I can see clearly, now.

I have been seeing more and more political commercials lately. Keep checking back for updates, videos and hilarious commentary.

Ian

03/09/11

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1:35pm
Beautiful poetry

Plain was the same as it ever was the same
Plainly plain…
Samely same
But then, someone lit the flame
Plain rode away on lion’s mane
Where plain met fruits with strangely names
Such wonderful things they did contain
A shot of life to a hungry vein
The captive beast who broke the chain
And there, upon that fruited plane
Is where plain became what plain became
So much more than more than plain
Plain will never be the same

Even as a literature major, I recognize some people’s views that a lot of poem interpretation and the “poetry movement” is a bunch of stuck up BSing snobs talking about nothing.  But there are moments where a poem can just blow me away. 
Most times people are blown away by the visual descriptions in poems, or the interpretations that you can ‘massage’ out of a text, but it is not often that the way a poem sounds can blow you away. 
If you read this poem and didn’t listen or view the above video, you might find the poem beautiful.  But I find the beauty in this poem by how the words sound.  The alliteration and the phonetics of the words.  It is truly magical.

Oh, and, apparently, after reading up about this commercial and poem, there is no known author.  Meaning: it was probably written by a copy-writer or a marketing intern/freelancer for the PR company in charge of the FAGE USA account.

If that’s true, that guy needs an award.

03/05/11

10:14pm
Catheters

So, I think the worst part about my upcoming transplant is probably going to be the catheter that they put in me.  I vaguely remember having one for a previous surgery that was done, but I definitely remember the pain of it coming out.  Besides the pain, I’m not excited about using it, either.
For those of you who have never had one, basically, your bladder tells you that there is pee, but instead of you holding it in, you have no choice but to release it into the catheter and into the pee receptacle.  It feels like you can’t control yourself from peeing in the bed. 
I think that, after you are potty trained, your brain has this intense fear of accidentally peeing.  If you’ve ever peed in a dream and ALMOST peed in your bed, you know the fear that occurs is unlike anything that you experience anywhere else in life.  And the worse part about the catheter is that, your conscious mind knows you don’t need to fear the release of the pee, but every time you freak out as your bladder empties itself without your control into the bag at the side of your bed.

It is absolutely terrifying.

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A quick thought about Public Unions

I see a point in having unions.  I really do.  The thing is, a large part of what a union does is to make sure that the workers get a fair share of the profits of the business.  When the business makes more money due to the workers, the workers make more money.  Yahoo!

The problem is that Government is not a for-profit business, so public workers, who desire more money, are not taking a larger piece of a larger profit pie, they are actually taking a larger piece of the same size pie; that is, unless they enlarge the pie (take more income from citizens).

 

And the MAIN reason I get uneasy about public unions was finally verbalized a few days ago in an article I was reading.  In a PRIVATE union, the workers are going to the managers (owners) and requesting more benefits or pay.  They are two opposing sides.  Management wants to keep the employees happy, but wants to make sure that the company keeps their profits high.  In the public sector, workers are on one side and GOVERNMENT is on the other.  And GOVERNMENT is usually elected BY the workers.  Now, sometimes, such as in Wisconsin right now, the elected government has different views than the workers, and the tug of war is back and forth; MANY times, though, the government has the same views that the workers do, so there is no give and take…mostly just GIVE on the side of the government.  After many years, and a recession, people realize that the GIVE was too much, and must TAKE some of it away.

 

Now, don’t get me started talking about GETTING RID of collective bargaining.  If the Governor wants to balance the budget, I don’t know why getting rid of collective bargaining is his Achilles' heel.  It doesn’t seem like collective bargaining is going to break or balance the budget itself.

 

To me, the guy just seems like a douche.

2/19/11

02:32am
A quick thought on school funding
I received this in an email this morning.  It was talking about Governor Rick Snyder’s new budget and how funding for k-12 dropped, but college funding increased or stayed the same. (It also talked about other things like teachers increased retirement tax rate and such that I don’t really want to get into)  From a section of the email:

“We believe the governor's proposal is a direct hit at the intentions of Michiganders who voted for Proposal A. When voters chose to setup a state funding system for schools through an expanded sales tax and the State Education Tax on property taxes, they were sold a system to adequately fund their local schools. Now, with revenue for schools actually looking like it might do better than expected, the governor has to disinvest in public schools in the name of ‘shared sacrifice.’”

Now, I think the intentions of the Michiganders who voted for Proposal A was to tie school funding to SALES TAX AND PROPERTY TAXES.  The problem happens when you want to increase funding for schools and property values decrease while people loose jobs and don’t BUY things.  If people don’t BUY things, the government can’t TAX them.  So, as much as I think it sucks that funding for schools is decreasing, when you tie funding to these things, and those things don’t increase or actually DECREASE like they did with property/house values, those funds dry up and sometimes decrease.

It’s clichéd for a reason: “we are ALL tightening our belts.”

2/15/11

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10:07pm
I like to eat my corn-fed beef, delivered by ethanol-powered trucks with sweet-corn on the side
I’ve been reading THESE articles that give different opinions about a variety of topics and tomorrow’s edition is about whether or not the world is producing enough food.  I always get angry about this topic because America is VERY privileged with what we get to eat.  We are allowed to eat more meat than any people ever before.  We get to eat it in every season because we have refrigeration, we get more meat at a lower cost because we feed our cattle cheap, government-subsidized corn and we get it delivered cheaply by use of government-subsidized ethanol.

It’s a shame to me that in such a wealthy country like ours, our desire and ingenuity to create cheap food has cost us much regarding our health, nutrition and moral obligation to the world.  In a world wear people starve because the costs of grain goes up, we complain because our cereal is in a smaller package.  In a country where we are told to eat more fish because they contain omega-3 fatty acids, we have to actually eat MORE fish than usual because we feed our farm-raised fish grain, which makes them have LOWER amounts of omega-3s.  I live in a country where people don’t like the meat in Europe because it tastes weird.  I’ll tell you why it tastes weird; it’s because their cattle don’t eat corn, they eat grass and plants which give them their NATURAL taste.  You’re used to consuming fake cattle.  Ugh.  I’m done.

No, here’s my final point.  I don’t think we CAN produce enough food for the world to eat, naturally.  I think this whole ‘natural, organic, local farm-based" economy can’t work on such a large level.  Not only are we going to have to have MORE industrialized farming, but I think America is going to have to maybe get used to not being able to eat beef in all seasons or sweet corn in the winter.  I mean, I’ve already had to start cutting back on my shark-fin soup.

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10:27pm
Obama has TRICKED them again!
I hate Obama’s budget proposal and love it at the same time.  I can’t stand that, after all he’s done about finding out budget items to cut (surveys, discussions, EVEN A FLIPPING DEBT COMMISSION), he still didn’t do ANYTHING in this budget.  Except call the Republican’s bluff.  Because he offered a stiff first hand, the Republican’s are going to have to counter with some actual budget cutting.  Boehner even said, “Our budget will lead where the President has failed, and it will include real entitlement reforms so that we can have a conversation with the American people about the challenges we face and the need to chart a new path to prosperity.”

Now they’re going to need to actually cut some entitlements.

This is too much

FINALLY!  I UNDERSTAND!