Should have let him say it....

....He says it best


I don't know what it is, but each time I hear a Reagan speech I get a bit misty eyed. Proud to be born when he was president =)

Thank You, Mr. President

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
Aesop

Thank you Mr. Change...
All I see everyday from your Change is people worried about what's happening next....not because we fear Change, but because we fear the direction this country is headed as we have seen the effects of your "change". People are rising up for the first time in a long time (1770's-ish maybe?) to speak out, but is it doing anything? I hope so. Universal this and that seems to be driving the other way. You take away, for instance, the independent health care companies (those capitalist pigs, right?) you are taking MORE jobs from the people. Because it's not just hitting the corporate big wigs, it's those people that do the small stuff. The people that have no say in your premiums or your coverage, but are just like you, trying to pay their mortgage, put their kids thru school, live the "American Dream". As depressing as this is,there is a new change...a new hope. I see it more and more, with the meetups, with the Project 912 supporters, #tcot and Tea Parties, American's are getting sick and tired. You take away everything from us, we have nothing to lose. I had a lot more I wanted to express, but have you ever been so frustrated you can't? My eyeballs are burning my body is shaking and I can't believe that we have been so blind to what's happening, and, possibly in my own personal world, these "changes" are coming down hard and fast, and not in a good way. So, rather than confuse my words and tangle myself up while I'm still seething, I'll let others speak for me till I can control the words.


"You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."
Abraham Lincoln
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
James Arthur Baldwin

“Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose”
Baltasar Gracian quotes

“We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.”
George Orwell

“The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbeliever, having everything to gain and nothing to lose”
Lord Byron

"Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair."
George Burns

"Put not your trust in princes."
Psalm 146. 3

Top Five Fav Movies of the 90's

I've been on a nostalgic kick lately...it happens, usually in the summer and around my birthday, so I was well prepared this time. Sometimes it can kick me in the shins....it hurts remembering how much fun summer vacations were when there was no bills, no work, no worries. My brother and I would stay up until 3 or 4 every night watching Nick at Night (remember when they showed OLD shows? Now they show shows that were popular in the 90's in which I speak) sleep in, swim, and watch MTV all afternoon (remember when they shows MUSIC videos?) Throw a few movies in there, bike rides, friends and boys, and that was my summers growing up. Pretty perfect. I always wanted to be a writer when I grew up (I'm still growing up I guess) and would lose myself in the fantasy of the movies. Maybe it was that imagination that created my own stories about the movies. Each of these on this list represents something I wanted: Either a character I wanted to see more of in myself, a lifestyle I wished to live, even if just a little while, or a character I wanted to know in real life. The fantasy was fun, it was encompassing, it was my own escapism from the recent death of my mother.....So here goes
My Top Five Fav Movies of the 90s

1.) Now and Then-the characters were me and my gang of girls. The boys were the boys we chased around, who chased us back. The at home dramas struck a little too close to home sometimes, but the lightheartedness balanced out enough to make the list.

2.)Dazed and Confused-Funny story. Rented this movie 2 weeks after my mom died (obviously not the funny part) I was 12 and if she was still around she never would have gone for it. But God bless my dad he would do anything to make my brother and I happy at this point, so he rented it. My friend and I watched it in the basement of her house while her parents were at work, drinking diet pepsi and getting sugar rushes that made us feel drunk while we danced around to the killer soundtrack. So it wasn't sugar rushes and we just wished we were drunk, but we were 12 and, even if Dad let me WATCH the movie, I knew PARTICIPATING in some of the activities in the movie would get my @$$ kicked.

