JMFK (MF = My Friend)

                                                                                       Watching the commercial of Ally Bank where everyone is going to extremes to make sure they get involved when the team is going ALL IN reminds me of how I fell about this country. We have been through the grinder over the last couple years, as it seems we go through every time a presidential election occurs now. Some are overjoyed and some are angry. In 2008 amazingly theses groups were flipped as far as their reaction to the results. I heard from people I work with from both crowds, and I have seen reports on TV and the internet. The results aren't what makes me angry, but people's reaction. You see I am like Ally Bank. I am ALL IN, and I have been that way. The change in who sits ...

Most everyone knows I have no children so it is vary rare that I interact with any. Just the other day I was coming home from the grocery store and I see two kids hanging out in the street in front of my house. Now I have a little "creek" or drainage ditch in front of my house, and on a couple of occasions I have noticed kids looking for frogs in it. No nevermind to me, they aren't bothering anything unless like that one time they moved the big rocks from the ditch into my yard and I had to move them out the way when I cut the grass. Minor inconvenience so no harm no foul.      So as I pulled in my driveway I get out and get ready to take my groceries in the house when one of the boys hollers at me. I go down to see what he wants and of course its to ask about frogs. I talk to him and his brother about the frogs and how they hide when people come around. We then talk further about animals, hunting, and the circle of life....

JUST RANTING     Some may get the things I say and some may not. Some may think they know me and some might think I'm a stranger. Some may think I am on one side of an issue while some may think I'm on the other. The point is none of that matters. None of it needs to for everyone to do the right thing.      Call it WWJD or DO UNTO OTHERS, or whatever you need to so that things get done. When you believe in commUNITY, and you have love in your heart you help everybody. Not just the people like you or the ones you like, I mean help everybody.      This is especially true to my religious people out there, because I don't know of any major religon that tells you not to love people. They universally state that GOD is about love. Think what that means, and think about what you do for the ones you love. Now think if you felt that way for everybody and examine how different you might treat people.      You can...

Some may recognize this as part of the litany against fear from Frank Herbert's Dune Novels. If you don't recognize it and you get a chance google "litany against fear" and read the whole thing. I recite the litany daily as part of my meditation along with passages from other various text because it applies so directly to everything in life, and there is so much truth found in this simple statement alone. Now I'm sure those who have read the Bible, the Torah, Qua-ran, or any other religious text can also think of or recite passages that deal directly with the notion of fear so one way or another we have all studied about it.      We have all been afraid of something at one time in our lives. That fear has probably helped us survive, and also held us back from doing some things. It can can keep you from jumping from a height that your body can't handle without breaking bones, and it could keep you from asking out that girl you've had a crush on since you...

Maybe Vulcan's are right! I'm sure you remember Spock from Star Trek. He was a Vulcan, which was a race that prided itself on using logic and suppressing emotions. We as humans may never be able to suppress our emotions, but we can learn to be more logical. Case in point is our facination with turning our feelings into facts and denying actual facts, numbers, and statistics. I have listened for years to people saying I feel like the man is trying to keep me down, or that police are trying to get me. Then I listen as other people say they are foolish for feeling that way. These same people then say they feel like terrorist are plotting to kill them, and the government is trying to take there rights from them yet those feelings are apparentely okay. How about we all recognize that as humans we all have feelings that are dependant on our different situations, but are the same feelings nonetheless. We are dominated by fear and mistrust. If we admit this to ourselves t...

RANDOM So I was finishing a run in the park and an old woman came over and struck up a conversation with me. I had noticed her and what I assume to be her daughter over by a tree a lap earlier. Now those who know me know that I am a magnet for random, and sometimes crazy people telling me there life story at any time in public. Mistakenly people have thought they knew me and from time to time I have been mistaken for Don Cheadle. I always go ahead and talk to the people just for the experience. I have noticed that a high percentage of the people who do just randomly talk to me are older. It makes me wonder is it that people these days don't have the same sense of community that used to exist were it was just a normal and friendly thing to strike up conversations with people. Could it be just something about me that makes older people want to talk to me. I have always felt like maybe I was supposed to be born in another time. Perhaps I remind them of that, i.e.. I have an old soul...

Do You Remember He-Man/Voltron/Tranformers/Thundercats/Blackstarr/Go-Bots/Silverhawks I was reminiscing with a friend, who is about my age, on 80's cartoons. Some we still remembered vividly and others we had to google. You will note above that I listed several  mainstream cartoons and there knock-off counterparts. Not that the knock-off's were bad, but they didn't have the same success. Anyway what I wanted to get to is how looking at these cartoons now they seem so diffrent. Things I didn't pick up on as a kid I see now. As a child it was so easy to be amazed and dazzled by the colors and action. The characters doing amazing things. Now that I am older its hard not to analyze and find the faults in the writing and see how bad some of the animation is, including reuse of footage from old episodes spliced into new ones. To see messages they were trying to feed my mind. Not to say they were bad messages or become some kind of conspiracy theorist, but looking at it ...