And What's the Deal with Rap Music?

I used to listen to rap music growing up. I listened to alot of different types of music growing up. I enjoyed the bumpin' sounds of alot of rappers around when I was a teenager. Dr. Dre and Snoop, NWA, Ice Cube, later on Master P, C Murder and alot of others that I can't remember right now. In Colorado Springs, we recently got a radio station that plays nothing but hip-hop music. I'm like "koo". Then I listened to it for awhile and I was like "not koo" because at first, the song on the radio sucked. It was just a bunch of noise really with some guys grunting and making strange sounds. Do they really expect us to take them seriously? All they rap about is how they are going to bust me in the face with their gat, etc, etc. Please... So anyway, I switched the station but I switched back several times througout the day and each and every time it was just a bunch of noise. Just a bunch of garbage on the radio and I'm like WTF so I actually called the radio station to ask them why it was that they played nothing but shit music? They said it was black music and I wouldn't get it. I'm like yeah...I guess a bunch of grunts and bangs and whistles just isn't music to me...go figure. I guess I'M the one out of touch, right?

Powerball 365 MILLION!!

I could really use this money. I'm just not cut out for the day to day of a normal working life. I'm much more suited to live the life of a rich man with many millions of dollars. Driving fast cars, fast bikes, doing things that most people only dream of. You know what I would do if I had 365 million dollars? I'd give it to everyone I know that lives through the same daily struggles as I do. I would use it to make everyone I know as happy as I could. I would of course buy things that I would like to have like some chocolate or something. Then I would some on the women in my life. Mostly my soon-to-be daughter, Lindrielle. I don't know if there's some secret in the universe or some force or devine being that decides who might win the lottery. I don't know if everyone who has won has done the same thing before they won. All I can do is buy my ticket and hope that my numbers are all called. Winning for anyone is truly a life changing event that changes the world around them. I would hope that if someone is truly happy, that it would not change that about them. All this because money is what runs the world. If it weren't for money, nobody would have anything or everyone would have everything. Man would be united and everyone would do for everyone out of the goodness of their heart. Or nobody would ever do anything and nothing would ever get done because there would be no incentive to do so. The nature of man is unkind and unknowing. I guess that's why the world has its religions.

Today at the Wal-Mart

When I'm trying to find a place to park in a large parking lot as are those found at a Wal-Mart or mall type arena, sometimes I'll drive close to the desired entry door, expecting full well that I will not be successful in finding a parking spot. Sometimes, I feel like I have a "sense" of where a spot will be. I'll decide to just turn, apparently random, into a aisle of parking spots, thinking and hoping that there might just be one close. Actually, sometimes there is a spot, even if may have to whip my car around oddly to get into a spot meant for spot seekers coming from the other direction. Other times, I'll have to drive further out, looking longer than I'd like to find a spot. In the end, that's just fine with me. I don't mind walking a little ways to get to the door. Sometimes, of course, it's raining or snowing and that makes it a bit unpleasant. Today was a beautiful day but I found a spot right by the door and thus I jumped into the spot with a quickness before some crafty old lady managed to magically appear from nowhere and steal the spot from under me.
Once I got into the store, I was able to quickly find the items I needed. I picked up two TV dinners and a Bolt House farms Vanilla Chai Tea drink. This was food intended to be taken into work tonight. At the time of this writing, I've finished my drink and one of the meals. I look forward to about 3 hours from now when I'll be enjoying the next. I buy the turkey, stuffing, peas and mashed potato meals. Those are my favorite. They have a dining facilty up here at work (I work on a military base, mind you), which is run by AAFES, but as you can assume by the word before my last comma, it sucks. Yesterday, I didn't have time to stop to bring anything into work so I was forced to use the dining facility or go hungry. I purchased a small piece of dry, tasteless chicken breast with a funny film on it, a small soda and a small salad for $8.30. What kind of crap is that? That's 8 junior bacon cheeseburgers!
Anyway, after I got what I needed, I hastily made my way to the check out counter area. I looked at the 3 "express" lanes. 20 items or less, you know. The lines were about 15 people long in each line. I decided to take a look at the self checkout lines. They were noticeably shorter. In fact, I chose one that only had 2 people in front of me! Man, I thought, I'm going to be out of here in a jiffy! In the line next to me, I noticed that a man with 4 or 5 items had gotten inline at the same time I did and he was about 5 people back. I wondered by he had chosen that line and not the line I was in.
Here's how it went:
The person in the front of the line had about 10 items. She checked things through just fine and then it came time to pay. That was not so easy for her. She was paying with cash. Mostly change, apparently. She sat there and actually counted each little piece of change instead of just feeding the machine until it was full. Fine, after about 5 minutes, she was done and the next lady moved on. At this point, I looked over and noticed that same guy that was 5 places back was now 3rd. This new lady started scanning items but she was very slow to put them into the bag, so the computer kept telling her to scan the item or to remove the item, rescan the item, remove object from counter, and so forth. She was very confused and had no idea what the hell she was doing. No matter what freakin' line I get into, I'm ALWAYS behind someone who is using the self checkout for the first time and has no communication skills with computers. Eventually, the light came on and some manager came over and helped her out. Yay! I finally get to the counter! I look over to see where that man is now. But...I can't find him. He's gone? Why would he change lines? Oh no...that's not what happend. I looked around and saw that he was already headed out the door having already bagged and payed for his items.
That guy is never me. I'm never the guy who picks the fastest moving line. I think that if I chose the line with the least number of people with the least number of items, that I'm going to get out of there fast. Nope. Never happens. From now on, if I have 1 or 2 items, I'm going to get into a regular line with 10 people with carts that are full of crap. I'll probably be done in 2 minutes.