3.)White Squall-Remember when Scott Wolf was all the rage? Before Lost's Sawyer vs Jack, it was Party of 5's Bailey vs Charlie on the hotness scale. I watched this movie tonite, and didn't realize that, made in 1996, Scott Wolf was born in 1968 making him...thats right...still older than me when this movie was made. Yet, Balthazar Getty (so hot in this movie btw) was born in 1975 making him only 19, but still looking the same age, if not older, than Scott Wolf. Crazy. Guess the last thing I've seen Scotty in was Go-and he still looks about 25 tops. I digress. The true draw of this film was the sea. I've always been happiest when in water-I would sit out for hours in the pool when I was ten or so, curl up in the fetal position w/ my snorkel, and bob around for hours....I've always loved going out on boats any chance i get....and I never feel as at peace as I do when I'm on the shoreline staring at the ocean....so this had to make this list, bittersweet and all. And Jeff Bridges as the Captain makes the movie.

4.) Reality Bites- "hello, you've reached the winter of our discontent" + Ethan Hawke's band + Ben Stiller playing a yuppie tool (not that far of a stretch in my opinion) + Steve Zahn as the recently-out-to-his-parents gay friend=what I expected my friends would be like in my 20s. Because, you know, me and Winona are SOO on the same page and all.

5.)Basketball Diaries-"Your growing up, and Rain sort of remains on the branches of a tree that will Someday rule the Earth, and that's good there is rain, it clears the month, of your sorry rainbow expression, and clears the streets, of silent armies, so we can Dance"-Jim Carroll played by Leonardo Dicaprio. Ah-mazing. I was a complete b-ball nut back in the day so totally related to that part, but this, along with my drug talk w/ my dad, kept me clean. (In case you are wondering, my drug talk w/ my dad was, "I'm not encouraging you to do drugs, but I want you to watch this." he sits me down and we watch Easy Rider. After watching Peter Fonda drop acid and cry to his mother on the statue-I was good. And, in Peter Fonda's memoirs, he states he really did drop acid for that scene, and was crying to his mother for killing herself. My dad's a pretty smart guy diguising his motives and all. I recommend this approach to any parent. sidenote)



So there they are. The movies that shaped my childhood, shaped the amazing eclectic crazy girl you have before you today. I now insist you Netflix them all and report back to me. Or don't and tell me which ones I left off. You decide.

7 Days

The last vacation I went on, that was more than a 3 day venture, was to Disney World the summer I turned 9. 18 years later, I finally take another week long vaca, again to Florida. We stayed in a condo on the beach (when I say we, I mean my dad, step-mom, 11 yr old brother and 6 year old sister...23 yo brother opted not to go) and I woke up every morning to the sound of the ocean.

This picture is of me on the beach after a storm. It was beautiful-the beach was all but deserted, sea creatures of all kinds washing up in the shallow water along the shoreline,and if I looked out just right, keeping the view of hotels scattered up and down the coast out of eyesight, and just focusing on the vacant beach and vast ocean, it was like my own private paradise.

I was only gone a week but it felt in ways much longer. Maybe because I didn't have my computer and was limited on using my cell phone, maybe because something about water has always made me a bit more introspective, maybe because Saturday I turned another year older, but something inside of me seemed to change in those short 7 days. When I got back home, I felt a bit empty inside. I return to a job that doesn't satisfy, friends whom I love but are very much going on different courses than I in their lives, and that feeling I forgot until the moment we hit the beach: How small of a fraction of the world I live in here.

When I took that trip 18 years ago, we had stopped at the beach, and I remember feeling tiny against the backdrop of the sea. I'm older, I'm bigger, but still got that same feeling when I stood against it this time. And that realization that it is a big, big world. One with possibilities. One with opportunity for more than what I live here. I hope that I can somehow harness this feeling into something productive, but fear that with the return to work tomorrow, it will chisel away at my soul once more, and I will regress back to the zombie I was before I left.....

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow....

I'm going on vacation...to the beach....super excited. However, not until today when I checked to see if my ISP is supported in Florida, did I realize I will be without the internet for a whole week. I'm kinda freaking. I think I'll be ok. I'm bringing lots of movies and books and bought the Teach Yourself Chinese game for my Nintendo DS, along with an audio book I downloaded to teach myself Russian. SO I'm sure I'll have lots to say when I get back, but in the meantime, miss me lots :) And feel free to hit me up on FB or Twitter as my trusty phone can easily access those sites.