Kids are the Coolest!

I spent this weekend with some family who were visiting from out of town. No one can understand just how crazy a seemingly normal scenario such as this can be. When four insane children are running rampant in a house filled with the sounds of contemporary gospel music and family members carrying on 7 very loud conversations at once, things can get a little nerve racking. Don't get me wrong though, I wouldn't trade 'em for the world. Myself and my brother are probably the only progressive thinkers of our family. At times it is very hard to get any kind of an open minded point across in conversations with my family. I found that the most interesting individuals are the children. I love talking to kids. You can discuss imaginative things with kids and they don't try to quickly change the subject to sports or money or something like that. The four kids were my cousins, whom I rarely get to see. Sometimes the maturity of 7 year old kids is amazing. 3 of the four seem to be very mature for their age. They sit back and listen to the adults talk and at times I believe the children greatly surpass the adults in maturity. You can see that their minds are fresh, not yet tainted with all the garbage that we are fed along the way to adulthood. For this reason I love kids. I'm not saying the kids are perfect. They fight and break things running in the house, all the normal kid stuff. It is their eagerness to learn things, however, that is impressive to me. No matter how bratty they can get at times, they are watching us always and developing themselves. It's really a shame that they're inevitably going to be force fed all the narrowminded ideologies of modern American culture. For all their imagination and dreaminess kids cannot escape the press of the cookie cutter culture that they are born into. For now though I try to talk to them when I can. To get a glimpse inside their amazing little minds and to try to be someone who is cool to them. Not someone who tells them they need to do this or that or to try to impose some kind of rules on them. Rather I want to be someone who they can see a little attitude and humor in, someone who shows them how to break the norm a little bit. I don't want to teach 'em to be bad kids, I just want to help 'em have some fun. In the process I end up having the most fun of all.

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Negative energy in the world today

Again I'm thinking about the things I'm reading concerning new tensions in the middle east. I think that all of this will pass with a little time, or at least until people get sick of seeing it in the news. Then it will likely continue, but at least we will be ignorant of it. I guess what you don't know can't hurt you. In all honesty I think the whole thing may be blown out of proportion. It is scary, however, to think that countries like N. Korea and Iran may have nuclear weapons. Obviously they don't like us and their leaders are crazy enough to do anything. Yesterday I was in a little convenience store and the guy behind the counter brought up the subject of Syria and Iran. I said something like, "man I hate to think of getting right back into another war." His response was, "Shit, we gotta get them before they get us." I could tell he was a little perturbed by me. Oh well. That's his opinion and mine is mine. I read once that as nations grow stronger their citizens get weak hearted. They become pussies who don't want to fight anymore (aka left wing). The book went on to say that this is the reason great empires like Rome fall. Maybe this is right. Maybe I'm slowly becoming one of the weak hearted pussies. I just don't want to kill or be killed. I guess we'll never have a world of peace because we'll always have to defend ourselves, sometimes even pre-emptively. I always find myself second guessing my own opinions and ideas. Should we be in Iraq, should we not be in Iraq? Did I vote for the right guy, and did it really matter? Ah the lack of confidence in oneself is two fold, first it causes us to seek out information and then it keeps us from ever making a sure decision with the information we find. The only way to truly make a decision your sure of is to be a little ignorant of the facts. Anyway, I've lost track of the subject. I feel that there is some negative energy brewing. We can only wait and see what happens.

Terror, Syria, Iran?

These are in the headlines today. I wonder what will all come of all this. In one article I read about economic sanctions on Syria. I hate to hear words like that because sanctions led us to Iraq. I hate war! Right now I'm reading "All Quiet On the Western Front." In it this guy named Paul describes all the horrors of fighting on the side of the Germans in WWI. Not that great a book, but definitely thought provoking. I hate the fact that we kill each other. Axle Rose sang about civil war. Really, he was right, all wars are civil wars. Human vs. Human. When you think about it what do nations/borders really mean? Humans live on each side of any border. Yet somehow it's OK to kill other humans if they live on the opposite side of the border/water etc. How shitty! I guess I oversimplify things. I'll leave u with a quote from Prince (which you are likely to see often on this blog)

"Everybody's got a bomb we could all die any day, but before I'll let that happen I'll dance my life away!"

Thanks for listening

6+1=7

My First Post

This is my first post and it is basically just an experiment so that I can view my template. I am excited about the prospects of this web log.

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