Jason Self

Things that are new......

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 04:29:26 GMT

I havent posted here in awhle. Not that many people read it anyway. Things are going good, I finnally have me feet planted firmly back on the ground (work is great and I am getting comfortable in my new job) and I am looking for a condo. The band is starting to get some air under its wings...We have gigged a couple of time and we are now comfortable on stage. Still looking for a compitent and non-arrogant bass player but we moved on. I was able to get my friend Josh a job where I worked, and that is really cool....he starts in a week and am I excited for him. That just about all that is going on right now.

First in awhile

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 04:32:45 GMT

Well it has been awhile since I have posted anything, so it is about time... I honestly have been so busy catching up to life as it was that I have been very abscent minded about my LiveJournal. Actually I am giving alot of thought to hosting a real webpage on my own server that is basically a political discussion block with Editorials by me. Granted, nobody cares about what I have to say (yet) and I get about four people reading this whenever I post, but I think I could have fun with things. Just a quick catch up...I am back at work, I am doing Electrical Engineering work again and I love my job and the company I work for. My band is doing great, we have over 16 original songs, recorded three demo songs and should be playing out soon, and I mean very soon.

Now for the good stuff.

I have read today that an organization based in California representing Native Americans in the United States has organized a boycott of CBS because of the performance by Outkast. Well, I guess everyone needs a hobby. Ok, I will admit I am only about 1/8 or so Native American, and except for my eyes you could barely tell, but give me a break. It is a shame that there are people that will jump the racism conclusion at the drop of a pin. Grated, we should not do anything that is bashing another race but dressing up as Indians for a song and in a way that more resembles a scene from Disney's Peter Pan than anything else. Grow up people, I remember my teachers instructing us not to be tattle tails in grade school.

The second topic I want to get off my chest is the heat that the movie Passion of the Christ seems to be getting. It is a shame that people will persecute anything they can. Lets face the facts, these are the facts only. The Jews with the help of the Romans executed Jesus. (for those looking that is a PERIOD at the end of the last sentance.) No, it was not pretty, no it was not humane, and yes that is what happend. Nobody wants to sugar coat what Hitler did to the Jews, nobody wants to sugar coat what Whites did to black slaves, and nobody should sugar coat what the Jewish people (2000 years ago I might add) did to Jesus, who himself was a Jew.

There, I have gotten it off of my chest. If people would just chill out before jumping on the bandwagon of feeling offended because it is the chic thing to be then the world would be a much better place, You don't see me running to the ACLU when a television show mentions red headed step children in a derogative way (and I am one for anyone keeping score) So maybe one of the few people who are actually going to read this might have an opposing view on something I have just written and might be swayed by it, or maybe I am wasting my breath... It makes me feel beter anyway.

Have fun with the spelling mistakes,
Jason

Oh where oh where has the polotics gone

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:40:54 GMT

Ok, so its been awhile since I had posted a political piece here in my Livejournal so lets see if I am out of practice or not.

I got the privelage today of watching some of the movie Bowling for Columbine and have decided that I would much like sitting down and watching the whole thing now. As a matter of fact I think everyone should see this movie. But Jason you are asking, have you a change of heart...Well not exactly. I just think it is a strong social statement that everyone should take in. It really got me understanding Liberals a little better. Ok here is the situation, we have this breakdown in society in the form of a shooting at Columbine High School in Colorodo, but before we get to that lets make sure that everyone is aware that the government, would do something so horrible as moving a nuke down the streets at night...while the children are sleeping....THE CHILDREN, NO NOT THE CHILDREN....This is an outrage, you mean to tell me that a nuke would be moved down the street and....gasp...the children are sleeping while this is happening. If only they were awake maybe they could save themselves if there were some sort of disastorous accident....I have a solution to this...lets get rid of all our nukes so we can be sure the sleeping children in colorodo don;t have to hear the big truck moving the bombs. If we are lucky, maybe all the other countries will say, ah how sweet, we can't let our children be exposed to this kinda stuff either and they will disarm too....Then we can all sleep well at night knowing that everybody in the world loves eachother and that we all have destroyed the nukes. But whats the worst that could happen aa a result....I think it is clear that the risk of having another country with no fear of our relatiation drop an atomic bomb on the Whtiehouse is well worth the sacrifice. After all, we kept the nukes away from the children in Colorodo. Ok, maybe I talked myself out of that argument a little bit...huh, and I was thinking of voting for Hillary if she ran....Oh maybe this will bring me back to my new found liberal ideaology. Guns....CHILDREN GOT SHOT IN COLORODO, WITH GUNS, OH NO....then I sat through a heart felt scene of one of the victoms fathers at an anti gun rally....If only the children had not been able to get guns.....OH AND SEMI AUTOMATIC WEAPONS AT THAT! NOT SEMI AUTOMATIC WEAPONS....with any luck the guy that sold the weapons drove an SUV. If we cant get rid of guns all together we should at least make sure we mention that they are semi-automatic guns so that we can at least outlaw those...surely everyone will feel the pain and sorrow after we MONOPOLIZE (whoops that was my old Republican self slipping out again) I mean show the civilized people in this country that guns killed the children....If we make guns illegal for citizens then the children surely would have been fine.....Oh wait, oh no, here comes my republican side again....The criminals will still have guns illegally, and they can just shoot you whiel you try to defend your family from being attacked with a pocket knife..hmm, can the people in Massachussets still carry pocket knive or is that illegal ther now too? (sorry for spelling your states name wriong) Anyway, if there were no guns then nobody would could shoot the poor innocent bambis in the forrest...sure they will over populate and eat themselves into extinction, but at least we didn't have to use one of those nasty gun things. So lets say that we get rid of guns...by some miracle we find a way to destroy all the guns in the world....so while I am getting robbed at sword point...oh illegalize swords too, ok, so while I am getting robbed at knife point...hmm, ok fine, no knives either....Ok, well while I am on my way to get some food, that doesn't need to be cut up and I get robbed with a guy that has a crowbar...hmm, no blunt objects either...well...fine...I am oviously not going to a baseball game now that bats are illegal, and I really didn't want to try to eat my steak without a knife...then again I wouldnt be eating a poor helpless cow...and I guess I wouldnt be able to drive since the world has no crowbars and I cant get the tires off...that fixes the ozone....huh...maybe all this stuff would work...and I can even see the plus side of abortion in this new improved perfect society...mainly because if I lived in it I would probably want to be aborted before they make me have my arms cut off for the fear that I might punch somebody to death. Alright, fine, so maybe Mr. Moore didn't do a good job of convincing me in the few minutes I saw...I gues Ill watch more so I too can be a good liberal.