Asbestos

I keep seeing these commercials with elderly people talking about the need for the creation of a fund to compensate "victims of asbestos". Ok look. If you are 105 years old and you were allegedly exposed to asbestos 60 years or more ago, then obviously the asbestos didn't have too much of an effect on you! They want to show some old decrepid 100 year old man on a breather and blame asbestos. WRONG! He may or may not have been exposed to asbestos but the reason he can't breathe could be a thousand different reasons, one of which being...he's 100 years old!
In another commercial there's a woman with leathery, wrinkled skin claming that her lung cancer was caused by asbestos exposure. Yeah yeah...we all know how it is. You want to blame your problems on someone else and claim there was nothing you could have done about it. I'm sure the 40 years of smoking 2 packs a day had nothing to do with it, right? It's your fault! Now take some goddamned responsibility for your own fate caused by your own actions! NO MONEY FOR YOU!! And that's the other thing. These people don't want anything except one thing. MONEY! They don't care about anything else, it seems. Money makes everything better, right? "Yeah my family was killed and I have nobody now. Just give me 5 million dollars and I'll be fine." That's the mentality of tragedy and loss these days. No compassion whatsoever. That's what's wrong with America these days.

A Note to Mexican Males Between 15 and 26 Years Old

It's not necessary to wear a white "wife beater" shirt and tan khaki pants EVERY DAY. You can wear this outfit once or perhaps twice a week and still get away with it. On the other days of the week, you are permitted to wear a normal T-shirt, preferably with offensive language and smelling like weed. You can wear black jeans or dark blue jeans. Absolutely NO LIGHT COLORED BLUE JEANS WILL BE TOLERATED!! You will be immediately jumped by yo homies if you are caught wearing light color jeans, sweat pants, shoes that are not cool enough, a hat of a team that someone doesn't like, or any type of sweater. Hoodies are highly recommended if you plan to wear any type of shirt which may be considered humorous.

Super Bowl

Ok so it didn't happen the way I thought...ahhh well. I don't really care anyway :P

Super Bowl Half Time Thoughts

Yeah...uhhh...ehhh...I don't really care. Good defense plus bad offense has made the game thus far pretty boring. Then they gave Ben Roethlisberger a touchdown he didn't deserve, but that's ok. I'm sticking with my prediction of a score of 26-17 Seahawks. It's not that I don't think the Steelers can win. In fact, I believe the Steelers have a better shot at winning. It's simply a matter of two good teams. Neither of the teams is going to simply walk all over the other. I think the Seahawks are going to have some big plays in the second half and I think the Steelers might get another touchdown and a field goal. Not much time left in the game to do all this so both teams are going to have to step up quick for my prediction to hold. 26-17 Seahawks!! Come on!!!

Destroying Homes for Business

It happens all over the country. Rich developers want to get richer so they go through the city planners to get approval to get rid of homes in areas in which they would like to build businesses or an apartment complex or what have you. Usually, the home owners are offered more than the market value of their home. Alot of people take the offer while alot of others built the house with their own two hands or had the house in their family for a number of generations and there's simply more to the value of the house than money. In Colorado Springs, CO, a hospital was planned for expansion. There were a few houses that were going to have to be torn down in order to do that. Everyone sold their houses except one old man right in the middle of the planned parking lot area. He took the city planners to court and he actually won his case. Today, there stands in the middle of the hospital parking lot, this old man's house. Good for him.
What's really sad is that when someone decides they don't want to sell, sometimes they are taken to court and they lose and they end up with little or no money at all for their homes. They are simply kicked out of their homes and they are destroyed and some business complex is put up in it's place.
Just in the time I've lived in Colorado Springs, there was one housing area in particular that was destroyed for purpose of building a business strip. Some of the homes there were very old. Others were fairly new. I don't know the personal story of any of the people who lived there. All I know is that after only a few years of businesses running in that complex, it now sits empty with "For sale" or "for rent" signs on the windows. They've been sitting that way for a number of years now. Those people lost their homes for nothing. All in the name of "better development and the economical growth of the city". Do they really think that all those empty businesses sitting in the middle of a residential area are good for economical growth? Heh...I don't think so.

