Happy Samhain

With Halloween so close I thought it would be only appropriate for me to write an article about the infamous holiday that many celebrate so blindly. I find it quite amusing when I see the same mothers who protested The Golden Compass and Harry Potter dress their children up for a little Trick Or Treating. Perhaps these people do not realize where Halloween originated, or they choose to ignore it because the day is just, let’s face it, so damn fun!

As I am sure most people know (or hope that most do) Halloween originated as a Pagan holiday, or festival. With a little research I dug up some more about it.

“The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.” Find out more here.

I have no gripes about the origins of Halloween, and quite honestly, I am totally down with drinking in the Celtic New Year with some beer and wariness for evil spirits, but come on America! If people are going to be against witchcraft, sorcery, and anything not Christian and “innocent” in origin, please by GOD be against Halloween too. If you want to embrace ignorance, do it 100%, or not at all. It does not matter to me if you dress your child up as the Holy Virgin herself and only allow her to Trick or Treat for Holy Communion, it’s still hypocritical and I still want to hit you a bit for it.

So your kids wouldn’t understand if you didn’t let them dress up? Well, here’s a crazy thought, maybe they don’t understand what is so wrong with Harry Potter either. Children are innocent and do not judge things as wrong just because they are different, learn a little from them parents out there.

Since I doubt no parents actually read this blog, for those of you twenty-somethings out there—take heart. Perhaps when our generation reproduces we will be a bit more tolerant of both literature, popular culture, and the history behind things in our world. (I doubt it however). I am quite sick of everything that isn’t Christian being evil, and people only allowing the “fun” things like Halloween to sneak through their ignorant cracks.

So, go drink, dress up, be slutty (or not), and enjoy the ancient Celtic festival!

Happy Samhain my friends, Happy Samhain.

Hate me if you want to, but I'm right.

When it comes to friendship, intelligence is the most important virtue I look for. Granted integrity, honesty, and beer pong skills are important as well. I have found that when I hang with unintelligent people I sink to their level so as not to confuse them with my large vocabulary or incredible wit.

Sure, I have been called intellectually arrogant, a bitch, stuck up, and many other horrible things, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am typically smarter than the insulter. People get offended easily when called ignorant or idiots. It’s really hard to blame myself if I am a little stuck up in my intellectualism when the university I attended is taken into account. While attaining my major in English and minor in Philosophy I would read a campus newspaper that had more typos than Wal-Mart has crooked policies. I would sit through philosophy classes where people thought they were smart because they could argue points that had nothing to do with what we were reading. I tutored people who didn’t know the difference between their and there and were native English speakers. Hell, I tutored people that were born in Wisconsin that looked confused about what “native English speaker” meant.

I had to be picky while I was in college when it came to friends or I would have spiraled down to the pre-high school level most of them seemed to be stuck at. I dated man after man that knew more about Halo stats than he did about how to make a grilled cheese. I would watch people in awe of their ignorance as they wore shirts with a recycle logo on them and toted around Styrofoam cups from the dining halls on campus.

If by “intellectually arrogant” people mean that I am actually more educated, intelligent, and less ignorant than them, then yes, I am. I do not enjoy drinking a bottle of wine with a friend that only talks about celebrity gossip, video games, and television shows.

If you believe that media in America is unbiased, I don’t want to be your friend.


So, maybe I am arrogant, but if you are going to call me that PLEASE at least know how to spell it. Perhaps I will give friends pop quizzes on simple grammar, history, and logic in order to determine if they are capable of continuing the friendship.

Media Censorship Exposed…Again

I have known for a long time that the popular media in America and around the world is biased to a fault. The journalists of universities are often shocked to be controlled in what they write when they get into the real world. Lately I have been reading the book You Are Being Lied To*, which touches on the Media, who controls it, and how unreliable it is. The deeply embedded truth of this has been sinking in for a couple of days, and then I got this link in an email:

http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/s/ABC

We Can Solve It is not some ho-dunk agency trying to campaign for change, they were founded by Al Gore!

In order to figure out why this ad can’t be run by ABC, I think it is important to look into who owns ABC. Take a wild guess…I bet you won’t come up with it. WALT DISNEY owns ABC. For those of you who don’t keep up on who owns what (and not many people do) this is an important fact to know.

I am now going to quote directly from You Are Being Lied To because I feel the experts in the book know far more than I do about this subject. I think Norman Solomon is pretty reliable…

Here’s what he has to say:

“Published in spring 2000, the sixth edition of The Media Monopoly
documents that just a half-dozen corporations are now supplying
most of the nation’s media fare. And Bagdikian, a long-time journal -
ist, continues to sound the alarm. “It is the overwhelming collective
power of these firms, with their corporate interlocks and unified cultural
and political values, that raises troubling questions about the
individual’s role in the American democracy.”

I wonder what the chances are that Bagdikian—or anyone else—will
be invited onto major TV broadcast networks to discuss the need for
vigorous antitrust enforcement against the biggest media conglomerates.
Let’s see:

CBS. Not a good bet, especially since its merger with Viacom (one
of the Big Six) was announced in the fall of 1999.

NBC. Quite unlikely. General Electric, a Big Six firm, has
owned NBC since 1986.

ABC. Forget it. This network became the property of the
Disney Company five years ago. Disney is now the country’s
second-largest media outfit.