Insomnia

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 06:04:44 GMT

Well, I shouldnt really be up this late, I really wanted to get some more sleep, but I have found that I am plagued with a nice case of insomnia. So I guess I will bable about the band a bit more today, considering that is what is going through my head instead of sheep at the present moment.

Sunday Leah, or potential drummer became our actual drummer. She has some serious talent and now we have all the parts assembled for the band. We added drum lines that are excellent to probably half our songs in just one sitting, and we have bass lines for all of our songs now so it is just a matter of practicing and perfected at this point. We did not get to work on any of the songs T.J. plays the main guitar part for on Sunday, but I am really excited to see how they will turn out.

Since we added Kenan to our band we haven't really had the time to write anything new. We have 2 or 3 partial songs but nothing that is put together with lyrics yet. I can not wait untill we get the rest of the band caught up because I want to get some more stuff donw soon.

Its an interesting thing to watch, this band. Josh and I were sitting around a campfire and I was strumming along on his acoustic guitar that he had brought. Before you know it we had ourselves a song and decided it would be fun to start the band we had always talked about, We promptly got T.J in on the idea and before long we had a decent set of original songs written. Bumped into a friend of ours named Ted who knew a good bassist and he came to listen to us...before you know it we have a bassist, he layed down some good lines really quickly and had a good feel for our music. Then I made one email contact from citybeat for a drummer, and there was Leah. Its all comming together nicely, lets just hope the rest of the world likes our music as much as we do, and if not we can at least say that we tried, and that we had alot of fun trying.

Ok, well I have typed enough for one nights worth...I do not know what I am going to do to either put myself to sleep or keep myself occupied untill I have fallen asleep but this helps get things off my mind a bit. I guess I can work on getting my computer in more of a propper running order...at least try to get my palm pilot to sync and stuff like that.....I have had an awefull lot of computer woes this week, the fortunate part is that I got the important stuff up and running again, I may, however, have lost my Grand Theft Auto Vice City saved game...that will be unfortunate if it is the case, but I got my linux system up and running again and that is the most important part......This paragraph got long for one I was hopping to be a short summary, well happy spelling mistakes to you all, I can only imagine how many you have found if you have read this far.

Good things

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:05:09 GMT

Well the band is really taking off now. We just procured a drummer today, Leah, and I am really siked up about it. So now we have a bassist and a drummer, two guitar players and Lead Vocals.....not just to finish adding the bass line and a drum line to our songs and we should be ready to play out. I just started singing with a PA and its hard to get used to...Its alot different when everyone can here you, including yourself....After I started warming up I got alot better but I was really flat the first couple of days with it...and nerves, sheesh, my nerves are the worst when I am using that thing, it just amplifies any mistakes that you make and during a couple of songs I messed up once and barely was able to recover the rest of the entire song, just out of stage fright, but its getting better. At first I was reluctant to hum in front of strangers so I am confident that this too will pass....We have a song called one day at a time and when I was done Leah just looked at me and told me that I have a killer voice, that helps my confidence a bunch. I am hoping that after a couple of weeks, now that we have a complete band, that we will be ready to play out, I want to first get a group of friends together over at Josh's house (a big group of friends so if you are reading this you are probably invited) to hear us and kinda act as somthing to trigger my stage fright, force me to get over it before I am on stage.

Tue, 15 Jul 2003 07:26:36 GMT

Ok, its been awhile since I have posted and figured now is as good a time as any to start posting again. Lots has happened since my last post, some good some not so good. Ill start off with the bad to get it out of the way. I still dont have a job, but Im on unemployment for a little while so I guess Ill be fine. Its a little bit of a hit to the pride but when I started reading about how companies were taxed based on number of employees for unemployment and realizing that it doesnt even begin to cover how much I have paid in to the government in taxes I starte feeling better, blah blah blah, I didnt get a job that I was really excited about, even though I got to second interviews with one other person....that should be all the negative....on to the good stuff.

My friend Josh has gotten back in town, we started a band that some how or another is comming along rather well even without a drummer or bassist, We have four original songs already and a couple of covers. Its alot of fun getting together with the guys and I think that we are going to at the minimum make a big local splash once we get the rest of the band assembled, the amount of chemistry that we have in writing and preforming music is astounding especially since we have only been doing this for about 2 weeks now.

I got my amature radio license. Why I dont know but I have it now. Its kinda neat to get on the radio and talk to people, and I get to play around with electronic components and stuff like that so it makes for a good hobby for me. If I ever get teh opportunity going to school to become an electrical engineer would be about as much fun as I could possibly have learning something.

I have no hair, ok well a little, I let my girlfriend cut my hair and it ended up badly so I decided to buzz it all off...surprisingly not to bad looking...that is when I asked her to trim behind my ears and she ended up taking a chunk of the buzzed hair out with the clippers, so I just shaved it all off. Now that it is growing back in a little bit and I dont have a tan line at my scalp anymore it doesnt look too bad. I dont expect to keep it this way but everyone seems to think I look tougher with this new do...sure ok....one of my girlfriends friends said I have a vin diesel look now....um, yeah, right....who am I fooling.

Thats about it in a nutshell, its late, im tired, and Im off.

