McCarthy's B-day

Okay. Happy birthday. Birthdays are cool. Birthdays are fun. I like Birthdays I...eat them...all..the..time...? Or something like that song that they sing on Noggin...actually, I think that ones about sandwiches. We're gonna have to take a raincheck on that one. I saw someone wrote happy birthday to you on the window. That's cool. I wish someone had done something like that for me. Feel special. I just realized that I either wasn't listening when you said or (the more likely) never asked how old you are (turning). So, heres to growing older and hopefully wiser all the time.
Do you know at what hour you were born? I always think thats cool when people know that. Like then you could probably figure out what tv show was on while your mother was giving birth. Do people even use the TV Guide anymore? I remember when we used to have crappy tv and I would turn to the guide channel and get stuck watching it because they would have some semi interesting mini show going on while they were showing the guide and i'd always get so caught up in it that I would miss the channel I was looking for and have to keep watching. This went on for years until we got Comcast, which at that time was COMPLETELY dominating the southside cable scene. Yeah. I was in The Know.
Well, Anways. Happy Birfday.

New Wave

If ever there was a song that explained the current state of the union...or dissension rather. Its Common's "New Wave" from the album Electric Circus. What initially attracted me to the song when I purchased the album so many years ago was the beats eerie - techno feel that was so beautifully incorporated with the harshness of pounding and echoing drums. However, as I recently revisited the album, I recognized the attention that was put into every detail of the track in order for it to serve its purpose as an eye-opener to the occupants of the America we live in today.
Common addresses society on every level from the reality tv wanna be to the corner hustler, warning them (us) all that we've "forgot(ten) the mission", and then forces us to listen to a chorus thats meant to empower the american but is spoken in French. My guess is because he's been saying it in English for a long time and it has yet to be recieved. He also addresses, however breifly, the subject of gentricfication as he says "this new age can't really save the ghetto".
Overall, New Wave is an excellent track and a definite contender for my favorite by this artist. Issued as both a warning for oncoming and a vivid image of what "war time" in america will be like, I would recommend this song to anyone who ever even imagined themselves taking part in anyones revloution.

Letter to Mr.McCarthy

Peace and happiness homes! Thank you for writing The Road, it was a truly beautiful piece. The idea of the world coming to an end filled with destruction and death has been throughly explored on several occasions, but your writing style completely transformed the topic into something different for me. The abrupt nature of it at times made it read to me almost like poetry. You would be short and vague and then punctuate that passage in the end with some beautiful epiphany. Those realizations would leave me with this errily wonderful feeling of seeing something for the first time. Like, how did I not notice that before...how did I not see that in myself even.There was also the way that you brought the reader into the minds of the characters through your descriptions of the settings; the way that the tone of their enviornment was projected into their individual thoughts.
 I'd never before seen the prospect of survival in a world of nothingness in such a raw and gritty ...way. It was interesting to see the ways that the father adapted to his situtation. How eventually he came to see dreaming as a sign of a weaking morale. What most surprised me about that was that I would think that anyone in that situtation would be happy to be provided with an escape, even if it only be in sleeping. I was also surprised that the father, who saw dreaming of what was as something negative, encouraged the survival of that "fire" that existed within his son. If he felt there were nothing better than what he had known his whole life...should he not prepare him to be faced with that forever?....

God in 2010

Forgot this one...forgot God? Like many other people in todays world, I let God fall to the bottom of my list of priorities as my level of responsibilty mounted. I am just recently recongizing how important it is to my quest for peace within myself, to stop denying God's place in my life. Through reading "The Spirituality of Liberation," I saw how all of this darkness and negativity had manifested itself in my life because of my disconnection with God. God is truth and reality. I began to realize that I had gotten so far off in to my own way of being, a web of lies, that I had begun to basically create my own reality around me. My truth became my lies. Those lies eventually envolped me in their darkness and consumed me. I became an angry person. I couldn't even understand why it was that I became that way...I couldn't understand myself and I didnt know where to begin. When things started to occur in my life that I could only explain through the power of God, whether they be good or bad, I could no longer deny Him. I felt the weight of all that anger and those lies lifted from me. God is my peace. Whenever I am feeling troubled or lost and weak, I call upomn Him as my source of strength. All that being said, I am non-denominational. Its like my mans Com(mon) said "I lecture how I got God but dont got religion."

Father...Son....Sister...Uncle...Baby Mommas Aunties Cousin

Developing strong relationships with members of your family is crucial to leading a fufilled and less diffucult life. This is a lesson I am presently learning myself. As I have gotten older and started to yearn for more independence, I have become more disconnected from my family. This is an important part of growing up because you have to learn things for yourself so that you will be able to function once you are on your own. However, I was trailing off so far away from my family that I was forgetting that those were the people who taught me when I wasnt able to figure the world out on my own. At the basest of all my ideals, are those of my mother...those of my father. Whether I chose to embrace or combat them, is a part of my individual journey. Still when I make decisions, when I percieve things, it is always influenced by what my parents have taught and continue to teach me. It was after I made that realization, that I began to listen again. I realized that just because I had began to formulate my own opinions, that didn't mean that my parents were devoid of all knowledge as far as I was concerned. Now I work to re-establish the bonds that once existed between myself and my parents, so that they will be willing to teach and see that I am more than willing to listen and learn.

How Do I know What I Know?

Most of what we believe is based on the physical. What we can touch, feel, hear, see. A part of the seeing aspect of that is coupled with that which we have read and been taught (hearing obviously). Reading is the way which we are taught about the vast ammount of things that we have no way of actually witnessing. Those facts that we intake are then reinforced by someone who we trust as an authority figure or educator. These things are from there, taken in as fact, and not questioned. I reason that people are often reluctant to question what they are taught because they doubt their own knoweldge of the subject or are entirely ignorant of it. It is as the saying goes, "Those who satnd for nothing fall for anything." This is not to say that those people are always easily swayed out of sloth, but also to suggest that one should not be so eager to learn, that they take everything handed to them, from whatever source, as fact. I have, on several occasion, fallen victim  to an over-eagerness to learn from those who I've encountered. This is where the pursuit of knowledge becomes dangerous. As I considered myself a student of all those around me, I was neglecting the fact that not everyone has the best intentions. Reflecting on this lead me to be more careful giving individuals the role of my educator.

Our Meaning

I believe our meaning as human beings in general is to aid and enrich each others lives through whatever gift we have been given. It is through that method of existing that one can pick up where the other leaves off and we can build as a race altogether. A part of that is also recognizing that the Earth is a member of our Universe as well. Humans have to treat the Earth with as much respect and care as they should another human being. Give back to it and replinish it as it gives to us, this is how we will be able to reach our full potential. However, I do think that because many of us have become so disconnected from one another as well as our surroundings we have stifled our own growth, and therefore forgotten our meaning.
The individuals meaning is interwined with that of our universe and the realization of this comes through the journey of life. I believe that once a person realizes that the meaning of life is to figure out what your power is...your purpose, then you take the journey to use that power to reach your full potential. However, in order to do that you must interact with others and recieve their gifts and relay to them yours. That is how you find your individual meaning and relate back to that of the race simultaneously.