it is a strange number, my phone will identify the state from which the call is being made. So here I am standing in the lobby of the theater looking at my ringing phone. I look up at the other volunteers and say “Who the hell is calling me from Alaska???”
So I answer. Daigle.
I ask him what he is doing in Alaska and if he is calling because he got my text. He said he was in Alaska on tour with his boat and that he called me because he got off work and was feeling a bit homesick for SF. Then he asked me what text. I said I had just sent him a text earlier that day because I was thinking about him. He asked what phone number I had for him and I railed off the local number. It hadn’t been functional for months and months.
So out of nowhere I missed Daigle and sent him a message that he never got. That same day he missed me and called me… ooooooooooh… Mystical!!!!
The other weird timing thing that happened was with Danny…
We were at home watching parts of a home video we had just made and we were talking about the horrible lighting… shutup… yes, yes, that kind of video… jeeze pervs, back to the story… so we were talking about the lighting in the video and I said:
“If I wasn’t wearing the black tank top, you would barely be able to see me I’m so white”
Danny looked at me with his big brown bambi eyes, his eyebrows went up, I could see the witty response building in his eyes… his lips parted…
“I know, Riiiiwiiight!”
A look of sheer utter confusion came over both of our faces… we both turned out heads back to the computer… in the video that we had momentarily forgotten… I had just spoken those eloquent words. We looked back at each other… opened our mouths to say something…
Then both Danny and I lost it. We laughed so hard we made those “oh… God… sooooo… hahahahaha… Stop… Hahahhaa… no… oh god…… cant breath… hahahaha… wait wait… Hahaha…” sounds. Tears were streaming down both our faces, and we were holding our bellies from laughing too much.
It figures, leave it to me to be so uber witty and fantastically gay that I have the ability to supply my own sassy retort via previously recorded video… wait… that didn’t come out right did it… I mean via previously recorded and as of yet unviewed video. Didn’t quite have the same punch did it… oh well, you know what I meant.
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