A little trip into my psyche

Sun, 08 Jun 2003 07:55:34 GMT

Ok, here I go again, babbling about how bad life is. So, if your not in the mood to hear me whine about how unsatisfied I am with the events in my life as of present read no more. For the rest of you, you must either be one of my friends or really bored.
I think it is important to emphasize that overall I life is good. Taken in whole I am truely blessed and I realize that it would be so easy for things to be worse for me, on the otherhand I have never been one to settle for the apples life hands to me, rather, I tend to look more for ways I can acquire apples that are more flavorfull than the ones I already have. Lately it seems that some of those apples are comming off of the tree eaten away be insects and rotten. I know that is a horrible analogy but it seems to fit well in this case.
I think that things took a turn for the worst when my eyes got big in the midst of a failing economy. I was presented a job offer that would dramatically increase my income level and set things up for me to start the life I had always invisioned for myself. I was back in college again, I was saving up to buy my first home, and for once my career and my social life were comming together in a nice little package. Unfortunately that ignorant bliss that I had become so content with was shattered when work started dropping off and I got laid off. Looking back now, taking this job was the cause of every bad thing that would be to follow, gone was my job security and gone was the path I laid out for myself, the path that I had hopped would shape the rest of my life. I spent the next 5 or so months supporting myself with the money that I had saved up, ignorantly opting not to pursue unemployment benifits, at the verry moment that my assets were starting to run out I was able to find work again. Needless to say, anyone who has read my Live Journal posts recently will know that that lasted for only one short month, I got fired. I had never been fired before, not outright like that, and let me tell you, that does something to you, especially when you are starting to feel that maybe, just maybe life is getting back on track. So, I am back at it again. This time I am going to swallow my pride, as painfull as it may be, I have registered for unemployment and should be recieving benifits soon. At the same time as it pains me to admit that I am in a position where I can no longer provide for myself, it is a relief to know that at least I will have somewhat of a financial saftey net. I have still been desperately searching for employment, and it appears that nothing has changed in the month that I was employed, the market is stil horrible, and the job prospects are bleak at best.
In this time I have had to make sacrifices, I have had to force myself to be ignorant of things I would have checked up on, forcing myself to assume that things are as right as they should be. Now I am faced with the possibility and the consequences that maybe things have slipped too far and maybe I have backed myself into a position that I can not simply allow to pass, without facing consequences that I just never expected I would ever surface. All this uncertainty, the consequences that I may soon have to face for my actions, or innaction as it may be are accumulating faster and faster. The thoughts that keep me awake at night, the thoughts that keep me at my computer into the morning hours night after night in hopes that keeping my mind busy will stop me from thinking about the things that troubling me have broken through. No manner of distraction can seem to hold my emotions at bay today. Maybe I am not comfortable with my own emotions, Im not sure. What I do know is that alone at night, in the quietness of my bedroom I begin to loose my ability to keep my pain at bay. Despite my intentions several tears manage to slip out before I get a chance to compose myself, and what is left is not the man that I had become but a frightened boy once again. I have always felt compelled to write down my fealing whenever I am emmersed in them in this way, It provides a certain ammount of therapy for me that is hard to acquire in any other form. It probably wouldn't hurt me to open these things up with my girlfriend, but when I communicate my feeling to a real person I feel weak and the levity of matters is so much more real to me. When I am at a keyboard, or sitting down with a pen and paper I can somehow let the emotions flow that way, through my fingers as words or drawings and it affords me some comfort.
Well, that was certainly alot more personal and deep than I was planning for, and its hard to resist the temptation to delete this post, but perhaps some day in the future when i am feeling down I can come back to this and it will be a comfort, perhaps then I will be able to look back and appreciate how the events unfolded and count my blessings that things were not any worse, for now, this will have to do.

eh

Tue, 27 May 2003 01:53:38 GMT

Well, I havent written in this thing in awhile, I have actually been a little one-tracked in my online activity lately, but I am getting into my normal swing of things. Im gonna hit a couple of topics so Ill break it up into paragraphs.

Well, I got fired the other day, so I am unemployed again. Aparently the company I was working for want somebody that has more experience in architecture. Thats a bit of bull because they knew my experience level before I started and the week before I got canned I heard the president of the company talking about outsourcing their drafting work. Oh well, It has made me decide to start looking at things a little differnetly.

So, I think I am going to find a job that works around college rather than get a college that works around my job. I figure now I dont have too much to loose, and I have decided to go to school where I wanted to in High School, It is about time I start following my dreams rather than my unrewarding career. So, I am going to enroll in Antonelli College for commercial art. Hopefully start writing comic books, if even only on the side.

I am also glad to hear that my buddy Zach is seeing more and more of the light every day. He may never get around to admiting that he is a conservative but he is starting to see the reasons that I am conservative. My problem is that people are afraid to call themselves conservatives because of some ridiculous stereotypes that have been pushed on us. People need to realize that special interest groups are going to destroy this country if nothing else does. It seems that you cant do anything without offending somebody, who no doubt either has a lobbyinst or a lawyer, and guess what, they are certainly not conservatives...however conservatives are not about hating minorities or special interest groups, but rather that everyone should have a completely level playing field, and come on people, let the stupid little things go, Hasnt anyone ever heard the expression having broad shoulders before. I guess it is going to be up to my generation to fix the ridiculous situation that the baby boomers and early gen Xers got us into. I have had enough personally.

I guess thats it.