Movie Review: Annapolis

Hated it! It's mostly a movie about boxing. And if it were categorized as a "boxing movie" it wouldn't be a good one. Let's say that Rocky was rated as a 10. This movie would be around a 2 or possibly a 3 with forgiving judges. The guy gets accepted into the Naval school. No real background other than he had to nag a bunch of times to get a recommendation. Then he gets in, struggles with the whole teamwork concept, has a hard time listening to people, and decides to join the boxing competition and eventually gets his ass kicked in the ring even though he shows a good fight. Every time he gets knocked down, everything goes to slow motion and he has flashbacks to things and people that are important to him...yadda yadda. After about the 4th time was knocked down and it went to another slow motion sequence, I was checking my watch. I figured the movie could have been around 30 minutes shorter without all the slow motion crap. One time...two times...ok it adds a dramatic effect. After awhile, it just gets boring. Then of course he falls for one of his trainers. There's a whole thing involved there too that has nothing to do with the school itself. The movie is just about this guy's first year in the school. It's not really a story specifically about anything. It was pretty difficult to tell which direction the movie was going in at any given time. Then all of a sudden, the movie was over and I went on with my life.

Now Look at This. He asks for MORE MONEY!!

When I was a kid, sometimes there would be something that I really wanted. I would ask my parents for money. Usually I would ask my mom first and she would say that I had to talk to my dad. I hated talking to my dad about wanting money for something, but 9 times out of 10 he would eventually give it to me. He's a great dad. He seemed to always have the cash on him. It was great and made me very happy. Now, if my dad gave me 10 bux that I had asked for then, the next day I went back and asked for another 10 bux, he would tell me to forget it. What did I do with the other 10 bux, he would ask. He would talk to me about managing my money better and talk to me about being more careful on what I spent it on because the next day there might be something I want more. I understood. I never asked for money like that again.
When Bush asks for 80 billion dollars, then 72 billion dollars a few months later, then 82 billion dollars a few months later, then 70 billion a few months later and more money here and there, bringing a total to 400 billion dollars, nobody questions it. Everyone just signs off on it. "Oh it's for the war". If I asked my dad for 10 bux for a new nintendo game, knowing it wasn't enough, my dad would say "are you sure it's only 10 bux?" Then I would say "Oh yes it's only 10 dollars, dad". Then the next day I go back and ask for another 20 bux, he would say "I thought you said it was only 10 bux". I would say "Well..turns out it's more than 10 bux...I didn't know". Then he gives me the additional 20 bux. The next day I come back and I tell him that I need another 10 bux. Then he says "ok ok...exactly how much is this video game for crying out loud?" I say "Well it's 30 bux." "Well what about the 10 bux I gave you the other day? That with the 20 bux from yesterday makes 30." I would then say "Well I spent the first 10 bux on something else since it wasn't enough for the game so now I need the entire amount." He would then lecture me once more about managing my money. I would say I understood.
Nobody questions where the money is going and what exactly it's being spent on. Then, in the same breath Bush asks for more and more billions of dollars to spend on wars in the middle east to secure oil futures, he talks about how Americans should try to become less addicted to OIL! When people talk to him about all these billions of dollars and where the money is going to come from for these wars, he says "Oh it's ok...we're going to take the money out of the food stamps programs and programs like medicare and medicaid." He actually asked for and was GRANTED a bill that restricts the growth of medicaid and medicare! In order to fight this war and try to make his daddy happy with him and make him and his buddies richer as they bathe in oil, he's taking money away from the lower and middle class people who are struggling to make it day to day. They live paycheck to paycheck and now it's only going to get harder. Programs are being cut from schools that feed their children. Imagine making $1000 per month and that goes to housing, clothes, utilities, other bills. That's about it. There goes your 1000 bux. But that's ok because you have government help that helps to feed your kids and helps with their medical bills. Now imagine that that food and that medical bill help is stripped away. That easily adds another 300-800 per month of costs. That is completely unreasonable for anyone to be able to handle on 1000 per month. But that's ok. As they starve in the dark basement with their sick children dying because they can't afford medical care, they can be happy because they know that their own personal sacrifice helps some family in Iraq have better schools, better food, better clothes than they and millions of other families have right here in our own country.