...*(a bit of a read... but me point is at th' end)*...

Last week, a local grade school caught fire and half burned down. All the kids and teachers got out okay, just a few got a little smoke inhalation.

Then a local store, the Dollar Tree, located at one of shopping malls, Lloyd Center, decided to "help". They announced that people could come in, buy school supplies from them, and then put them in barrels located in the store that would eventually be delivered to the kids at another school building so they could continue their education.

Local new media covered it for about a week on the 5-7 o'clock news, making a big deal on how wonderful the store is for doing all this.

Now, something bothers me about all this. Is it just me, or am I on to something here?

I have nothing with the Dollar Tree store garnering a little free publicity, and I have nothing against them thriving and surviving. (Gawd knows their prices are right.)

But why couldn't the Dollar Tree Store just donate their school supplies to the kids DIRECTLY and not manipulate the public into coming in and buying them first?

Why did they have to PROFITEER off of the school kid's tragedy? And make no mistake about it, it WAS profiteering!

How much trouble would I have gotten into if I had gone to the store, pulled the school supply items off the shelf, and simply walked over to their barrel and dropped them in? Quite a bit, I suspect, escorted out the store, and maybe banned from coming back in for life, one step away from actual "shoplifting" in their eyes, just I'm probably gonna get on their bad side for writing and posting this blog.

But what did they REALLY have to lose by just donating their school supplies directly, getting the media to cover that, and maybe even funneling it thru a non-profit organization to get a tax deduction? Those items sell like hotcakes in August and September, just as the school year is starting, but then they mostly sit on the shelf for the rest of the year.

But no, let's make a buck off of this sudden "tragic opportunity" and make the public pay for it! (And as usual, God bless the public for coming thru, like they always do for everyone in need.)

Dollar Tree is not alone in this self-serving profiteering hypocrisy.

Multi-millionaire actress Sharon Stone was on Letterman a few nights ago squawking about the Aids pandemic caused by a lack of clean water in Africa. She could do like Bono and Bill Gates and just funnel some of her own money (yet another potential tax deduction) to Africa to build hundreds of those inexpensive wells where kids play on a merry-go-round to pump fresh clean water out of the deep African aquifers. But no, so she's selling a line of expensive Jewelry and making yet another fortune to "save the Africans". She failed to fully explain how selling jewelry was gonna funnel any quick money for clean water for Africans and, in the meantime, dirty water is killing babies over there every day, as she pointed out.

Now, I have nothing against Sharon Stone making a big deal of her actually doing something for the Africans. Publicize it and yourself all you want s that you can fill theaters when your next movie comes out. But don't pretend that profiteering off selling Jewelry is gonna accomplish anything faster or better than just going over there yourself and spending some of your own money to build those merry-go round wells yourself. Sure, go on TV and raise even more money for Africa, but selling expensive Jewelry when most people can barely afford a bus ticket across town? Come on!

One last thing:

Here comes another in a series of Teenage Vampire movies, the second in the TWILIGHT series.

That's all fine, I guess.

But what IS it about women and vampires?

It wasn't men who made first Bela Lugosi, then Christopher Lee, and now the latest heart-throb actors world famous for playing well-dressed blood sucking vampires.

It was women.

Just what IS a vampire?

Here's a self-serving dominating thug who seduces and manipulates unsuspecting women into his arms, then cannibalistically bites them in the neck and sucks their blood, while giving them a permanent incurable virus and disease that causes them to avoid all normal social life, end all their former relationships to family and friends, and live a life of blood sucking addiction themselves for the rest of their unending lives.

What a perfect thing to glamorize!

And that's supposed to be "romatic" enough to fill theaters full of young girls who just can't get enough of this idea? Apparently it is, cuz the theaters are filling up with young girls as I write this.

Now, is it any wonder that young boys and men are getting mixed sexual signals from all this?

Is it any wonder that date rapes, and regular rapes, are statistically up at an all time high, because these impressionable guys are led to think that since beautiful young women are flocking to theaters to see some aggressive monster of a man seduce and suck blood from them, and actually enjoying it enough to come back for more when the next sequel or spin-off movie comes out, that just maybe it's then okay for these boys to act in a similar fashion in real life to use their imaginations to "hook up" with these girls in every possible way at every opportunity?

And meanwhile, back in the real world, Earth is loaded with gentle guys who actually listen to what the feminist movement has to say, and as a result, respect women enough to never even think of stooping low enough to immorally aggressively manipulate a woman like that, to the point where most of these noble guys have never been laid at all.

And yet, we call these kind of "whimpy nerdy" guys derogatory names and make fun of them in movies and on TV, while the women watch and laugh and approve of making fun of them, and then they rush back to the theaters to see manipulative vampires sucking their blood.