The material girl and her playmates

Sat, 10 May 2003 03:20:53 GMT

Back to the music sharing issue again. I was just hearing how Madonna has put up on the fileswapping services a little message blasting her fans that try to download her music, that appears to be her song but is instead a nice little lecture about stealing from her. Is this not the woman who just was under fire about a song blasting the materialistic ways of America? Laying to waste her "Material Girl" persona for one of divine humility, or something like that? Now, I think that it is funny that the same artists that will tell you that American corporations are evil because they grub money hide behind record labels and the RIAA. There was once a time when the record industry hated the radio because it meant that people could listen to their music for free, now they do everything they can to get airtime so that they can get heard. When video recorders came out the MPAA complained that people could copy videos and rip them off, they lost their battle and now they make a killing on video sales. Companies like Apple computer have thought ahead. Digital music is not going anywhere. Ever. So it only makes since to provide something like apple has that you can download the music for a buck and you do not have to deal with the crap songs tha bands seem to put on an album as filler. I think that this is good because it will force musicians to produce good albums instead of a single hit and a bunch of crap songs. Now what is also an interesting point is that the artists that are really complaining the most, Madonna, Dr. Dre, Metalica, etc. are the artists that have their own stake in record labels, not the acts that have to tour for their money. Courtney Love, Billy Corgan etc. actually make most of their money from touring, maybe Metalica should try the same, instead of sending junior henchman Lars out to whine. Nothing says great heavy metal to me like a whiney millionare.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that noboby should be making money off of artists work without the artist being compensated, and I surely believe that people have the right to make a buck, I just have a problem with people that will whine and complain and sue children rather than adapting to change. I am sure that me and just about everyone else that is a music enthusiast still buys music via cd. I just bought the White Stripes new album and I am glad that I did. Having the original album is a great thing, especially if you accidentally pull a fdisk /dev/hdd1 and trash everything on your drive that has all your mp3's, videos, etc. Not that I am bitter. (fyi, fdisk is what you use to format a disk in linux)

President Flyboy....

Thu, 08 May 2003 01:22:12 GMT

Ok, so if you haven't already heard, some in the Democratic party are questioning the cost of the President landing on that Aircraft Carrier a few days ago. Please. You can not tell me that they have so little to attack that they will go after this. I swear if he stopped up the toilet too often some liberal senator would be able to put a twist on it that he is wasting a record number of dollars on Whitehouse maintnance. It was an extremely powerfull scene, it was extremely presidetial, and it was an excellent moral boost for our troops. I believe whole hartedly that some liberals are grasping at straws because they are upset at a couple of things. One that George W. Bush is even in the Whitehouse and secondly that he is proving them wrong without question. It has been shown that the American people overwhelmingly agree with him on most of his issues, and especially with the war, and they must do anything that they can to try and discredit him. To me this comes down to what Zach would call "freedom fries" I think it is time that poloticians on both sides pay attention to the issues and stop fabricating things just because they are bored sitting in that big building listening to reports while they drift off into their little fairy tail land. Get a clue, the American people are finnally seing things for the way that they are. Democrats need to stop being whinney babies on trivial issues, and stop making themselves look like bafoons in front of the American people. The Republicans need to stop pandering to Liberals because it is clear that the people are for the "Compasionate Conservatism" values that the president ran on. Even George W. is pandering to the Democrats on a couple issues. He needs to realize that no matter how a liberal senator or congressman feels they are going to vote with solidarity and their is nothing he is going to be able to do to sway them. Only Republicans seem to bicker back and forth about issues. Not withstanding their are several liberals and conservatives that historically vote with the other party, I am talking about the general populations

How much email do you get? +RETRACTION

Tue, 06 May 2003 01:19:44 GMT

PLEASE SEE RETRACTION BELLOW THIS POST

-----------------------------------------------------
I just read a nice little article on slashdot.com today about the proposal Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford about how we can manage to cut back on spam. Tax. Thats right, tax emails to the tune of 1 cent per letter. Hmm. according to the article the average person would pay about $10 dollars a year for email. That dosent sound to bad right, well not so fast, I have 5,729 emails downloaded right now. I subscribe to a couple of mailing lists, and community forums, and I delete my emails roughly one a month or more. Not only that I subscribe to User groups lists at work where people exchange tips and ideas related to my industry, at about 40 or so emails a day that I am sure I would have to pay for if it were taxed to my company, meaning an additional 1240 emails a month. all of a sudden my $10 a year is, well $836.28 Now, I might be able to afford high speed internet access and I might be able to afford all of the top of the line hardware, but there is no way that it would be economically fesable for me to pay more in email tax than I got back in my income tax return this year. I already pay taxes on my ISP service, I paid taxes on my computer, and some people even pay for the software that gets the email, not to mention some people have no choice but to use free email accounts like hotmail. Frankley, I do not mind the spam I get, I can live with it, and as a matter of fact I can filter it away if I wanted to. The bandwidth that it takes up is minimal in comparison to the other things that I download and even so, I am paying for the bandwidth. What anybody who agrees with this Ivy League lunatic should realize is this. There is a whole sub culture of advanced internet users, hackers, crackers and the likes. I happend to be a hacker myself to some degree, but not of the notorious "black-hat" hackers that you hear so much about, destroying systems and bankrupting companies, simply I am somebody that enjoys computers and uses them to their full ability. But I warn now that us white-hat hackers, the ones who cause no problems, the ones that have not broken through the security of some unsusepcting website will change their hats, I will. I hope that Lawrence Lessig feels that the piece of paper that the telecommunications act is written on is strong enough to protect him from the wrath of every hacker in the country, the millions that view slashdot.com already know who to blame. And I wil take a stand, at any cost It will be my only thought to fight anybody who supports this proposed law, and make sure that they dread turning their computer on every morning. This is MY manifesto

PS, here is Mr Lessig's email address, so you can give him a little unsolicited email of your own, telling him exactly how you feel.

--------------------------------------------------

Ok, I can admit when I am wrong, I sent off an inflamed email to Mr. Lessig, and he informed me that it was not his proposal that suggested that email be taxed. Rather it was a proposal by a couple of Senators, I owe Mr. Lessig an appology and have sent him one via email as well. But, this is being proposed and the same thing applies. I will leave the original post in tact, just to prove what a weenie I have been on this issue.

Ok, what is he doing now.

