The value of a nickel

I make a lot of jokes about people.  I will make fun of how they act, how they look, and what kind of crap they do.  But underneath it all, I take a great deal of sympathy on people.  After all, not everyone has all that I have, or can they do all that I can do.  Napoleon Hill said in his book “Think and Grow Rich”, that the number one reason for failure in life is Unfavorable Hereditary Background.  To quote it directly, “There is little, if anything, which can be done for people who are born with a deficiency in brain power”.   

I write this because I am surrounded by people who are suffering.  Suffering in poverty, with medical conditions, and just other crap that life has dealt them.   I myself suffer some of these things, and I need to remind myself this from time to time. 

The adage “One man’s garbage is another man’s Treasure” never seems so true then when I see someone digging through the trash for pop cans.  I see this a lot now that I am back in Oregon.  Washington didn’t do this .05 refund for returning the can to the store, so it wasn’t a big deal.  But here in Salem, the land that I would like to leave and forget, it is very common.  In fact, it is so common that I have started to remind people during the move-in process that they cannot climb in the compactor. 

But today, I came to the compactor and one of my residents was inside of it.  He had been there for a while, and was breaking open trash bags.  He was pretty dirty, and red in the face from the cold.  And for all his trouble, he had about 15 cans sitting on the ground. 

I told him he couldn’t do that, and he gave me an excuse about it being Christmas and he needed money for his kids.  The sad part, I know he isn’t completely lying.  I know there story, and I cannot share that here.  I started to clean up around the compactor, and he gathered his stuff to leave.  As he was leaving I noticed that he picked up about 10 cigarettes that he had pulled out of the trash, all over half smoked.  I know he doesn't smoke.  He pulled them out for his wife. 

I don’t have much money right now.  I am so broke right now that I am looking at ways to cut expense for the next few months.  But, I can be eternally great full that I have not been reduced to picking trash from the garbage.  I pity the people that find that as a reasonable source of extra money, and I wish that our society took better care of people.  The treatment of the mentally ill and the disabled is often reprehensible.  I will call that a fact, not just my opinion.     

To make things worse, I work and live in a community that is well below the poverty level.  Over half of the people here are on Government housing.  I would predict that 90% are receiving assistance of some sort.  Some of the people here chose their life style, most do not. 

I think living and working here is like visiting a foreign country.  It is easy to think that these people and this situation do not exist.  Or, that it isn’t as bad as people say.  Try telling that to the person who is has been reduced to digging through the trash.  Tell that to the people that cannot even get a job at fast food.  I suppose they would have trouble getting a food handlers card, but that again… Is it there fault there parent breed.    

An idea of a new hobby

I am considering starting a new hobby.  This one would be to give me an outlet for my bi-polar rages. 

I am going to start a new identity, facebook, youtube, google+… all of them.  Then I will log into the accounts and go to youtube and wreck havoc for fun.

I will go to a Justin Bieber post, and say that this kids is a homo freak with horrible hair.  Then sit back and enjoy the reply’s that people make. 

Then I can go to fox news and write a response to a news story about how we should vote 4 more years for Obama on a Romney story. 

Then I can find a equal rights story on a news site and quote some passage about how God hates all Fags, and we should public stone them.

I think that I may be able to have fun with that.  I wouldn’t care if I agreed with the story or not, just pick the opposite opinion of the story, and let it run for as long as it takes to get it out of my system. 

And then, when I get blocked from CNN, or Youtube, I can just create a new account. 

I think it would be a lot of fun.  

A good movie

There is something about foreign films that I seem to love.  I love America, don’t get me wrong.  And when it comes to movies well obviously we make good ones. 

The thing is, I love stories.  After all, that is why I write.  I love to read them, tell them, hear them, and live them.  But one thing I hate about Hollywood blockbusters is they are often simply unbelievable. 

For example, I went and saw some fast furious movie not too long ago with some friends.  It is hard to watch a movie like that, primarily because it could never happen.  Dragging a full safe with a one car through all of the concrete pillars and all that.  Let alone, the actors are not even close to real…

But something that has always annoyed me, and probably will forever, is the Germans speaking English with a German accent.  Watch a WW2 movie and they are speaking English with a heavy German accent.  And to make it worst, they say German words while speaking English to add to the fact that they are German. 

I have noticed this with watching a lot of the foreign films, and that is that they are not so big on having the Germans speak there language in a German accent.  Don’t get me wrong, it works in most cases.  But it fails to pull me into the story. 

Can you imagine a epic story like The Lord Of the Rings, and having the elves speak…I don’t know, English with an Irish accent? 

I just watched the best movie I have seen in a while.

Arn: The Knight Templar

The movie was a good story.  Full of love, hate, enemy’s trying to outdo there enemy’s.  There was human kindness, as well as the bad parts of the species.  It was, all in all a very good and moving story. 

This movie drew me into the story.  And I have to admit, that is hard to do in most cases.  I am writing, reading, or doing something online during most movies.  It has to do with the ADD and all that. 

Anyhow, right of the bat I decided that it was going to be hard to watch, as I was restless and trying to watch what I believed to be a Swedish movie.  

The coolest part of the movie, well at least to me, was that it was multi language.  The character went all over the world, and they spoke the appropriate language for that part of the show.  It went from Swiss, to Latin, to English, to Swiss, to English, to Arabic, to English, and then to Swiss again.  I may be leaving some out.

At one point, the English speaking person was mad at the Swiss person for knowing the language of their enemy, Arabic. 

This trait of a movie isn’t unseen in other movies.  This was just a good story, told nicely, with the added realistic approach to world travel….Language.