So it's okay for American business to profiteer off other people's tragedy, and it's okay to treat women like vampire victims?

Is it any wonder our world is so f***ed up and violent in general?

Or is it just me? ☠

Remember, you ARE gonna get real sick and need medical care someday, guaranteed! Something will happen to all of us, regardless of how much we don't want it to happen. No one will "dodge this bullet" and escape some kind of medical problem. It will happen, to me, to you, to everyone..........eventually.

So when it happens, can you afford to pay for it all by yourself? With no price controls keeping medical costs from skyrocketing like they always do?

Or do you like the idea of the medical profession wildly profiteering off your eventual suffering?

If you don't, and you do want a National Health Care System to help you out, then you need to get rid of the Republicans. Because they're the ones holding it back and trying to kill it with every dirty trick they can think of.

It's not the Democrats, it's not Obama, it's not anyone else. It's the Republicans.

They're the ones trying any way they can to KILL it.

Their half-successful dis-information campaign on the internet has easily manipulated the millions of less-intelligent people in this country to actually openly protest the whole idea of a health care plan in the halls of Congress, completely ignoring and still protesting, using the same old rhetoric, despite the fact that the plan doesn't "pull the plug on grandma", and all the other mis-information the Republicans still promote, while they quietly laugh in their offices as all the chaos happens.

And all this controversy about a "Public Option"!

Let me explain it to you in simple terms:

We fought our revolutionary war against England in the late 18th century to gain MORE Freedom.

And we won our Freedom from the British!

So MORE freedom is a GOOD thing.

Which means that LESS freedom is a BAD thing.

A "Public Option" means MORE freedom to choose MORE options on how you use the National Health Care System, if and when it ever comes into existence.

So for us who want (and ALL of us who will NEED) a national health care system, the "Public Option" is a GOOD thing!

I feel like the blind man in his lovely cabin in the dead of winter teaching the Frankenstein Monster the basics of life in the old 1935 film "BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN":

Food: GOOD!

Water: GOOD!

Warmth: GOOD!

Uncontrolled fire: BAD!

Public Option: GOOD!

Republicans: BAD!

So do you get it now?

Or not?

You're dumb as a rock if you're falling for the usual Republican dirty tricks of misinformation and actually protesting the inclusion of a "Public Option" in National Health Care Plan proposals.

That's like going to court for a hard crime you didn't commit and finding yourself guilty and then sentencing yourself to Federal jail forever.

But it gets even worse:

The Republicans have managed to manipulate most moronic people among us into thinking that the Democrats were the problem for our current troubles (like the Republicans have done oh so many times in the past), that some ignorant people actually voted out some Democratic Governors and replaced them with the very people (more Republicans) who are causing the failure of the National Health Care plan in the first place, as if that is gonna solve anything, just as it not only didn't solve anything when Bill Clinton lost his Congressional majority in 1994, but got worse as we watched six years of Republican harassment via a set-up sexual scandal that exploited Clinton's weakness for women, while Clinton was manipulated into signing bills that outsourced even more American jobs, and Gingrich's "Contract On America" cut off food stamps for millions of poor people who needed them the most.

Now the Republicans are using the same dirty tricks to manipulate the uneducated ignorant, trying to cut off any future hope of a National Health Care plan so that their big business puppet-masters can be even more free to raid the national treasury and plunge America into even more economic and social despair.

It's so sad to see that about half the country is so incredibly stupid (yes, I said stupid) that they're so easily led like sheep to NOT want something that could actually benefit most of them, that it's just sad to see almost the whole "system" fall apart like the gradually crumbling Roman empire, apparently forever.

And so the passage (only just barely) of the National Health Care bill in the House is, so far, dead on arrival in the Senate.

And, yes, I know the Democrats are only slightly less corrupt than the Republicans, but at least the Democrats occasionally give a little bit of [censored] about the American people enough to pass some social reform programs once in a awhile, while the Republicans would get rid of ALL of them if they could, so if, when, and until America ever wises up completely and puts in an all independent government, finds a way to ban the big business lobbyist system entirely, outlaw the outsourcing of American jobs (including retroactively), promote the formation of world-wide labor unions (but only those free of their own brands of multiple corruption that has aided our current unions to be so easily reduced to nothing by business management), and sets up an election system in which the person with the most fundraised money doesn't always win, the Democrats are the lessor of two big-business-controlled evils.

NOW: If you're smarter than the people I describe above, and you DO realize that ALL of us are going to get seriously sick and need affordable medical care someday, and you DO want a National Health Care system, then you need to do every legal thing you can to get rid of ALL Republicans in the House and Senate to stop their pressuring and manipulating of the just-barely-majority Democrats so that there's enough Democrats at the end of 2010 to overwhelmingly pass a National Health Care bill in SPITE of ANY dirty tricks the remaining Republicans come up with.