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 03:30:25 GMT

So, in the time that George W. Bush has served as President I think I have disagreed with him twice. The first thing I had an issue with was his former stance on a fairly open door policy with Mexico. What was he thinking! Now granted, 9/11 and the Iraq war have put the kabosh on this, but really, I think we need to be closing more doors than opening them, but with respect he has dropped the issue and since has even warned Castro to keep his people off of makeshift rafts or be held accountable. Today President Bush announced a plan to spend a ton of money in Africa fighting AIDS. Now don't get me wrong, the 80% rate of AIDS in Africa is a sad situation but due to the nature of how AIDS is spread, and due to the the fact that we have problems here in America as well I think that money could be better spent...at least not spent at all, maybe given back to us. Over all the President has been doing an excellent job, he has cut taxes a bit, faced down terrorists groups, brought about the fall of Saddam's Iraq, and worked hard for more tax cuts, education reform, social reform, and now even more vigorous tax cuts in his effort to revitalize the economy. He is not wasting a moment, addressing and pressing issues as soon as the time was appropriate, but this latest one seems to be more a compromise than anything else. The thing is, this plan, that would also give American dollars to African families that take in a child that is of parents that would die (could you imagine the fraud) but it is almost verbatum what a Liiberal Extremist (I forget her name) has already proposed. Is he trying to capture the support of African Americans? What exactly is his plan? I do trust his judgement but what exactly is he pushing this for? I dunno, I kinda hope that this gets smacked down in the senate, but we have people like my Senator here in ohio, Vonovich, who seems to be against a large tax cut. I swear sometimes I wonder wether we are just playing polotics in these maters or weather they could possibly have their heads of the rearends this much (speaking of my dear Senator of course) He'll what kind of republican is he exactly. On the lighter side Clear Channel Communications is being accused of conspiring with Newt Gingrich and the Republicans for a large conspiracy to monopolize every market and push the conservative agenda, said to be spear headed by Rush Limbaugh himself. LOL, the sad thing is people will believe this and not even question the fact that Rush Limbaugh had no affiliation with Clear Channel yet when all this was supposed to be happening. Sheesh, here we go again.

This is new

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 00:45:04 GMT

Well I am certainly living in a differnet world than I was two weeks ago. My sleep schedule has been completley disrupted (fortunately I fill up a 52oz container of Mt. Dew each morning) and I have been tired alot lately, especially since I have been running non-stop with no time to rest at all for a week and a half. But things are settling down and I like my job alot. Thats all I really have to post, rather uneventull, Im a bit bussy being a grown-up again.

First Day

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 03:40:57 GMT

Ok, yes, for anyone who has noticed the music I have selected it is PM Dawn's Patient Eyes, I have a bit of a soft spot for mid 90's R&B :) Dosen't really look good in my cd collection next to Nirvana and the White Stripes, and I am pretty sure my Ozzy CD has kicked the crap out of my Boys 2 Men CD but oh well that is not the point of this entry, and yes Motown Philly did rock!

Anyway, I had my first day at work today and it was awesome, I was a bit tired from changing my sleep schedule back but over all it was a good experience, I look forward to working at this company....thats really all I wanted to post, it was kinda cool that I drove right by Zack on the way into work and we got to talk a bit at the traffic light, our cars were lined up and stopped next to each other in differnet directions..hehe.

I guess my disc-golf game is going to go to heck

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 21:29:24 GMT

Ok, Im pretty happy right now, but I am sure this is going to effect my disc-golf throw. You see, I like to go disc-golfing during the day with my friend Mike. But tommorow I have to go to work :) Yup, you heard me right I finnaly was able to get a job. I will be doing drafting work, although not electrical it will be in the architectural discipline, and later that will be able to earn me much more money than being an electrical designer. So here is the deal. The company is an excellent company, the first time I interviewed I knew that I wanted to work there, and they were rated "Architects of the year" in 1999. They are giving me full medical benifits, 401k/matching, and good vacation and bonus plans. I will be initially making less money than I was at PEDCo but they will re-evaluate how much they can pay me in six months, so I am pretty stoked, and the pay cut still puts me in really good position to start getting on with my plans. So maybe I can stop grovelling in this LiveJournal and start putting some happier posts in :) Ok, enough of my gloating and stuff, I have a nice celebratory dinner planned!

What a great day today was!

Sat, 12 Apr 2003 04:09:14 GMT

Well, my wining and moaning about how bad I was feeling for myself last night (or actually early this morning) is a completley differnet feeling than I am having today. Today my girlfriend unvailed her birthday present for me, and it was great. It started with lunch, she made some of her really good burritio's and then we were off to newport on the levee to see the movie Old School. It was a really funny movie, and when it was over we still had some time to kill so we stopped into gameworks and spent that time playing ski ball and that basketball game with the moving backboard. From there we went to Redfish, a really nice creole restaraunt downtown, they had excellent food and I had always wanted to go. From there we went to the Great American Ballpark for the single best baseball game of my life. Before the game even began it began for me, the new ballpark is amazing. We went into the main enterance and saw the brick paver with my brothers name engraved on it, a birthday present I got him two years ago, and headed inside to our seats. Our seats were isle seats near 1st base on the first base line, we were only 6 rows back! The Reds were playing excellent baseball, I got to see some great home runs and then Kate pointed to the gigantic scoreboard to have me look at it. Well, she somehow got them to put "Happy 22nd birthday Jason, Love Kate" up on that thing! That was awesome! Towards the end of the ballgame they started to play some garbage baseball and the Phillies were able to come back and then get a run on us. Now, just as I was starting to thing that Bob Boone messed the game up royaly they ended up winning with a two run home run in the bottom of the ninth by Austin Kearns! Wow! What a great day!

1 year older

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 05:47:08 GMT

Just to prove that there is more than me than my political ramblings, and the fact that I could use an outlet here comes some of the stuff that has been going through my mind lately. I feel a little uncomfortable showing my cards like this but I think it may do me some good to get it all down.

