DiorNotWarPDX's Xanga

Value in People

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:40:00 GMT

I should preface this; I am just a kid. I still don't know my ass from my head. I live under a rock...I don't watch television, and I don't read the news. I am in no position to be remarking on humanity.

All I seem to hear about anymore is how horrible this world is. How horrible people are... violence, war, rape, judgment, hate, etc. And sure, there is truth in this. These things exist. But that's not the end. Sure, you can blow the head off of an Iraqi civilian, or you can fly a plane into a building... but that's not the end. You're still a person outside of those acts; there is still hope. I think we're doing an injustice to people by letting them be defined by their actions. There is goodness in people, there is lightness of heart. It gets clouded by their Shadow, but that lightness is still there. I am convinced (or you may well say, deluded) that there exists tremendous potential within each person - it is so obvious! Why should we bypass this truth in favor of validating the evilness of their Shadow?

So I don't know. Maybe this is just a complaint...a general complaint to the e-world. Or maybe it is a challenge to each person to bleed compassion, to ask why each person has gone the route they have gone and have understanding. People. People are valuable, and not because of the function they serve, or the good that they do... but because it is inherent within them. It doesn't come from millions of years of evolution, and it doesn't come from some god. It is simply there, waiting to be celebrated by each one of us.

[end rant]

Never Ask Important Questions

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:35:34 GMT

Especially not in America. And even more so, NEVER ask questions about the secret society both Bushes and Kerry have all been part of at Yale, called "Skull and Bones"

People asking about such things should face physical pain as a consequence. How about a taser?

This is America. We don't question things. If you want to ask questions, you don't belong here. Like this guy:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SaiWCS10C5s

A Very Special Recipe

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 05:38:21 GMT

Suppose you have an ingredient list like the following:

1 - Space
2 - Lust
3 - Politics
4 - Circus Sideshows
5 - Time
6 - Gall Bladders
7 - Existential Notions of Pantheism
8 - Cucumbers
9 - Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
10 - The Smell of Petunias

What is your result?

[Noise]

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:32:17 GMT

Well, coming from someone who daydreams about the pleasures of being deaf.....this video isn't exactly challenging from my perspective(ie. it was not thought provoking), but more of something I found myself quite glowing & pleased to find(ie. it validated my experience):

Really?

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:52:42 GMT

Monday, June 04, 2007

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:57:56 GMT

Monday, June 04, 2007

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 01:41:51 GMT

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:32:01 GMT

Earlier today, I was on my way to a job interview...I had a bus transfer, and had about 20 minutes to wait....JUST enough time to make a MUCH needed bathroom run in trusty ol' Starbucks down the street.

Well, it turns out Portland Starbucks locations aren't so trusty after all. You must be a paying customer in order to urinate or defaecate.

This may be the only area in which the midwest triumphs over the Pacific Northwest. You do not need a key in the midwest in order to use a Starbucks restroom...whether you are in the affluent suburbs, or on any Michigan Avenue location....NO key. Anyone can relieve themselves for free. This is also true of the Eugene Starbucks locations... no key.

So, my request for the key was denied. I fail to understand the mentality here. Why do downtown Portland Starbucks locations restrict bathroom access to paying customers only? This question is not rhetorical... I am really wondering if anyone on here knows the answer to this.

At any rate, my hat is off to you, Midwestern Starbucks. Your bathroom generosity has not gone unnoticed. Kudos.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Tue, 29 May 2007 20:24:58 GMT

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/28/sheehan/index.html

(CNN) -- Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became an anti-war leader after her son was killed in Iraq, declared Monday she was walking away from the peace movement.

She said her son died "for nothing."

Sheehan achieved national attention when she camped outside President Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, throughout August 2005 to demand a meeting with the president over her son's death.

While Bush ignored her, the vigil made her one of the most prominent figures among opponents of the war.

But in a Web diary posted to the liberal online community Daily Kos on Monday, Sheehan said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll of the past two years.

She wrote that she is disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end and tired of a peace movement she said "often puts personal egos above peace and human life."

Casey Sheehan, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in an April 2004 battle in Baghdad. His death prompted his mother to found Gold Star Families for Peace.

But in Monday's 1,200-word letter, titled, "Good Riddance Attention Whore," Sheehan announced that her son "did indeed die for nothing."

"I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful," she wrote. "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.

"It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years, and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."

Cindy Sheehan's sister, DeDe Miller, told CNN that the group would continue working for humanitarian causes, but drop its involvement in the anti-war movement. As for her sister's letter, Miller said, "She cried for quite a bit after writing it."

Sheehan warned that the United States was becoming "a fascist corporate wasteland," and that onetime allies among Bush's Democratic opposition turned on her when she began trying to hold them accountable for bringing the 4-year-old war to a close.

In the meantime, she said her antiwar activism had cost her her marriage, that she had put the survivor's benefits paid for her son's death and all her speaking and book fees into the cause and that she now owed extensive medical bills.

"I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," she wrote. "I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.

"I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble."

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Sun, 27 May 2007 22:25:21 GMT