Just like we elected Obama with an overwhelming Democratic majority of votes in spite of the Republican election manipulation tricks they used so successfully in 2000-2004.

So: REMEMBER this e-mail a year from now when you go the polls (sure, I can send it out again about a year from now to remind you) and get RID of the remaining Republicans in Congress so that we can have a National Health Care plan, WITH a Public option.

But if you're stupid, ignorant, uneducated, and moronic, and just plain dumb as a rock, and don't want a National Health Care System, ever, then go ahead and vote Republican in 2010, cripple Obama's ability to get anything accomplished for the rest of his term(s), as if we didn't vote him in to DO something about America's various current problems, all originally caused by Republicans, and just let America slide into the third-world dark ages that it's currently headed for.

While the Republicans quietly sit back and laugh in their mahogany-paneled offices while their bank accounts get bigger and bigger every day.

Hate my guts all you want for being so blunt, but it had (and has) to be said, cuz this is one of the major current problems that's keeping America down at a near-third world level.

So, ask yourself this: Did the Frankenstein monster do better than you on his IQ exam?

Just how dumb, or smart, are you? ☠

I was walking past the mental hospital the other day, and all the wild patients were shouting, '13....13....13.'

The fence was too high to see over, but I saw a little gap between the planks, so I looked through to see what was going on.....

Some idiot poked me in the eye with a stick!

Then they all started shouting '14....14....14'... ☠

here's a Beatles' song, ay'll betcha've never-ever heard b'fore! Enjoy! ☠

IS THIS YOUR AGE GROUP?
IF NOT, TOO BAD!







Black and White
(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they go...pull a chair up to the TV set,

'Good Night, David.
Good Night, Chet.'

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then..

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. We all wore white, short sleeved, buttoned shirts and (short) blue shorts for gym, washed over the weekend and brought back clean on Monday. We all took showers at end of Gym before going to our next class.
Flunking gym was not an option.... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention..

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Do you remember the school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Stations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, text messaging or over 270 H.D. digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah.... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.

Little did his Mom know that she could have owned everything we had, along with our house..

Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.

How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA. AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.
I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best. (Feel free to copy/ paste...) ☠

it takes a DARN GOOD pilot to do this!!!

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our friend Dreadnaught Dan, who had a heart attack, 'bout a month ago...
he'd been in a play at the Newport Performin' Arts Cent'r 'n' b'tween acts, had gone out t' his car... 'n' someone had t' go out 'n' check on him, 'n' found him collaps'd.

poor Dan'd been through hell...
he told us 'bout his ordeal... how he'd "really felt ok" but someone'd call'd paramedics, 'n' they kept askin' "did he have chest pain?" they took him to th' hospital anyway 'n' next thing he knew he woke up in OHSU, in Portland, almost a week lat'r.

in all, he'd had a heart attack, congestive heart failure, 'n' a collaps'd lung. he'd told us all 'bout th' ordeal of IV's 'n' tubes down his throat 'n' his arms were ti'd down (they didn't want him t' wake 'n' - wond'rin' where he was, 'n' try t' pull out th' tubes - which is exactly what would'v happ'n'd, had they not tied his arms down)... 'n' thankfully he had a nurse that was good at "charades" t' allow him t' communicate with them.

talk 'bout lousy landlords... just cause Dan'd end'd up in hospital, HIS landlords evict'd him outta his house in Newport. he's now stayin' at th' Whale Inn, in Depoe Bay, waitin' for an openin' at Otter Crest, just south of Depoe Bay.

mondays 'n' thursdays, owlsy 'n' ay go t' free dinner at "St. Texaco" (a church behind th' old Texaco station, which ay always forget the name of, hence my name for it) 'n' past thursday, we took a "to-go" dinn'r t' Dan 'n' had a good visit. he was happily surpris'd t' see us, wond'rin' how ay'd track'd him down. =)

we had a good visit 'n' told him it was really good t' see him 'n' und'r th' circumstances, he was entitld't ' his answ'r, which was "it was good T' BE SEEN"! lol.
(we also got t' meet his kitty, Candy, who is a sweet lit'le girl 'n' a good companion t' Dan.) he looks good, too - he's lost a lot of weight, but ay think can still keep his pirate name of "Dreadnaught Dan"... 'n' while in hospital, they shav'd his beard, much t' his dismay - but he's growin' it back. =) (DON'T shave a pirate's beard!!) >P

t' those of ye who answ'r'd me Pray'r R'quest, THANK YOU!


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