The yesterday of 2 hours ago was an excellent day, filled with great gifts and good friends. I have been on a bit of a birthday high all day, My brothers selfless act giving a birthday gift to me with his own money (that he got from my grandparents for his birthday that will be hear in 12 days) was extremely touching to me. He is only 14 right now, and he only gets money when he can 'con' it out of my parents as we joke, and him giving me all but 10 dollars of his birthday money makes me greatfull to have a brother that cares about me the way he does. I ended up with some really good gifts, but the things that made me the happiest were the little things. My mom made this tea that she hasn't made in years for me, that she knows I like alot. The birthday cake was chocholate just like I like. My friend Mike showed up for a little while even though he has barely slept in the last two days and had classes right after he left. I went to Friday's with my grandmother for lunch! I haven't done that since I was around 13. My girlfriend came over, and she had gotten me tickets to the reds game that is later today, and gave me a card that said so much to me that I had to hold back getting misty eyed. These things have made my 22 birthday a verry happy one.

It seemed that it all passed when the clock struck midnight. I was alone again with my thoughts, and crashed from my euphoria like coming down from caffine that has kept you up all night. The absense of friends. One in Japan, the other who does not seem to care about anything anymore, and whom I have not seen in months. For some reason I made the mistake of looking at college courses online today and was overwhelmed with the feeling that achieving college will not only be extremely hard but I may never end up with that 4 year degree that I always dreamed of, and that I will be where I am in life forever. But again, it moslty comes down to the things that keep me staring at my computer, keeping me starring at my computer screen, watching the television, creating an insomnia that feeds on my overwhelming feeling of loss. I know its petty, but the impact of me loosing my job...way back in november, has been tremendous. Every single plan that I had, The steps in the right direction that I was taking, and the fact that almost all of my goals seemed reachable for the first time was gone. It is really a kind of heartbreak to watch your dreams swallowed up in dissapointment. For 6 months I was on top of the world. I was ready to buy a condo, a place of my own that I would own, I made a strict budget and for the first time in my life I would have been able to not only live independantly but to make little to no sacrifices to do it. I was actually for 6 short months making more money than most people in their 40's. And now, well I can not find a job in my field at all, I feel stuck in my parents house, and money is no longer comfortable. I think about that maybe I should have not left my previous employer, The owner of the company was one of the best guys you could ever meet, but I wanted more, I wanted to expand my experience, and paycheck. I had a secure job, and gave it up for a job that did not even last until Thanksgiving. in a way I realize that I was would be cheating myself and my previous employer by not expanding my experience, and being forced into a postition to learn more and discipline my self better, I did not want to become another washed up and burned out draftsman like many others before me. But still, the fact that I had a good job that paid well and had great security and I left all that for this burns in the back of my mind.

Its a little odd that by day I am a happy optomistic person, scouring the classifieds in hopes to find that job again that could get my plans back on track. Happy to be with friends and family, and friendly to people whom I have never met, even now, reading the second paragraph of this post, and dwelling on those things makes it impossible not smile. But at night when I am all alone the echoing of the third paragraph is what keeps me up at night feeling this enormous loss of things I once took for granted. I know that every thing will work itself out eventually but for now I guess Ill just play things by ear. And no, I am probably not nearly as depressed as this post would make me out to be!

Freedom in Iraq

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:29:40 GMT

I feel ecstatically about the news today from Iraq. If anybody has even looked at the news today they know why. Looking at the newly liberated people in Iraq today, watching the statue of Saddam fall with disgrace, and the joy in the people thanking President Bush and the Uninted States is awe inspiring. It is a humbling reminder of our responsibility as the super power that we are. Many people have announced their shame of this great country but today I am prouder than ever to be an American. This war is not over yet, but for many their world has gotten infinately better. The sad thing that still looms is the caution that the world has of America's intentions. I think that it is important that we show people that are warry of America's intentions how great a country we are, that we do not exploit this country but allow it to grow. The worst thing we can do now is blindly hand it over to the UN to be exploited. I think the people that live in the oppressed countries of this world wil see freedom as an attainable dream. But with a stern warning I see on the television representitives from other countries fearing that they may be next, wondering what America will have in store for them. My only thought to that is good. If you do not know what America has in store for you then chances are you time is comming soon. Iraq has all but completely fallen, and anyone else who wishes to oppose america should feel great fear as to what will happen to them, especially since they now know that their citizens will be on our side.

Here is a thought

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 00:45:22 GMT

I have heard so much about how the cultrue in the middle east is differnet than ours and it is not a place we should stick our heads in. I have heard this from pundits on the television, I have read it on websites, and I have even heard it form people I know. It's all that same bull about how evil western civilization is and how we want to force our evil ways on to everyone else. Well, today Marines entered and released a group of 100 children that were political prisoners. They ran out hugging and kissing the Marines who liberated them and were greated by their greatfull families. Elsewhere in Iraq a man suspected of being a member of the Fedayeen (Iraqi sucicide terrorists, for lack of a better description) was beaten down by the no longer opressed people. This is what happens when people are oppressed. They are clearly showing that they enjoy freedom just like everybody else in the world, and we should be proud of ourselves for the work we have done in this country so far, especially since it appears we have now found some of these "non-existent" weapons of mass destruction.

Depressing little Story

Sun, 06 Apr 2003 15:41:53 GMT

Ok, this is depressing. My birthday is in like 5 days from now on the 10th. And I just got an email that there is going to be a memorial in the newspaper for an old friend of mine who killed himself on the 10th, 1 year ago. Now granted he did not know that he was killing himself on my birthday but I am so sick and tired of giving a shit. Steve was a good guy, he was not a great guy, but he had issues, and was not as strong as people had thought. And frankly I don't care anymore. He was the idiot and from now on my group of friends (who I barely even talk to anymore) associate my birthday with the day Steve killed himself. To be completely honest, If we could bring Steve back from the grave like Lazarus or something my first order of business would be to beat the crap out of him, Im sick of hearing about it! He was weak, selfish, misguided, and now dead, and he did it on my birthday. I wonder if it is healthy to feel this kind of resentment over somebody who is not alive anymore. On the bright side I may get to hear stories of just how bored and lonely my friends are, and how they swear up and down they can feel Steve's presence and all that "lets make it about me" bull crap. Oh well, I guess I am done with my rant now

What is a conservative -- The major issues

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 05:07:02 GMT

Ok, I had a conversation with a good friend of mind who was surprised at some things that he thought were conservative issues but where actually not, so I am going to try to make a short list for everybody of what things being a conservative means, and a little why for each one. I start off with the most agregious of them.

