Thanksgiving

Today is our state-sponsored day of thanks, but we should give thanks everyday!  Be thankful you are alive each morning that you wake up,  thankful that the sun is still shining, that there is a ground beneath your feet, and that there is music and love, and life all around us. Embrace life, live your dreams.  Be thankful for those dreams, or life becomes much less worth living.  Give thanks to Cthulu, or God, or the flying Spaghetti monster, or whatever the heck you worship, or don’t.  Be thankful for other people simply because they are exactly who they are and nobody else, and be thankful for yourself because you are the only one who is you.Be thankful for families, for friends, pets, and animal friends. Be thankful for trees, flowers, cacti, any plants really. Be thankful for all life basically.  Be thankful most of all for the fact that you as a human creature can do pretty much anything as long as you have a mind to spare, because human brains are the best computers around.

POTTER MANIA!

I wrote this down after watching  Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 on DVD:

 

12 years ago on my birthday, I first met the boy wizard.  The Potter craze took a while to heat up around here, and the first three books were already out. I had heard they were good, but nobody told me they were amazing! I was blown away by her attention to detail and it wasn’t just the characters that were fully fleshed out, but an entire wizarding world.  Such wonder such magic, I bulldozed through those books, and couldn’t put any of them down until reading the last word.  And each subsequent release of a book or a movie was greeted by me with such glee that nothing before or since has been able to ignite in me.  I remember a friend of mine being jealous and wishing that she could have had one of JK Rowling’s many ideas herself.  I have so many memories, all the tears and laughter, all the magic, all the wonder, and the characters who I very well feel like I grew up with.  Now that all the books and all the movies are now done, what’s the next thing that can even rival Potter?  Maybe I’ll write it, maybe you will, who knows?  Regardless of who writes it, know that I will be there to compare!  I just have a hard time imagining a child growing up knowing the complete story, not knowing the crazy anticipation that we all had for each new installment.  Jo Rowling has carved a great place in our hearts, in our minds, on our shelves, and even on our televisions.  I know she has said she will not write another book about Harry, but whatever she puts out, I know I need to read it.

-Craig

Keep your dirty laws off of my internet!

A law that would allow us to stop blogging, would allow them to keep us from our free marketplace of ideas that in this modern age we would be so lost without?  The blogosphere, the social networking scene, is so much the life-blood of the youth these days.  This is where we learn the most, live, laugh and cry with strangers and friends alike.  With the lessening of print media, many of us are dependent upon blogs and forums to get our information.  It’s not like we can trust half of the news media.  I have said all of this without even mentioning the unconstitutional nature of such a law, a law which will prevent me from sharing my thoughts and my ideas with my friends, and impede my somewhat limited communications with them?  I think not.  Whoever could even suggest such a law, and anyone who even considers passing it will surely be out of office by time election rolls around.  Chew on that y’all.

11/11/11

It is the day that wishes come true, or at least realized.  Open your heart on this magic day, and let love rule.  If you feel strongly enough about a dream or a wish, don’t give it up.  Even if it causes you hurt when it can not be achieved, the heartache is what shows we are alive.  And as Dumbledore said, “the time has come where we have to choose between what is right, and what is easy!” In matters of the heart, the right way is hardly ever the easy one, given distance between loves, having to work hard to actually get the job or the degree you want, to struggle for your voice to actually be heard over the mob, or what have you. But know this, you will just become a ball of regret, and tremendous rage, if you do not place your heart on the wire. Take a chance, and live, or you will never know if what might have been, actually could have happened.

Cheers,

It is apalling…

It is apalling to me how so many of the toys are still marketed exclusively towards boys or girls.  Dictated by this corporate monster that runs our holidays, is the list of the hottest toys this season. But what’s funny to me about this year’s list is the seemingly lesser numbers of  toys specifically gendered.  So given this fact, it is a bit perplexing to me that they are still split up by boys and girls toys. Especially now. Regardless of these binaries we still foolishly cling to, a child tends to know what they want, and it usually is only enforced after the fact, whether it is suitable to their gender stereotype.  So let’s have the kids pick what is best for them. This binary system although not 100% responsible for it, is a big catalyst in the growing rate of bullying and youth suicide that is plaguing the land.  So yes to more gender neutral toys, but still a big fat no on the marketing of them.  The majority of toys in the boys column are the gender neutral toys, causing the male identity to be completely othered.  And the other side seems to do the opposite, by ascribing stereotypical girl toys to it, but then putting in toys that seem to contradict each other as far as individual tastes may be concerned.  So a new sort of othering ascribed to the females.  And when these kids get older the divide will be worse than it is now, girls alienated from themselves and men alienated from everyone else.  A xenophobia that will bring us back a great deal of years, and I am here to say, let us give our children more choices on how to live their lives, because the dark future needs to be merely one of possible futures.  Those of us with the eyes open will always fight to keep this world a better place.

-Craig

Bullying

Bullying in any form, cyber or in real life, is bullying.  No matter what age or for whatever reason, a bully is still a bully.  If you belittle others to make yourself feel good, if you come in to attack someone and then call them out for feeling threatened because you state “your opinion” you are still a bully.  It is a victim’s opinion that they are being bullied because, it is a fact that they are being bullied.  Let’s help break the hate people.  Be yourself and be proud of that fact.