Fox. The Fox network is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corp., currently number four in the media oligarchy.

And then there’s always cable television, with several networks
devoted to news:

CNN. The world’s biggest media conglomerate, Time Warner, owns
CNN—where antitrust talk about undue concentration of media
power is about as welcome as the Internationale sung at a baseball
game in Miami.

CNBC. Sixth-ranked General Electric owns this cable channel.

MSNBC. Spawned as a joint venture of GE and Microsoft, the
MSNBC network would see activism against media monopoly as
double trouble.

Fox News Channel. The Fox cable programming rarely wanders far
from the self-interest of News Corp. tycoon Murdoch.


Since all of those major TV news sources are owned by one of the
Big Six, the chances are mighty slim that you’ll be able to catch a
discussion of media antitrust issues on national television.”


As you can see, judging by the fact that all major news outlets are owned by what he refers to as the “Big Six” chances are that none of them will run anything that is degrading to big oil, or how the economy in America is run.

Although I think everyone should email ABC about this, it is important to remember that the people that make the decisions about what to air on television are not the people that read the emails. Those employed at ABC are either trying to ensure their jobs by not letting this ad air, or are so brainwashed by the system and the people they work for (not questioning crooked tactics becomes engrained eventually) that they think the ad is wrong in its very essence.

Let us again return to Solomon:

‘“It is not necessary to construct a theory of intentional cultural control,”
media critic Herbert Schiller commented in 1989. “In truth, the
strength of the control process rests in its apparent absence. The
desired systemic result is achieved ordinarily by a loose though
effective institutional process.” In his book Culture, Inc.: The
Corporate Takeover of Public Expression, Schiller went on to cite
“the education of journalists and other media professionals, built-in
penalties and rewards for doing what is expected, norms presented
as objective rules, and the occasional but telling direct intrusion from
above. The main lever is the internalization of values.”

Self-censorship has long been one of journalism’s most ineffable
hazards. The current wave of mergers rocking the media industry is
likely to heighten the dangers. To an unprecedented extent, large
numbers of American reporters and editors now work for just a few
huge corporate employers, a situation that hardly encourages
unconstrained scrutiny of media conglomerates as they assume
unparalleled importance in public life.”


So, long story short—Good luck Al Gore.

*If you'd like to read more from the book You Are Being Lied To, go to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/5991212/You-Are-Being-Lied-to-Full-Book

Nature's Sanity

It really is interesting how much emotion governs everyday life. For the past several years I have felt empty (I might as well use the old cliché, something was missing from my life). For only short periods of time would I feel full again, and those were times when nature and love combined in a glorious harmony. Only when I was with someone I truly cared about, and in nature was I at ease.

I bounce around my office job and city apartment with a lost type of acceptance. I run to the park almost every evening to center myself. Yet, coordinated landscaping doesn’t quite cut it, and nothing seems to cut through the loneliness. As with most of my emotions I have begun to analyze my feelings on days when I run to the park in comparison to days that I don’t. I also contrast them with days when I work at the YMCA camp that I have come to call home. And, in contrast to all of these comparisons I throw in the days when I have considered myself to be “in love”.

It is no mystery to most that know me that love has been missing from my life for a long time; it was far gone before my last relationship was even over. I have been searching for that certain connection for so long that I fear I will now miss it when I come across it. Yet the more I analyze the more I know the truth: nature and love are the only things that will make me content. When I look at a macro view of the earth, I realize that this simple fact is true for most people.

It comes down to this simple fact: humans are not content without nature nearby. Even in the city that Sex in the City says people move into to search for love, there is a park. People go to Central Park quite often, and even though they likely don’t analyze why, I think I know. Humans need nature, and without it we are lost, and thrown into violence.

It is more than just needing a plot of trees when it comes to me however, I need love too. Without both I am lost, and without either, I end up where I sit right now. An office, no windows, and no escape until my lease ends next August.

I wonder how long it will take man to realize that he can’t exist without the natural places, not just for technical survival, but for the soul’s sanity as well.

Just recently I met someone that within them seemed to have the same connection to nature as I do, a rare find in this world. I have only ever met one other person that seemed so in tune with all that nature had to offer, and they disappeared from my life quickly. There is something to be said for someone who really loves nature, and thus treats it like one would a lover, with care and honesty. I think that it is with someone like him, whether it be him or not, that I’ll be happy, finally. I think it takes someone who feels that tug when the sun shines through leaves casting a green hue, it takes someone who cringes a little when thinking about meat packing plants. It takes someone with a connection to the earth to connect to me.

I wish we could all find someone like that; the world would be a much better place.

Here is a poem I recenty wrote in regard to nature:


Intruders and Lovers
By: Me

A beautiful view
Rock and tree and air
Blue and white and green and clear
Forget the earth’s despair.

But what is this?

That shiny thing
Emerging from the brush
Hammered in sometime past
But hurting just as much.

The medal here
Does not belong
Its bolt bleeds out the soul
Why is man so violent
To the earth that is his home?

The scenes the places
Of natures’ loves
Desecrated and bare
Unnatural deserts scream
Of mans’ influence there.

The barren forest
The dammed old stream
No longer sway, or creep—
Or drip.
They blow with dust
And swell as lakes
And thus have stopped—
To live.

So fight the fight of the radical
The doomed, the hated, who’ll shove
Frown at greed and grin at green
For what is life, but love?