1. Abortion. Yes, this is a really heated issue but conservatives usually disagree with this heatedly. But why. No it is not a matter of womens rights at all, in fact if I remember correctly the child is created using the father as well. I know that some times it seems to us that a child would be better off not being born but that is not really our decision to make. Now if the life of the parent and the baby are a concern then that is a different story, but conservatives do not believe that it is the choice of the mother to end her childs life, or poteintial life. Statistically more abortion advocates are men and not women by an overwhelming number, mostly because of men not wanting to take responsibility for the life they brought into this world. And no matter what women who have abortions, and even men that have their child aborted, suffer horrific mental distress and regret for their entire lives as a result.

2. The death penalty. Nearly all conservatives support the death penalty. but why? Well it is in fact a known deterant against crime, no matter what you say to anyone if you know that the crime that you are going to get will end up with you getting executed then you will tink twice before you do it. Especially if the executions were more public. Another thing to think about is the family of the victom. It is hard to know that somewhere out there the person who murdered your loved one is alive, how would you feel if it happened to you? By the way I have seen studies that suggest people who commit capitol offenses do not think about the death penalty as a consequence, what I would like to see are the statistics for the people who did and decided against it, nobody is going to come out and say "oh yeah, I was going to kill my wife but didn't"

3. The right to bear arms. Yet another heated debate. In the Bill of Rights the right to bear arms is clearly stated. This is coupled with the right to form militias. The primary reason other than simple self defence is so that if the government gets out of hand the citizens can overthrow it, and technically our government was designed to be overthrown every so many years to keep things fresh, but that has never had to happen fortunately. In states that had allowed concealed carry crime has gone down. And to be honest if I were in a postition where my family or my life was in jeapordy I would be glad to have saved them if it meant shooting the person that has tried to harm them. And, law obiding citizens that register their firearms are generally not the people responsible for the firearm related homicides, those people are what we would call criminals. And for the record the hollywood type that are outspoken on this, they do not travel to bad neighborhoods, and they have body guards who carry guns, why should the be so privelaged?

4. God. This country, and I know people try their hardest to refute it, was founded by forefathers who believed in God and founded the country with God in mind. The seperation of church in state was a statement meaining that the FEDERAL government could not designate a national religion. It was designed so that people could choose what religion they wanted to worship freely. I am certain that is why this country has been blessed as it has. It does not matter who your god is you have the right to worship them, and tolerance does not mean you have to agree with something at all, or accept it as truth, it just means that you are not going to burn somebodys house down or beat them to death because of it. With this in mind their is not mention that Religion is to be abscent in government. In the contrary the constitution and many statemtents made by the forefathers have expressed the neccessity for God. It was just to protect God from the country.

5. Affirmative Action/etc. For the last bloody time! conservatives are not racist! Senator Bird the ex KKK member is a democrat remember. We are fortunate to have a country that recognized the problem with slavory and ended it (Lincoln was a republican, and I don't want to hear any garbage about he just did it because it was the popular thing to do, he pissed off half the country and the other half barely cared, then he got shot for it.) But the world is a differnet place. It is true that some white people are still ignorant bigots but so are some black people. ( As a personal note I resent the term african-american, Im just white, not caucasion-american and nobody means it with ill intent.) We can not have the government saying that by in large black people are not as good as white people so we have to give them special breaks. That is ridiculous. The only way that we will get an even playing field is by allowing people to get over this whole black/white issue and realize its just a friggin pigment of skin! But, you can not expect this to happen is people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are throwing it in white peoples face all the time. And, there is a serious sub-culture problem amoung the major minorities that convince its members that getting an edjucation is bad, and not acceptable. This one really irritates me. I do not see why people have not just gotten over it by now, for heaven sakes, its a skin tone and hair type and thats it! But I think in 10-20 years we should have this under control as well, or at least I sure hope. If it makes anybody feel better my anscestory is American Indian and Irish, we were bigoted against, murdered, and forced into endentured servatude throughout history, and no I do not want reperations. To top it off I can't tan and get sunburned easily :) You would think I could have gotten the American Indian pigmentation!

6. Economics. Ok Regan was a genious on this one, and i know that some people think that trickle down economics does not work, but it does, and that is why the economy was a strong as it was just a short few years ago. The overall economy depends on what companys and the insanely rich do with their money, that is what happens in a capitolist economy. And now the stock market has fallen drastically. Giving companies incentives to create their procucts better and more cost-efficiently is a definate plus, so few of us can be business owners, and have to work for a company of some sort. The more money they have to pay the government means the less money they have to pay you! And if you look at the money, the lower class barely pays anyting in the way of taxes compared to the way upper class. And I mean barely nothing. Generally the people who are complaing about not getting tax breaks are paying less than 500 dollars a year in taxes, most do not get everything back! Its the middle class and up that are getting the screws twisted on them. Tax cuts are an excellent idea all around. Why? because the government has more money than it knows what to do with so it spends it all on ridiculous things, I am not going to name them here but you should look at the budget some time and what these things pay for. If art was so good people would pay to see it willingly, not be forced to pay for it through the government. Also, the economy is controlled by wall street period. when the stock market is down that means that the economy will be down, cutting taxes on stock trades gives traders incentive to trade and therefore gets money flowing and trading going. I for one made a comfortable middle class income last year and feel that I got messed over by taxes that are going to some of the stupidist programs and I feel that everyone should get a tax break, even the rich, I am not going to be bigoted against them just becasue they worked their butts off, and were blessed. And we do not need to just throw money at problems becasue it makes us feel better. No, we need to have actual humans caring for people, and about things for anything good to happen. We have been throwing money at our problems for decades and they problems just seem to get worse, that should be a wake up call.

7. The Iraq war/Global Diplomacy. We have been spending so much of our money doing the bidding of the UN, and when it comes time for them to back us they all turn their noses up at us. Keep in mind that the free countries of this world largely agree with us, and the UN is made up of many countries that are rulled by dictators and communists. The UN is not the government of the Uninted States, My constitution does not mention the UN anywhere, and we will not be rulled by what they say. The entire fiasco was an excersize to see if the UN was even valid anymore, and its not. We have a clear threat in Iraq, the cards have been laid out on the table, and the people of Iraq are suffering badly under Saddam's hands. It was time for action and the UN was clearly not going to take it. It is funny how we get sucked into wars like Korea and Vietnam because of the UN and never do anything productive, but In Iraq and Afghanastan we have has clear objectives and are carrying them through. Personally I could not care what France thinks of us and I am disapointed in Germany, but they have stakes in Saddam staying power. Not to mention they are worried about the Euro being effected by the war. By the way, Saddam is nuts. He is a true mad man and is not going to be talked into giving up his country or turning over incriminating evidence out of the goodness of his heart. He is a violent man, and as such can only be dealt with by violence. It is a sad fact but that is the only thing that some people can understand. I am an optomist but not naive enouh to believe that everybody has good intentions, or that genocide is a legitimate part of a culture.

8. A small Federal Government. This is probably the most important issue for most conservatives. The Federal government is just way too big. It has gotten out of hand and the smaller the government is the better. The best form of government is one that could disapear and unless we have need for the military we would not know it was there. The ferderal government has made laws that make it imposible for states to do things because of the need for federal dollars, and as such found a loop hole in distributive powers. The Federal government has outlined responsibilies and should stick too them, allowing the states to make decisions for themselves. The government should not be preventing people from being idiots. We should all just let the idiots do idiotic things and maybe they will learn their lessons, if not at least they can get themselves removed from gene pool :) I do not like the government telling me what to do for my own saftey, If I am dumb enough to get onto a motorcycle without head protection why worry about saving that head. Let people make their own decisions and they will come to the right ones, its all about having faith in people. It is not the governments place to censor what our children see, its parents that are responsible for doing that. If parents spent more time being parents then we would not have half the problems we have today.

That is all I have time for I am exhausted. I know I could have been more clear on some things but I am tired give me a break :) But maybe I gave a better insight as to what a conservative thinks, I dunno

More idiots

Wed, 02 Apr 2003 00:42:37 GMT

Ok, how many more people are going to show themselves to be complete morons. The more I see people who I had thought were hopelessly lost in a naive optomism turning to a more conservative stance on this war the more idiots I see popping up. Who is it this week you ask. None other than the Material Girl herself, Madonna. This woman is absolutely out of her mind. First of all, remember one thing, she left america and moved to europe with her husband, so its not like she is even much of a citizen. Now with her new song "American Life" she starts bashing the American way of life and the American Dream. As far as I am concerned this enough for me to tell her to take a hike, but no, she could not stop there. Drudge Report leaks out that she (meaning her label) just yanked her new video from hitting the American market, but it is already available in Germany so we get to see what this wench is all about anyway. Her video depicts her and her dancers in military uniforms, transvestites in military uniforms, a mushroom cloud with the faces of "innocent" Iraqi children in it, and to top it all she tosses a grenade at a President Bush look-alike. Now this takes the cake, and for the record the song stinks. I have started to listen to Madonna a little bit (Ok really she is my girlfriens favorite singer and I get stuck with listening to her) but now I don't want to hear anything she has ever done. It tuns my stomach to think that somebody that has been blessed as much as she has by the support of America alone could bash it in such a way, and Michael Moore says President Bush should be ashamed. On the bright side it is still comforting to know that there are more anti-anti-war protests than usual for a war and I am hoping that this hollywood marxistness backfires on these idiots and they find their albums and movies bombing more than US is on Bagdad.

Mon, 24 Mar 2003 04:19:02 GMT

I remember a time, but only thorugh old move clips and pictures, of a Hollywood that loved America and supported it with pride in our hardest of times. I visited the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Museum today and watched a clip of Bob Hope spending his Christmas in Siagon raising the morale of our troops. Tonight, as our troops are 100 miles from Bagdad hollywood's elite are safe here in America, celebrating themselves. I have all but given up on changing anybodys mind who does not already see what we are facing. Some people can not be swayed by anything but force, it comes from a life of hardening, and anyone that would chop somebody up for giving them advice that they do not like, and sending the pieces to the widow is not somebody that is going to have their minds changed by diplomacy.

As Rush would say, "See I told you so".....

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 22:53:34 GMT

Well, we are deep into the war right now, Most of Bagdad's military and govenmental buildings are not standing anymore and The President and other conservatives have been proven extremely right, pardon the pun. Today I have seen something that makes all of it worthwhile, Pictures on the news of Iraqis dancing in the streets, pulling down large portraits of their dictator and shaking the hands of the soldiers who have liberated them. All this comming of course after Iraq manages to shoot some scud missles into Kuwait (mostly intercepted) that they have told us they do not have. If they were not intentially lying I would really like to know how they motivate their employees at their missle producing facilities, because they built them awefully fast. If you are not convinced now then you just don't get the big picture. Iraq soon will be a free country, The world will soon be more secure, and the steps to stabalizing the middle east are greatly under way, not to mention that our stock market is soaring now that we have minimized a threat. This has been the best stock day since I believe they said 1986, huh, how bout that. What makes things even better is that the Americans that support the war have shown themselves to be a great number, and the protesters a small group. What is important here is that The President knew what was the right thing to do, the congress overwealmingly backed him, and although they put up a bit of an argument later they backed him again once the war started. It is a day we should be proud to be Americans, that we can bring freedom to the oppressed and security to the war. God Bless America indeed.

Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:23:52 GMT

Anyone who is interested check out this link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/16/wirq16.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/03/16/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=144082 Its all about how Iraqi groups are starting to fight back against Saddam. Just another reassurance that we are doing the right thing.